Wow. I appreciate the OT, Dawn! I used to work at Pr1me, started in manufacturing in 1979, doing incoming quality control on their multi-layered printed circuit boards. This board may even have a stamp on it, showing who actually tested the board through the process. I moved up to Marketing Technical Support at the Corporate Marketing Support Center from manufacturing in 1981, and was there until 1983 - when I went off to join Pr1me VAR MADIC, (manufacturing applications package), written in Pr1me INFORMATION. I ended up coming back to Prime in 1986, after MADIC had "business difficulties", and was a founding technical member of the PICK to Pr1me INFORMATION Conversion & Reseller Support Center.
I would dare to say that you are looking a an AMLC - Asynchronous Multi Line Controller card. Serial tty I/O board, four connectors of four Asynch ports per, yeilding 16, (0-15), total ports. I think 9600 baud maximum, (maybe 19.2K?). If I remember correctly, these are four layer, maybe 6 layers, of substrate/circuitry. The 0-3, 4-7, 8-11, 12-15 side would be sticking out the back, where cable assemblies would connect up to them. The opposite side of the board - with two longer gold tipped fingers connectors are, would be plugged into the "backplane", which is how all the boards would talk to each other; Memory at the top,CPU board sets next, disk controllers & communications controllers next, and asynchronous termial controllers next. Of course, power supplies at the base. These backplanes were basicially printed circuit boards, yet some of them still had "wire-wrapped" connections on them. These would be the boards that handled serial tty RS232 ports to "dumb terminals", BeeHives (PT-45), Perkin Elmer OWL, PT200's in the later years. Do you recall what model of Pr1me 50 Series it came from? What company were you working at that was using it? I hope this helps provide you with some historical technical tidbits to share with the young whippa-snappers! Regards, Scott Richardson Senior Systems Engineer / Consultant Marlborough, MA 01752 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://home.comcast.net/~CheetahFTL/CC eFax: 208-445-1259 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 10:00 PM Subject: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question > I'm doing a talk tomorrow to college CS majors (name of talk is: IT is How > it Seams -- at least I'm able to entertain myself with the double double > meaning) > > I thought I'd bring in some of the odds and ends I've acquired over the > years and one is a board from a Pr1me computer I worked on. It was gifted > to me when the machine was retired. However, I'm a s/w kinda "guy" and I > don't know a cpu board from a memory board from anything else. I figured > this was the best place to ask about prime hardware, but sorry for being a > little off-topic. > > It is an 18 inch-ish square green board with black chips and few white ones > that say "Bechman" on them. The black ones are at least three different > sizes. Along one side it has stickers that say "LINES 0-3" ... "LINES > 12-15". That seems like a big clue, but I figured someone here would know > what such a board might have been called. > > Thanks in advance. --dawn > > Dawn M. Wolthuis > Tincat Group, Inc. > www.tincat-group.com > > Take and give some delight today. > > > > -- > u2-users mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
