Indeed. I think I have sixteen dZ11 boards that I could part for a unibone

On March 30, 2025 11:49:44 PM CDT, Paul Anderson via cctalk 
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Does anyone have a list of what boards they were used on?
>
>I do have some boards I'm planning or recycling (I know, I shouldn't say
>that, especially here, but most are common boards  nobody uses anymore.) I
>haven't looked at the IPBs yet, but did plan on pulling some of the chips.
>
>On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 9:59 AM David Bridgham via cctalk <
>[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On 3/29/25 7:29 PM, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote:
>> > The why not use a UniBone comment has merit, what will your (FPGA)
>> implementation add ?
>>
>>
>> I'm not shadoooo but I've also been working on a somewhat similar
>> FPGA-based board called the USIC / QSIC.  We started working on it
>> before the UniBone but have been slower to come to completion.  A lot
>> slower.  Maybe there's no point to it anymore but I keep poking along on
>> the design anyway.
>>
>>
>> > If you solve the (near) unobtanium OC driver / receiver problem - I for
>> one will be all ears
>>
>>
>> Ah, yeah, this problem.  At one point in the QSIC project I started
>> doodling up circuits to deal with this so we wouldn't have to use up NOS
>> bus transceivers, wouldn't have to deal with the 5V/3.3V conversion for
>> the FPGA, and would be all surface-mount parts to make automated
>> fabrication easier (I never found any DS3662s).  A comparator for the
>> receiver with just the right amount of hysteresis.  Have to look around
>> a little to find one that's fast enough to meet the 35 ns requirement
>> but they're out there.  And then the driver is just a transistor and a
>> capacitor on the gate/base to limit the slew rate.  Shouldn't be all
>> that hard to design, right?  Might want to go with a constant current
>> source to charge/discharge that capacitor to make it a proper trapezoid
>> waveform though I don't know that that's really needed.
>>
>> This all needs testing and I was going to make up a little test board
>> with both my circuit and a DS8641 that could be plugged into different
>> busses to have a look at the waveforms that come out.  I looked up the
>> pinouts for SPC, MUD, and QBUS so I could design a board that would
>> equally work in all three.
>>
>> I was talked out of this idea though.  We were doing enough new already
>> with the whole rest of the board and from our prototype QSIC we knew
>> that the DS8641s with level converters would work so it made sense to
>> stick with that.
>>
>> Still, I think about this idea from time to time.  In the small chance
>> that anyone is interested, I just now threw my circuit ideas up on
>> GitHub.  Remember, this is doodling.  I can see three generations of
>> ideas in there, as I thought through different possibilities.  I also
>> had this idea about switchable, active termination so that's in there
>> too, though I'm now less sure that's a good idea.
>>
>> https://github.com/dabridgham/DEC-Bus-Transceiver
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>

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