exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hi,

Not sure if this is of interest to anyone but my STe came with a CPU breakout board, the CPU Funky socket had been replaced with individual pins. Some nice cutting out of the RF shield! Note the ribbon cable parting to accommodate the case post!
Board also marked with 'complay' 'soldlay' - only references to this I could find were in a CAD .pdf as part of a "EE-DESIGNERS ASCII text output file."
(Seems odd it was made with right angles in all the traces?)

I believe it was for controlling lab equipment/experiments from the ST back in the day. I thought I would post some pics here for posterity.


I replaced the socket with an original Funky PLCC from exxoshost shop couple of weeks ago, so now this lives in an anti-static bag.

That's really old school hand-etched PCB with no solder mask.

richud wrote: 26 Jan 2022 11:54 Not sure if this is of interest to anyone but my STe came with a CPU breakout board

Cool! Love to see the contemporary hacks.

BW

I would guess that this could watch the CPU address and data bus ? (biased by the repair thread of @rubber_jonnie :D )

sporniket wrote: 26 Jan 2022 12:26 I would guess that this could watch the CPU address and data bus ? (biased by the repair thread of @rubber_jonnie :D )

Got my LA on the job, A1 and A2 are bad, so need to figure out why 😁

Your schematics have been invaluable!

Maybe hard drive interface ?

exxos wrote: 26 Jan 2022 13:19 Maybe hard drive interface ?

I reckon you're right, possibly SCSI with that 50 pin connector. I see it says Complay top left of the picture, and Atari Interface under the 'OK' sticker.

The flux could do with cleaning off!!

may be ET4000 graphiccard Interface ?

richud wrote: 26 Jan 2022 11:54 Board also marked with 'complay' 'soldlay' - only references to this I could find were in a CAD .pdf as part of a "EE-DESIGNERS ASCII text output file."

I think these probably simply mean "component layer" and "solder layer" and aren't going to help much in investigating this.

But this is definitely an interesting board. Who wants to visually follow all those tracks and figure it out for us? :lol:

rubber_jonnie wrote: 26 Jan 2022 13:26 I reckon you're right, possibly SCSI with that 50 pin connector.

No SCSI controller anywhere though. All the ICs are just CPU, basic logic, and GAL. This is some kind of more direct bus interface.