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Looking for three IBM Cards

L

lyonadmiral

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Joined
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Does anyone have that they are willing to part with either or all:

1. IBM Binary Synchronous Communications (BSC) Adapter
2. IBM Data Acquisition & Control (DAC) Adapter
3. IBM Cluster Adapter
 
I have a BSCA card (PCB B-6133975) in the original box with sealed manual. I picked it up at a discounter a long time ago but never actually used it. Card looks to be either NOS or very little use. $12 for Airmail from Canada + $???

FYI: I also have a Synchronous Data Link Control Communications Adapter with a reversible modification for address selection. Also an IBM CGA card I used for many years and an unused (by me) PC-AT 370 Option card set.
 
lyonadmiral said:
Does anyone have that they are willing to part with either or all:

1. IBM Binary Synchronous Communications (BSC) Adapter
2. IBM Data Acquisition & Control (DAC) Adapter
3. IBM Cluster Adapter
Click to expand...

I have never heard of a specific BI-Sync adaptor, assuming we are talking XT/AT BUS. There was a Synchronous adaptor which is a total PITA as it used two IRQ's and I think two DMAs. Pretty sure it would do BI-SYNC or HDLC. If you are talking Microchannel then I have no idea...
 
g4ugm said:
I have never heard of a specific BI-Sync adaptor, assuming we are talking XT/AT BUS. There was a Synchronous adaptor which is a total PITA as it used two IRQ's and I think two DMAs. Pretty sure it would do BI-SYNC or HDLC. If you are talking Microchannel then I have no idea...
Click to expand...

It is indeed PC/XT bus, 8-bit, it is listed on minuszerodegrees.net as an available option for the PC & XT.
 
Computer Reset in Texas used to have IBM Cluster cards for both ISA and the PCjr. If you are going to get one you had better get a second one; they are useless without another Cluster adapter to talk to.

For those of you wondering what 'Cluster' is ... it was a primitive Ethernet-like network adapter for the early PC family. It was much slower than Ethernet and you generally ran IBM specific server software on an XT or an AT to service the attached machines. The cluster adapter on the PCjr had a BIOS extension that would allow remote booting, so that you could have a group of diskless machines all sharing a central file server.

It was not terribly popular. One day I'll setup my Cluster network again and port mTCP to it. ;-0
 
mbbrutman said:
Computer Reset in Texas used to have IBM Cluster cards for both ISA and the PCjr. If you are going to get one you had better get a second one; they are useless without another Cluster adapter to talk to....It was not terribly popular. One day I'll setup my Cluster network again and port mTCP to it. ;-0
Click to expand...

I may get two but right now the second one will be useless anyway since I don't have a 2nd system to put it in. It's more to have it in the system right now then for functionality purposes.

How difficult do you think it would be to port mTCP to it? Would that be practical mTCP on Cluster Network? I was under the impression it was a lot like Token Ring.
 
I have a technical reference for Cluster at home - it is definitely more like Ethernet in the way it transmits and detects collisions.

Even so, something like TCP/IP supports nearly any physical layer you can think of. What changes is the underlying framing of packets, what hardware addresses look like and how things like broadcast are done.

Cluster supports around 256 devices on a network, so running TCP/IP between machines using Cluster is not a problem. The hard part is getting off that network - you need a gateway or a bridge machine that includes both Cluster and something else, like Ethernet. Otherwise your TCP/IP network running on Cluster is a very, very small island. I had looked into doing a device driver for Linux for the Cluster adapter back when I had Linux that ran on an ISA machine, but I probably would have been the only user of it, and an occasional user at that. It would be easier for me to hack up mTCP to allow it to run as a dedicated gateway on an old AT with both Cluster and Ethernet rather than write the Linux device driver from scratch and deal with the timing requirements of the Cluster card, which was pretty finicky. (I had to slow my 386 down to AT speeds to get it to work; I doubt it would even run in a 486.)
 
Does anybody happen to have any software or documentation for the IBM Data Acquisition and Control card? I am pretty sure there was supposed to be a disk included with it that contained support files to program it. I'd appreciate any info anybody could provide. Thanks!
 
Hello modem7, thank you for the guidance. I have already found the two documents on your most excellent web site (-0). First place I always look for my vintage IBM info. What I am looking for now, is the original software that came with the card. I read in the attached document, that it came with support software. I am hoping someone out there has a copy of it. Thanks again sir!
 

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Well I almost thought I found it. Found this website which had links to it all.


But nope, none of the links work, I keep on searching. I did find that they alternatively refer to thing as the IBM DACA, which is how I found this link.
 
Okay, I found this site where this guy Herb has 3 of these DACA cards. He specified a link to manuals/drivers. But guess what, it's the same link I found with dead links. Man I wish I knew who Mark W. is that originally posted this stuff on AngelFire, he has it all!


I have to give up my search for now. If anybody has or knows somebody who has the original software and programming manual, please let me know! Thanks!
 
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