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

GearTechWolf said:
Any ideas what this is and what it goes to?
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My first gut feeling was some kind of cache module. But there is no RAM.

Those 8259 chips are PICs (programmable interrupt controller), and there are six of them? This doesn't seem like the kind of thing that you put into a DIMM socket. The interesting thing is all those "F86" chips, what can you do with 32 XOR gates? Note that XOR is not a common function for PAL chips. I guess you could match a specific address with it. And there's three 'F374 chips, I guess that's either four bits per PIC, or 8 bits per pair of PICs. Other than that you have a PAL and two TTL gate chips to control it all.

Why would you put a board with 48 interrupt inputs in a DIMM socket?
 
Bruce Tomlin said:
Why would you put a board with 48 interrupt inputs in a DIMM socket?
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Hmm, on a whim, I looked up Altos by itself and found out they specialized in multi-user computers and was acquired by Acer.
Therefor, perhaps this module is for something relating to running a multi-user interface of some kind?
The EISA/IDB label might factor into that as well, if the meaning of IDB can be sussed out.
I likely got it from a large amount of computers/computer-related junk that was being recycled at a local Mission while I worked there in the computer lab.
Might've been mixed in with a bunch of DIMMs, don't recall. I just dug it out of a box in my shed recently, figured it was a good item for this thread.
 
falter said:
Thanks Chuck! How did you get the first bit of info? Even just googling the company name didn't produce much for me.

And as for ChatGPT, good lord, Google may be spying on my conversations but at least it doesn't just make things up.
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Just good old web searching, I guess. It wasn't easy, but I was convinced that it was out there, somewhere. Took about a half-hour.
Problem is that everyone thinks that a search engine like Google will turn everything up automatically on one or two tries. For pre-internet stuff, that's simply not true.
Of course, ChatGPT can make it up from whole cloth and give you and answer.
I despair for the younger generations.
 
As far as the ACER/ALTOS card, I'd caution not to be mislead by labels. For example, it's clearly not what we understand to be an EISA card, regardless of the label, so probably means something else, but perhaps it's part of an EISA-based system.

Okay, so we have 6 8259 programmable interrupt controllers on an unknown bus to an unknown system. They must clearly be cascaded to another off-board 8259, so their purpose is to service 48 interrupt lines. What sort of equipment might use this?

Well, servers for one--and Acer Altos servers are well known. So my guess is that it's part of an Acer Altos EISA based server. Quite probably multi-CPU.

I'll leave it to the peanut gallery to line up the suspects.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Just good old web searching, I guess. It wasn't easy, but I was convinced that it was out there, somewhere. Took about a half-hour.
Problem is that everyone thinks that a search engine like Google will turn everything up automatically on one or two tries. For pre-internet stuff, that's simply not true.
Of course, ChatGPT can make it up from whole cloth and give you and answer.
I despair for the younger generations.
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I tried Terra Computers, Terra Computer Systems, in quotes, out of quotes.. tc-1c10, terra computer.. all kinds of stuff.. I tried for about 25 min and all I could find was what I eventually found in newspapers.com. Clearly my Google-fu is no good, although I didn't have the insight that the model number might be 1010 rather than 1c10.
 
Okay, got an odd little memory-like module here. Marked: Acer/Altos EISA/IDB MADE IN TAIWAN R.O.C. 92345 48.51113.001 (with a label on the back that reads: 55.51315.0013320054A M)
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Ive seen one of these in person year and years ago when I used to install servers. If i recall correctly its the SMP configuration card for a multicpu 486 Altos server.
 
GearTechWolf said:
None as to exactly what it is, but I noticed on the 2nd board (the one with the telecom jack) that there are parts with 82/83 dates, so it does appear to be all from the 80's despite appearances. Maybe that large white-ceramic IC on the 2nd board is a ROM?
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Yes, I meant to add that about the 82/83 dates on most of the ics, I guess I was just trying to point out just how different the 3 boards looked compared to the 4th board by pointing out that they LOOK like they are from different time periods.

The white ic is odd, it has a top and a bottom layer with space in between the two pieces. I was kind thinking that it might be a resistor array, it doesn't look like there is much to it. When I first saw it I thought/hoped that it was a microprocessor or rom or similar but idk.
 

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twolazy said:
Ive seen one of these in person year and years ago when I used to install servers. If i recall correctly its the SMP configuration card for a multicpu 486 Altos server.
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Ah! I also have two giant multi-CPU 486 server cards, and two matching RAM cards, from the same source.
So that likely is what it pairs with! Pity I lack the back-plane and anything else to make use of any of it, unless I were to build something...
But that's a far-off, so back-burner it isn't even in the house anymore, type of potential project! (but I'll hang on to the parts)
Anyhow, thanks for chiming in!
 
A friend found this monitor, no other pictures, any idea on what it might be?
 

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Could be monitor, could be terminal, no telling without a wash and some better pictures, especially of any ports on the rear.
 
Going to guess a word processor monitor, most likely monochrome. Maybe Smith Corona? Just a guess, as the other 2 said, its so dirty who knows. And with it being covered in mud, insides are most likely rusted bad. Tube is most likely ok. Flyback is most likely still good as well... But hey, I've seen worse on YT brought back to life so who knows lol.
 
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I'm leaning towards mono due to no front controls. That is definitely not a door on the front. And where the door would be, its cracked badly, and you can see its really bad cheap plastic.
 
So looking at local facebook stuff for whatever pops up and this pops up, jest you not! Looks almost identical bezel wise. 13" VGA.
335892053_6663268867021919_8819252361241919646_n.jpg


If anyone wants it...

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Got a number of these along with some other stuff recently.
Looks like a memory card for a DEC something or other, but I know very little about DEC stuff - QBUS, VAX, PDP-xx, UNIBUS, Oh my!

PXL_20230314_004135681-c-scaled.jpgPXL_20230314_004208571-c-scaled.jpg
 
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