Mysterious hardware, part 3.

So finally I have obtained an ISA-equipped PC that would be relatively new (a industrial grade P4) that allowed me to install Win XP and LabView software in order to debug the card, or at least try to do that. The motherboard was kindly donated by an elektroda.pl user and blog-reader nicknamed music. Thank you!

Using a simple LabView software I tried to write and listen to/from the cards addresses (that I know, as I can configure the 7 MSB by jumpers). It is quite easy to do that, as LabView offers InPort and OutPort commands that allow me to directly talk to the bus. As I do not believe that it can be so easy I have hooked an oscilloscope to the cards address lines and address decoder output in order to check if it's working or not. And it is.

Unfortunately I did not get any response from the card. Two options are: the card (or cards CPLD at least) is dead or that the communication protocol is more complicated. I'm in favor of the latter. For now I have no further idea what to do with this piece of hardware apart from trying to read the CPLD content. As I do not have any cable for Lattice ICs and any proof that this approach will be valuable I just put the card back on shelve. At some point maybe I will come back - to further work with it or scrap it, as there are plenty of nice and rare ICs there.

Mysterious hardware, part 2.

Okay, so I had some spare time to tinker with the Analog I/O card. Unfortunatelly I do not have much info now:

• On the DB50 connector on the bracket are signals from/to all the MUXes, this means 32 analog ports. Most probably analog inputs. The rest of the signals on the bracket connector is unknown.
• The card is electrically okay. It did not crash the computer I have inserted it in.
• the adressing uses only 10 bit, from which 7 MSB are to be configured by jumpers. This should help me to talk/listen to ports of the card.

Now this project is going a bit on hold. I have to obtain a motherboard with ISA connector and as powerful as possible (for the sake of convinience). I have locates several like that, so this is matter of time only. The problem is that I do not have any PC that 1) has OS on it, 2) is able to fit the card inside. And also - I would not like to test a '97 card on a '90 PC. It is hard without complicating it like that ;).

Mysterious hardware, part 1.

Some time ago I have acquired this card. It has plenty of interesting ICs on it, so I though about buying it before thinking about any use of it or at lest checking if there are any manuals and/or drivers.

The card was produced by a german company disys GmbH. The manufacturer showed me a general middle finger by saying that this card is unsupported, the backup with manuals and drivers and any other possible documentation is gone/dead/broken buuuuuuuut they could possibly try to find the documentation if I pay around 500 euro. Come on - how greedy a company has to be and how messy it has to be inside to ask something like that. If you ask me, this does not tell any good about the company.

None the less I intend to, at least, try to make this card working again. In order to do this first I need to identyfy some kind of drivers for this device and then do whatever is needed to interface to it. I guess this is worth the labor, as this card seems to have various interesting features, judging by the ICs that are on board:

Lattice ispLSI1032 - a 60 MHz CPLD, together with several HCTs and PALs working as the glue logic I guess.  Also three FIFO CMOS Memory ICs (50MHz AM7210), what suggests that the card should has some fast input (up to 50 MHz I guess). The card also has two Nec D71054 CMOS 8MHz counters. There is an 74HCT688 address decoder, that is close to the address jumpers (not seen here). I hope this will allow me to get the card physical address in order to start debugging.

The analog section is quite interesting. The card is capable of having D/A (digital to analog) and A/D  (analog to digital) converters together with PGAs (programmable gain amplifier) and analog MUXes (multiplexer). Unfortunately not all sockets are filled. In the D/A section is completely empty (not counting a single transistor Q600 and three precise potentiometers TR600..602. The Q600 is an RFL1P08 P-channel MOSFET from Harris. 

The A/D section is partially filed. There is one A/D converter - ADS7804 by Burr Brown and an programmable amplifier PGA202, also by Burr Brown. The ICs on the right are two CMOS analog multiplexers - DG506. 

There is also an DC/DC converter on the board, but it is missing an transformer, as far as I understand. The Converter is controlled by MAX743

There are also several connectors for additional features. One, neat the DC/DC converter is called XBUS, and the second one is near the output of the card. The second one is designated "Add On Board Stecker", and probably is designed for a daughterboard or something similar.

The output of the card is a single DB50 connector seen below. Up to now I do not know any pinout of it, but this is one of the first thing I'm willing to check. Second thing that I plan to is checking if the board is electrically okay and putting it into a working PC in order to try to run some tests.