[unix-pc.general] Anyone see the "extender" board for the UNIX pc?

lenny@alps.UUCP (Lenny Tropiano) (08/04/89)

Paging through the UNIX PC Reference Manual, I happened to see something
of interest ...  In the section on the Tape controller board they
mention doing adjustments to the board.  What they said in the 
instructions is to:

...
1.	With power off, remove the Floppy Tape Controller board and
	insert an _extender board_ in its place.
...

Now this sound useful for those hardware hackers out there (Gil, you
listening?) ...

-Lenny
-- 
Lenny Tropiano,  Project Manager / Sr. Software Engineer
American LP Systems, Inc.               
305-1 Knickerbocker Avenue       UUCP :  ...icus!alps!lenny
Bohemia, New York    11716       PHONE:  1-516-589-7930

jmm@ecijmm.UUCP (08/08/89)

In article <170@alps.UUCP> lenny@alps.UUCP (Lenny Tropiano) writes:
|Paging through the UNIX PC Reference Manual, I happened to see something
|of interest ...  In the section on the Tape controller board they
|mention doing adjustments to the board.  What they said in the 
|instructions is to:
|
|...
|1.	With power off, remove the Floppy Tape Controller board and
|	insert an _extender board_ in its place.
|...
|
|Now this sound useful for those hardware hackers out there (Gil, you
|listening?) ...

This sounds like something I've seen for Multibus.  Its a card with
an edge connector on one end, a matching edge socket on the other,
and a lot of straight-line traces between.

It allows you to have a board in a running system and still get probes
to various points for debugging purposes.  There might be a few extra
features (e.g. a switch to disconnect the board from the bus).

Apologies if you already knew this and read the subject as Physical
Extender rather than System Capability Extender.
-- 
John Macdonald

jbm@uncle.UUCP (John B. Milton) (08/09/89)

In article <896@ecijmm.UUCP> jmm@ecijmm.UUCP (John Macdonald) writes:
>In article <170@alps.UUCP> lenny@alps.UUCP (Lenny Tropiano) writes:
>|1.	With power off, remove the Floppy Tape Controller board and
>|	insert an _extender board_ in its place.

Yes, this did/does exist. The problem, word has it, is that most of the boards,
memory in particular stop working at the end of a LONG UNIXpc extender card. I
recently shelled out bucks to get an Expansion box, just for hardware testing.
With the cover off, it's easy to get at all the signals. The down side is that
memory cards are not supported in the Exapnsion box. The UNIXpc bus spec leads
one to believe that the memory specific lines are not even run out there :(

John
-- 
John Bly Milton IV, jbm@uncle.UUCP, n8emr!uncle!jbm@osu-cis.cis.ohio-state.edu
(614) h:294-4823, w:785-1110; N8KSN, AMPR: 44.70.0.52; Don't FLAME, inform!