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

dorkbert said:
It has no RAM, no IO connector of any sort, but it has onboard ROM.
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Those two TMS4416 chips combined provide 16K of DRAM, and I imagine some of that logic might be for handling the DRAM refresh.

Best guess as someone who is decidedly not an Apple person: might be Franklin's take on Apple's language card.
 
CommodoreZ said:
Those two TMS4416 chips combined provide 16K of DRAM, and I imagine some of that logic might be for handling the DRAM refresh.

Best guess as someone who is decidedly not an Apple person: might be Franklin's take on Apple's language card.
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you're right, those are 16x4 DRAM, though if it's 16k RAM card, it seem redundant as Franklin Ace 1k and later all ships with 64k on logic board.
a coarse search indicates that Franklin cloned the Language Card verbatim (complete with ribbon cable running from DRAM socket to the board) for Franklin Ace 100. So I still don't know what this board is.
 
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@dorkbert From your picture, assuming that the bus is Apple II compatible, it seems to have the fingers/contacts needed for I/O SELECT,A0-A15, SYNC (?), and +5V.

However, the ones for the other signals, including RDY, R/W, I/O STROBE, DMA, INT OUT, or DMA OUT appear to be absent.

So presumably this card sits somewhere in the memory map, exposing the ROM and/or those two RAM chips.

Perhaps it's purpose is to be able to do some kind of ROM shadowing into 16K of memory that can then be 'patched' by software at boot or before a program runs?
 
I've told before about the nice hardware I sold at its low point around 15-20 years ago, including a Voodoo² 12MB card and ISA sound cards. Anyway, I just found some pics of old PC hardware I sold as recently as 4 years ago, at a time I had no real interest or knowledge in retro computers and just tried to get some money back out of a package deal with Commodore's, Amiga's and other ST's I bought. Meanwhile I do have 3 generations of nicely specced retro PC's today and now I'm intrigued what exactly I let go back then. So, hurt me, tell me what hardware this was:

I thought that the motherboard was a 386, PC Chips by the looks of it. With serious battery damage. So yeah, not much lost there I suppose.

The two cards are a graphics card and I/O card, ISA? Might have belonged to that 386(?) motherboard.

The next PC is possibly a 486? If it's a 486, then I assume a later one given the cpu cooler, so I'd guess a DX2 66. Might it be an early Pentium? However the case never had a CDROM, only diskette. Any idea what cards are in there? I see an ISA I/O card, another ISA card and a VLB card or a large ISA card in a VLB slot? Connectors look like a sound card with gameport for that bottom card?

The last PC certainly is a Pentium 100 with 32MB RAM (for which today I'd have the perfect gpu for 2D games, but alas PC is gone!). Any idea what cards are in there, I see a huuuuge ISA card (and I'm afraid that was an AWE32? Another bad decision for the list!), an ISA modem card, another ISA card which I assume might be for a printer port or something, and then a PCI card which I guess would then be the graphics card? But it has loads of headers.

So, my own guestimate of the damage report: nothing much lost on the 386 mobo. The 486(?) might have been nice, but I have a stable rare DX50 PC standing right next to me now, so that one's replaced. My DX50 does have nothing special for gpu and a crappy sound card, so I might have sold better replacements. On the other hand the main goal of this 486 was to have something not too fast to run some difficult games that fail on my W98 rocket. Which brings us to the Pentium 100: that one might have been nice between my 486 and my W98 rocket, and I have a 12MB Matrox Millennium 2 to put in it. Then again, the use case for such a PC would become extremely niche for me. Old stuff goes on the 486, everything from Duke3D up to all DX7 stuff goes on the W98 rocket. So what's left would be a few point and click adventures or something like that. I'll tell myself I would not have liked another PC in my collection. Now you tell me how stupid I was, the AWE32 was a proper start at that...But for that one I can tell myself, and I'm not really lying, that at least in the DX50 case there simply is no room for such a surfboard of a card.

I'll finish with the lovely news that 4 years ago I also sold a Potex color CRT, a green CRT, and a Nan Tan mechanical keyboard with a switch for 8088/80286 standard. I am so smart, S-A-M-R-T...

Now this all isn't a disaster (not like selling the Voodoo² for 20, including the rest of the gaming PC, was) as I sold everything described above for 130 euro, which would still buy me a proper early Pentium today if I felt so inclined.
 

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In an attempt to reach a wider audience, the mystery isnt the board, its the connector.
In the last picture, the outside diameter of the barrel around the centre pin, is 0.175" But I just cant identify the connector. There are no markings anywhere.
Its the internal video connection between boards on the RML 380Z

20260509_082607.jpg20260516_175029.jpg20260509_082546.jpg
 
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Istarian said:
@Gary C You could try seeing what Mouser or Digikey carry, but you'll need as much detail as possible so you can filter down to less than a couple hundred options.

^ Farnell datasheet for the part @Qbertnix identified, dated 2001

You could presumably replace it with a different part that's intended for a similar usage.
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I could, but am trying to keep everything as original as possible as this might go on display at the museum eventually. Its for the hires colour graphics card on an RML380Z
 
Nicolas 2000 said:
I've told before about the nice hardware I sold at its low point around 15-20 years ago, including a Voodoo² 12MB card and ISA sound cards. Anyway, I just found some pics of old PC hardware I sold as recently as 4 years ago, at a time I had no real interest or knowledge in retro computers and just tried to get some money back out of a package deal with Commodore's, Amiga's and other ST's I bought. Meanwhile I do have 3 generations of nicely specced retro PC's today and now I'm intrigued what exactly I let go back then. So, hurt me, tell me what hardware this was:
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I spy a Kalok Octagon II in that machine!
 
famicomaster2 said:
I spy a Kalok Octagon II in that machine!
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indeed looks like it. Those are in the 100-120mb range, so that would indicate an early 486 like a 33?

i see high asking prices (150-350) for them on ebay, but I doubt those would sell in the real world. Even at 50 euro on other sites I see them unsold after half a year.
 
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NeXT said:
It's now on ebay.

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I hope someone enjoys it. It's about an order of magnitude too rich for my blood, but I'm not the ideal consumer.(*)

(* I mean, to be be clear I probably would pay $50 if I saw this at the local ham radio swap meet or whatever, if for no other reason than I really love the five hexadecimal breakpoint address knobs. The mainframe this was from was intended as a replacement/upgrade for the 16 bit-subset versions of the IBM System/360 line, which means it would be *very* apropos to hook this up to a homebrew 8086/V30 machine. Who *wouldn't* want an MS-DOS machine with a fully functional front panel?) ;)
 
hunterjwizzard said:
I hope it sells but $750 is MIGHTY steep.
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What do you suppose the cost would be for constructing a decent replica of it? Assume you need to buy all new components and wiring, but can throw together the physical structure inexpensively

If somebody had the rest of that machine or even just a partial museum exhibit w/non-working hardware, I think $750 wouldn't be too high a price for having an original front panel.

In any case, the listing now says it sold.
 
Istarian said:
In any case, the listing now says it sold.
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But not necessarily for $750. For years now, eBay no longer reveals the "best offer" price that items actually sell for, and instead falsely displays the item's asking price as its sale price, to artificially inflate the perceived resale value.
 
vwestlife said:
But not necessarily for $750. For years now, eBay no longer reveals the "best offer" price that items actually sell for, and instead falsely displays the item's asking price as its sale price, to artificially inflate the perceived resale value.
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Well that's stupid and highly annoying.

Still, hopefully it's in the hands of someone with a better use for it than gutting for some interesting knobs and switch (or dumpstering the whole thing).
 
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