What is this? Post Photos of Mystery Items Here (vintage computers only)

[mountainking]

Well, yes, I have a handful of 8085 SBCs but with this one being from 1980, which is not early as in 1975 early, but still before I thought things really exploded and every electronics company in the world started making their own, I thought it might be a bit easier to identify, but maybe there was a ridiculous amount of them by then, you'd probably know about that better than I.

It's just kind of an interesting board, it's definitely either a prototype or something from a small company that was making them one at a time by hand, notice that none of the text on the board is painted on, it's all raw metal so obviously all of the traces and text were etched on at the same time by hand. Yeah, that edge connector was something that caught my eye right away, there are fingers on one side and the other side, like you mentioned, is just big ground planes. I suspect that that connector along those empty sockets are all for I/O. Maybe once I dump the eprom all questions will be answered.

 

[Bruce Tomlin]

They were basically the Arduino of the '80s, only without having a standard design for everyone to copy, and no C++ compiler. I have two Z80 SBC boards myself.

 

[mountainking]

They were basically the Arduino of the '80s, only without having a standard design for everyone to copy, and no C++ compiler. I have two Z80 SBC boards myself.

Are you referring to the 8085 or the Z80?

 

[Bruce Tomlin]

The entire phenomenon of 8085/Z80 SBCs in general.

 

[mountainking]

I'm wondering if this is part of a computer.. the seller says it was part of an S100 system but I think he's using S100 as shorthand for old computer. Don't think anything S100 ever involved an 8008?

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I just made a post in the S100 section about the boards and whatnot that I got from that seller, if you are interested in taking a look at the boards.

 

[falter]

Curious what this is. I know SWP made add ons for Atari, but this looks like a full blown Z80 SBC.. in 1984?

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[Chuck(G)]

It looks like a complete SBC to me; serial I/O, parallel, floppy controller and 64KB of DRAM. I don't see where it would hook into an Atari anything.

 

[falter]

It looks like a complete SBC to me; serial I/O, parallel, floppy controller and 64KB of DRAM. I don't see where it would hook into an Atari anything.

Yeah. 1984 is getting late in the game for that sort of stuff no? Seems like a weird thing for SWP to be into. Unless maybe they had it for dev purposes

 

[Chuck(G)]

Could be an educational thing also or just promoted as a general development system. I wonder about that expansion connector on the extreme right side. That might shed some light on the intended purpose.

 

[GearTechWolf]

Curious what this is. I know SWP made add ons for Atari, but this looks like a full blown Z80 SBC.. in 1984?

The sticker on the ROM says 8500 V1.1, maybe a clue? Interesting bodge-wires on U20.

 

[westveld]

Getting a "Wintery Mix" in Michigan tonight, so why not dig out the big bin of misc key caps and switches!
Luckily they are bagged separately, but I still have no clue on some of them

 

[GearTechWolf]

Getting a "Wintery Mix" in Michigan tonight, so why not dig out the big bin of misc key caps and switches!
Luckily they are bagged separately, but I still have no clue on some of them

Are those red and white ones chiclet style?

 

[westveld]

Are those red and white ones chiclet style?

Maybe?
It feels like an even movement until they bottom out, unlike a buckling spring style.

 

[shrike]

Maybe someone can help identify this 8-bit ISA card I found recently. It's manufactured by Tektronix, so I assume some kind of instrument control? The only connector is a female DE9. I identified SRAM, a serial controller and an 8-bit CPU on the board

 

[mdog69]

Maybe someone can help identify this 8-bit ISA card I found recently. It's manufactured by Tektronix, so I assume some kind of instrument control? The only connector is a female DE9. I identified SRAM, a serial controller and an 8-bit CPU on the board

My money is on some form of synchronous communications card (SDLC/HDLC) that talks RS422 or RS449- the 8530 can do synchronous or async comms (SDLC/HDLC type stuff), the HD64180 does all the data processing on behalf of the PC, and the AM26LS32 and AM26LS30 are RS422 line receivers/drivers. My google fu runs out there - can't find any card specific info.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Nice to see a 64180 ( predecessor to the Z180) CPU in the wild. I recall being dogged by trying to find a socket for the thing (pin spacing is on .05" centers). The AM26LS32 and AM26LS30 as well as the comms chips point to an RS422/RS485 application.

 

[mdog69]

After having a probe around the Tektronix 1990 catalog (from bitsavers.org) , I'm thinking it might be a card taken from a TC-1000 or TC-2000 comms/network analyser.
Good luck getting any further info, with specialist stuff that age, it's feast or famine. (by the way it looks as if tektronix part codes starting "160-" are for firmware or programmable devices - saw that on a visit to bitsavers.org, and the devices labelled with xxxx-xx codes are more likely to be 160-xxxx-yy).

 

[shrike]

Nice to see a 64180 ( predecessor to the Z180) CPU in the wild. I recall being dogged by trying to find a socket for the thing (pin spacing is on .05" centers). The AM26LS32 and AM26LS30 as well as the comms chips point to an RS422/RS485 application.

I also came across this 8bit localtalk card made by Centram Systems that has the AM26LS30/32 chips on it. Too bad I didnt find the drivers or TOPS software, though

 

[mountainking]

I picked up this board because it seemed to have everything necessary to be a computer, though I was pretty sure it wasn't. Anyway, fellow forum member, lemonslice, dumped the erpom data for me and while I can see there is a bunch of text at the end I'm not sure what it's telling me. Anybody know what this board is from?

 

[mountainking]

Ah, looking over the text I see "Micropull", which lemonslice made mention of, looks like the board came from some type of test equipment. Maybe some one can tell abit more by reading the data?