EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Computers => Vintage Computing => Topic started by: pamperchu on July 24, 2018, 05:03:16 am
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I found an old navigation computer from the early 80s. I think it's a variation of the S-100 bus. came with 2 CPU cards, an 8088 and an 8085, plus a few other boards, I/O and keyboard controller.
History lesson;
Loran-C was a hyperbolic radio navigation system which allowed a receiver to determine its position by listening to low frequency radio signals transmitted by fixed land-based radio beacons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loran-C
It should be able to connect with TTY via the serial COM interface. Very interested in moding some of the system hardware
More Pictures
https://imgur.com/a/Ox0FsH9
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Don't think it's S-100, unless I miscounted, the pulled card in the imgur library has 43 pins per side, 86 pin edge card connector.
Neat piece of gear to play around with though.
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http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/s100bus.html (http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/s100bus.html)
Under " S-100 books and documents"
"Bill Godbout, founder of Compupro and George Morrow of Morrow worked on the IEEE-696 bus design, we have many manuals of those products. A discussion of pins 20 and 70 on the original Altair bus, which supported front-panel memory write protect, is in this document. My S-100 home page links to other documents of interest. "
If it is something else, or if anyone knows exactly what system bus it is, please let me know.
Edit; some information on Marrow computers
http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/d_morrow.html (http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/d_morrow.html)
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Bill Godbout, founder of Compupro and George Morrow of Morrow worked on the IEEE-696 bus design,
I don't think this was the same Morrow. It seems that George Morrow staid in the microcomputer business for quite a bit longer, using various company names and computer brands (https://www.pc-history.org/cpm.htm (https://www.pc-history.org/cpm.htm)). During the same time period, the Loran systems were developed by "II Morrow Inc" in Oregon, which later ended up with Garmin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garmin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garmin)).
Hence, I don't see any necessary link between the S-100 bus and your LLC-4000.
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LOL, ok so I don't have any clue now what system it is, besides being an 8088/85. Ill take a dump of the ROMs soon and see what I can find in them.
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I think it could be an Intel Multibus based system - who else would have an 8088/85? (Actually, a friend had an S100 card in the early 80's, but it wasn't Multibus)
I believe Multibus was codified as IEEE-796. I think later versions went to pin/socket connectors like Eurocard/VME.
BTW, I've always thought that Blunderbus was a good name and used it for a project in college.
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This is interesting 8088