Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!news.swapon.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Paul E Bennett Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Novix NB4300 Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 09:17:36 +0000 Organization: Hidecs Consultancy Lines: 46 Message-ID: References: <69271012-da0b-49b8-acd5-d150f3b53f67@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: individual.net QeAXVJ/gPkIVmdls6V0uCACYfvCa2btLW9JXdRkGgrfXzNvKPp Cancel-Lock: sha1:NYcxHPg2eSzai9R0t2PhxXRDIvM= User-Agent: KNode/4.11.4 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.forth:34304 dougatdoughq@gmail.com wrote: > Hi, > > I went mad, and clicked the 'buy it now' button on ePay, and have a Novix > NB4300 STD board being sent to me :-) Ok - Not *that* mad, but just a > little crazy. > > In the late 80's, I worked at the Australian National University here in > Canberra, Australia, where I helped work on a Novix Beta Board - And it > was amazingly fast. Blindingly fast. So much so, that I copied the doco > and the distribution media. > > So - I have here the printouts of the Novix NC4000P Supplement, which > documents the Beta Board, and some 40 track floppies - The job for the > next couple of nights, is to grab the data off the floppies. > > I am writing to the list, to see if anybody has doco for the STD bus > board, the NB4300, or if I will be reverse engineering it. From the > photos, I see that it has serial on board, as well as the ram for the > stack, the return stack, and the data ram, as well as a couple of narrow > ePROMS. I can't figure out how serial was implemented from the photo, but > there is enough programmable logic that they *might* have implemented a > SIO in a gate array because they were out of board real estate, but that's > not likely. > > What stuns me is that it looks like there there is *nothing* on the web > about the board - almost a complete vaccuum - which is weird. > > Anyway - hopefully somebody else here can help. > > Doug One of the best documents that explains about the NC4000 chip is "Footsteps in an Empty Valley" by C. H. Ting (circa 1985). If I recall, the serial was a bit-banged interface which required a letter from the terminal to synchronise to the baud-rate you were using. -- ******************************************************************** Paul E. Bennett IEng MIET..... Forth based HIDECS Consultancy............. Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972 Tel: +44 (0)1235-510979 Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk.. ********************************************************************