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

[njroadfan]

Just what the heck are these terminals? Found in the 1985 Maclean-Hunter Annual Report. I'm sure the keyboard mafia is foaming.

 

[stepleton]

The logo on the keyboard reads like it says "Composition Systems Inc.", which would make sense for a publishing and media firm.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Ok I'm modeling my next desk on that.

 

[bolex]

What is this? PCIE? with a sound chip, speaker and floppy drive mounted to the card. Pictures taken from eBay

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Can't identify the specific part but it is probably used inside a piece of medical equipment.

I'd be really interested to see what happens if it were plugged into a modern windows 10 system.

 

[luckybob]

100% NOT pci-e.

It strikes me as an CNR or AMR slot. or something proprietary, which would NOT be unheard of in the medical equipment field. It almost looks like they are using the floppy as some sort of audio buffer storage... which would play into the CNR/AMR slot design.

 

[Still]

100% NOT pci-e.

It strikes me as an CNR or AMR slot. or something proprietary, which would NOT be unheard of in the medical equipment field. It almost looks like they are using the floppy as some sort of audio buffer storage... which would play into the CNR/AMR slot design.

I think it would date back to more in the AMR given that the CNR wasn't introduced until the later end days of floppy disks. Having a floppy disk on one end and Audio on the other is quite a interesting piece of equipment This would have been from potentially. Also its using a Crystal chip for sound which is also DOS era. So mid 1990s at best. Maybe it might be from some audiologist's equipment?

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I know some proprietary equipment back in the day used floppy drives as cheap storage. There was a point in time(round about mid 90s I think?) where a whole floppy drive cost less than a small hard drive or DOM, and if your OS fit on a floppy you could just boot to that. I recall seeing a wireless access point a while back from '97ish that was basically a 386 booting off a floppy(with the floppy drive hidden inside) + some wireless cards.

 

[Elucidax]

I am looking for details on the processors in the Sharp 760, any ideas?

 

[falter]

Anyone recognize this machine? I couldn't make out much as the seller posted blurry photos (why sellers do that I'll never understand).

It was cheap but I didn't buy it as I wasn't sure if it was a personal computer or some random piece of industrial equipment.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

That's a weird auction. You can see part of the inside of the case in some pictures, but no big exterior shot. Just lots of focus on blurry cards.

 

[falter]

That's a weird auction. You can see part of the inside of the case in some pictures, but no big exterior shot. Just lots of focus on blurry cards.

Yup. It's like they took the pics with a 1990s Webcam. No idea why sellers don't notice or care about focus issues.

 

[jlang]

It's not S-100. Board form factor is wrong. No regulators on the boards.
The traces on the mother board are not bussed.

I can't say what it is, but I can say what it's not.

 

[NeXT]

It's none of the bunch. Seller just did a word salad to farm in search hits.

 

[Bruce Tomlin]

I didn't look too hard, but didn't see anything that looked obviously like a CPU, though I did see RAM and ROM. And then there's half the cards on the backplane slots having unique keying. I guess 100 bucks was kind of okay, I dunno. But either it's a got a discrete CPU, or it's that 28-pin thing, or an important card is missing.

 

[epooch]

Any ideas what this 68K trainer is, or where to get more info?
Phillips
S + I
T + M Education
No model number. I can't find any info online.

 

[MausolfB]

UPS Monitoring Board


It's manufactured by APCC with a date of 1989 and it looks like the model number is SB3068. Can't find any information about it much less if it is supposed to be in a UPS or a computer. Came with a lot of ISA cards I got a while back and wondered about this thing...

 

[eswan]

APC is still around as part of Schneider Corp. Big maker of Uninterruptible Power Supplies. 'American Power Conversion Corporation' if I remember correctly. Looks an isa card to monitor 2 relays on a UPS, one for low battery, and one for AC out. Probably only works with it's own specific software.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I had to guess that card is probably for gracefully shutting down a system within the UPS holdup time, same thing we do today with USB cables.

 

[Zare]

Could be. On their site's company history page says Powerchute software release in 1990. There's a 1.3 version for Xenix from same year available on Winworld.
The card was firmly in 386 age and was probably used on servers. I was a bit deceived about 8 bit design, but for control/monitor interface you don't need more.