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cuttingedgecs
Joined: 08 Oct 2017
Posts: 1764
Location: Australia
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 Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 5:51 pm Post subject: Some peripheral boards |
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Due to work related commitments I'm largely separated from my collection these days. So when I was last at the storage unit (back in October), I thought I'd take some photos of some of my more uncommon boards to share with everyone. So here I'm, finally getting around to it.
Starting with the Promise DriveCache 2030A
It's an IDE passthrough caching card. You connect an existing IDE controller to it (40 connector at the bottom), and then it to you HDD (40 pin connector at the top), and it will cache transfers to either installed 30 pin RAM, or to a similar sized RAM expansion board (that powers from an ISA slot) and connects to this board via 2 of the 34 pin connectors (I don't have the expansion board). The other 34 pin connector is a floppy drive controller. Not sure why they thought it necessary to include that. |
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cuttingedgecs
Joined: 08 Oct 2017
Posts: 1764
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 5:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Eicon X.25 Gateway with RAM expansion board. An older type of networking. Used to connect a "modern" PC to an X.25 server like it was an X.25 terminal. |
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cuttingedgecs
Joined: 08 Oct 2017
Posts: 1764
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Datacare caching IDE controller. Note the separate connections for drives 1 & 2, making this an ATA-1 controller. All later IDE versions supported 2 drives on a single cable via Master/Slave. |
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cuttingedgecs
Joined: 08 Oct 2017
Posts: 1764
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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Creative Labs VLB 3D Blaster CT6200
One of the first 3D video cards for home PCs. Used a passthrough system from a 2D video card like the Voodoo 2. |
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cuttingedgecs
Joined: 08 Oct 2017
Posts: 1764
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 6:12 pm Post subject: |
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| 30 to 72 pin RAM adapter. With 30 pin RAM having an 8/9 bit interface, and 72 pin RAM being 32/36 bit, it was trivial to make adapters to convert 4x30 pin RAM to a single 72 pin slot. This worked on boards that accepted stock, non-EDO modules. |
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WFS2005
Joined: 13 Mar 2007
Posts: 1526
Location: HB China
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| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 9:39 pm Post subject: |
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| cuttingedgecs wrote: | | Datacare caching IDE controller. Note the separate connections for drives 1 & 2, making this an ATA-1 controller. All later IDE versions supported 2 drives on a single cable via Master/Slave. |
Promise DriveCache2030A and Datacare Drive Controller.
They may be motherboards. At that time, the motherboards were like this. They needed to be plugged into the motherboards to work. Of course, they also needed an ISA video card.
I have some similar boards.
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cuttingedgecs
Joined: 08 Oct 2017
Posts: 1764
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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| WFS2005 wrote: |
Promise DriveCache2030A and Datacare Drive Controller.
They may be motherboards. At that time, the motherboards were like this. They needed to be plugged into the motherboards to work. Of course, they also needed an ISA video card.
I have some similar boards. |
I haven't seen a setup like that in an x86 before. It has an S100 look about it. What's it from?
In the case of the cards in my photos, I considered the SBC possibility, but the lack of peripherals or bus interface/north bridge/south bridge style chips to connect them with peripheral cards on a bus rules that out for me. the ST100 chip on the Datacare card is the Seagate chip designed to match their ST100 series drives and that's all. I know this card was also updated to ATA-2 and sold standalone as the TEKRAM DC-600B a year later, making it unlikely to be as functional as the setup you have there. |
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WFS2005
Joined: 13 Mar 2007
Posts: 1526
Location: HB China
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CPUShack
Joined: 16 Jun 2003
Posts: 34259
Location: State of Jefferson, USA
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| Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:47 pm Post subject: |
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Technically these are referred to as backplanes as they are passive, they supply power so the inserted cards but nothing beyond that, as you say very common industrial computers, but they arent really a 'motherboard'
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