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Single Board Computer - info please?

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kishy

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Posting this as I head off to bed with hopes there will be fun, juicy info when I awaken:

Yesterday I went to a garage sale at a local charity that refurbs computers for children, schools, etc. They take donations so naturally they've accumulated a significant amount of vintage stuff over the years (ex: there's a box of 10+ C64s of the varying generations).

I think I lucked out. For $20:

  • IBM 1386887 3179 terminal keyboard, for conversion project at geekhack.org
  • NIB PS/2 RF wireless mouse
  • Kensington Expert Mouse serial trackball w/cable and PS/2 adapter
  • AT/XT keyboard extension cable, 6ft
  • PS/2 extension cable, 6ft
  • Diversified Technology Single Board Computer

The SBC is in the attached photo.

It has two mini-DIN jacks (PS/2 type but I can't be sure that's what they actually carry), a big fat CMOS battery, loaded with RAM, has a 386 w/387, what appear to be two COM port headers...you get the idea. Diversified seems to have been involved with slot machines and arcade stuff and my understanding is local arcades were big donors (and buyers and traders) with the charity in question, so that fits. It's a 16-bit ISA card, or at least interfaces via a physically equivalent connector. Popped it in my P1 test rig just to see if anything started arcing and the system didn't POST, but seemingly no harm done (removed it and system works again). Any info? I'm not 100% sure what/where the model number is on this but the p/n is visible in the photo (CAT985 is another possibly significant figure).
 

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I have a couple of pc cards too, from old industrial stuff. They require a passive backplane (i.e. a set of eisa slots with power connections) to plug into.
I'm fortunate in that I have just such a backplane, but would imagine that with a bit of effort it would be possible to solder power connections onto the various power supply rails on an old isa riser card, just to get some functionality out of it.
 
nige the hippy said:
I have a couple of pc cards too, from old industrial stuff. They require a passive backplane (i.e. a set of eisa slots with power connections) to plug into.
I'm fortunate in that I have just such a backplane, but would imagine that with a bit of effort it would be possible to solder power connections onto the various power supply rails on an old isa riser card, just to get some functionality out of it.
Click to expand...

Well that's no fun...but perhaps not surprising. I was hoping there would be some way to use it in a similar manner to how Sun systems can use SunPCi cards to basically run a second computer inside your computer simultaneously.
 
...as a second processor...
there was quite a nice card of that ilk finished on ebay last night

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170417057567&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

9 transputers plus ridiculous amounts (for the mid '80s) of memory. In it's day it turned your pc into a supercomputer. The T800s were 32 bit processors, optimised for number crunching. the transputer "thing" was 4 very high speed serial busses that connected one processor to the ones near it, to swap data and synchronise operations. That particular card had a switch chip that allowed you to connect them in different patterns. (lines, squares, cubes, hypercubes etc)

O/T, I had a mate that used to program the "Edinburgh concurrent supercomputer" which was a reconfigureable array of 400 transputers. - I wonder if it still exists?
 
It looks like this CAN be used in a PC/AT. Manual here but maybe not for long. Someone at the company went to the trouble of scanning that when I mentioned I had found the card!

If it's AT compatible, presumably it can be put in my PS/2 30-286 which is pretty much an AT, right? Time to read the manual!

Edit: if it ends up being that the card works, I'd be interested in getting a PROM chip to populate one of the USER PROM sockets (or maybe two, who knows). Reasoning being that these function as disk emulation when present. Does anyone know where to obtain such a thing? Manual says it accepts "64K x 8, 128K x 8, and 256K x 8 PROM devices in 32-pin PLCC packages".
 
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You're SO lucky to have found something like this - I've been hoping to come across something like it for a while now. Here's what I'd do if I were the lucky one to find it:

- Buy an industrial motherboard for my Core 2 Duo box that has ISA slots.
- Put i386 SBC in ISA slot.
- Search and if necessary write my own programs/drivers to get DOS running on that card from within Windows on the main machine.
- Profit.

I did, however, come into posession of a Trackstar 128, which is basically a SBC of an Apple 2 in an ISA slot (8-bit iirc). Unfortunately the drivers had some evil copy protection at the time and the only place I could find disk images turned out to not function right. :/

Edit:

*has a thought*

I have a Zenith box that is one of those passive-backplane buggers. Unfortunately it uses non-standard dual 8-bit ISA (or it looks like that anyway) for most of the interesting cards. It has RAM cards that are standard 16-bit though, would/should those work in a non-backplane-style PC?
 
Raven said:
You're SO lucky to have found something like this - I've been hoping to come across something like it for a while now. Here's what I'd do if I were the lucky one to find it:

- Buy an industrial motherboard for my Core 2 Duo box that has ISA slots.
- Put i386 SBC in ISA slot.
- Search and if necessary write my own programs/drivers to get DOS running on that card from within Windows on the main machine.
- Profit.

I did, however, come into posession of a Trackstar 128, which is basically a SBC of an Apple 2 in an ISA slot (8-bit iirc). Unfortunately the drivers had some evil copy protection at the time and the only place I could find disk images turned out to not function right. :/

Edit:

*has a thought*

I have a Zenith box that is one of those passive-backplane buggers. Unfortunately it uses non-standard dual 8-bit ISA (or it looks like that anyway) for most of the interesting cards. It has RAM cards that are standard 16-bit though, would/should those work in a non-backplane-style PC?
Click to expand...

Hey, if I end up not wanting this or can't get it to work or whatever, I'll let it go to a member here, and since you mentioned it you'll get first shot if that happens. I would be seeking to at least profit SLIGHTLY in that situation though.

That's certainly a neat idea, getting a modern board with ISA and setting it up. From flipping through the manual I get the impression that one accesses it through DEBUG in the same manner one accesses an ST412 hard drive controller though so that may create big issues for modern OSs that don't give you nice direct hardware access.

I had a feeling I found something of interest :D
I saw it in a box, kind of tilted my head to the side (yeah, confused puppy look) then pieced it all together and grabbed it realizing potential rarity.

About the Zenith thing, I couldn't tell ya.
 
Anyone indicating it could NOT be installed in an "active" motherboard was absolutely correct, I should have read more carefully. Indeed, it needs to be installed in a passive backplane type system because the ISA bus slot is for attaching to other cards, not to an active motherboard.

As a result, I can't use it. I could probably benefit from the RAM that's on it though...just seems like a shame to part out. They are seated in normal sockets and could be replaced but this is a matching set of 8 and at some point must have been verified to work in this card.

The card will appear in the vintage f/s area momentarily. Raven, you still get first shot, but I suspect it is NOT what you're looking for since it is not what I was looking for. Pricing will factor in the potential value of removable components if sold individually.
 
This thing looks like a complete AT computer, and all you need on the passive backplane in addition to the SBC are a video card, disk controller, and I/O.

The fact that it has internal keyboard/mouse headers in addition to the external ones means the chassis probably had a KVM-like way to share a keyboard and mouse with several of these cards in one chassis.

As far as ISA passive backplanes, you can still get them on ebay and elsewhere. Just add appropriate power supply.

Would be interesting to get it running.
 
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the term "single board computer" gets thrown around a lot. As someone pointed out the main guts of a number of even butt old early systems contained a processor card. I also have a zenith that's set up that way. The AT &T 6300 also did it similarly. The early multibus and s-100 stuff did it that way exclusively. The term sbc should really be reserved for something like an Ampro LittleBoardPC or the like, and any number of embedded industrial controllers or much of the stamp stuff and the like today. Emphasis is on "single" and "computer", meaning no external components are needed to accomplish it's processing tasks (yet some stuff did accept smaller plug in boards, ala the pc104 standard, etc.).
 
tipc said:
the term "single board computer" gets thrown around a lot. As someone pointed out the main guts of a number of even butt old early systems contained a processor card. I also have a zenith that's set up that way. The AT &T 6300 also did it similarly. The early multibus and s-100 stuff did it that way exclusively. The term sbc should really be reserved for something like an Ampro LittleBoardPC or the like, and any number of embedded industrial controllers or much of the stamp stuff and the like today. Emphasis is on "single" and "computer", meaning no external components are needed to accomplish it's processing tasks (yet some stuff did accept smaller plug in boards, ala the pc104 standard, etc.).
Click to expand...

Ah, but you see, this is self contained except for video and power. By any definition I can invent, the card here is indeed a single board computer.

Note it has the ability to use onboard flash memory for diskette emulation...

I suppose I technically could solder it directly to a video card (butt them against each other and solder across the ISA contacts) then stick it on top of an AT PSU and presto, complete vintage computer smaller than a shoebox.
 
correction, video, power, and a backplane that has slots to accommodate the video card, and a terminal to apply power.

Of course you could solder all kinds of objects to the little fingers. But I can also retrofit a Cummings diesel engine to my Yugo. Something tells me it'll be something other then a Yugo when the dust settles...
 
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