What's this card.

[martinws]

I've been given a long NuBus card for a Mac II with a strange output port with D shape 9 pin female socket (two rows of 5, 4). Too small for an Apple monitor, no other sockets on it.

On the card is a MC680000FN10 chip.

It's id is A003845-01 Rev E and made by Apple Computer in 1988.

Finally, I've found out what it is via a really useful application called Snooper. It is a 'Tokentalk' card... Hmmm... not such a useful card then...


Still, the IIfx is now a 'dual processor'

Regards,

Martin

 

[vga4life]

I've been given a long NuBus card for a Mac II with a strange output port with D shape 9 pin female socket (two rows of 5, 4). Too small for an Apple monitor, no other sockets on it.

On the card is a MC680000FN10 chip.

It's id is A003845-01 Rev E and made by Apple Computer in 1988.

Finally, I've found out what it is via a really useful application called Snooper. It is a 'Tokentalk' card... Hmmm... not such a useful card then...


Still, the IIfx is now a 'dual processor'

You're quite right. If you've ever wondered what the "A/ROSE" extension was for in the older Mac System, it was to drive this card (and a few others like it). A/ROSE stands for Apple Real-time Operating System Environment, and was (as the name suggests) a complete real-time operating system for the Apple Coprocessor Platform - an "intelligent" nubus card, one example of which you now own.

There's a good article on this card here:
http://www.mactech.com/articles/develop/issue_04/coprocessor.html

-vga4life

 

[martinws]

I always wondered when the A/ROSE extension would get used... It's taken me 12 years! Now to get a token ring network

Since the Card is has a CPU itself, I suppose it was very expensive.

Do you know of other Nubus cards using the A/ROSE extension? Perhaps a nice Transputer card? (or was it just for network cards?)

Thanks for the link, very interesting.

Martin

 

[vga4life]

I always wondered when the A/ROSE extension would get used... It's taken me 12 years! Now to get a token ring network

Since the Card is has a CPU itself, I suppose it was very expensive.

Do you know of other Nubus cards using the A/ROSE extension? Perhaps a nice Transputer card? (or was it just for network cards?)

There were other cards based on the Macintosh Coprocessor Platform (MCP), almost all of them network or comms cards of various types:

-Apple Ethernet NB Card (there were 2 cards with this name that I'm aware of, the "ethertalk" and "short" versions, the latter being electrically simpler and physically shorter. The short version is probably the most common MCP card of all.)
-Apple Tokentalk NB card (you've got one. I've seen references to an "Apple TokenRing 4/16 NB Card," not sure if that's the same as yours.)
-Apple Serial NB Card (gives 4 RS-232C ports or 1 V.35 port and 1 RS-232C port.)
-Apple Coax/TwinAx NB card (used for connecting to mainframes)
-Apple ISDN NB Card (rare, part of the Apple QuickTime Conferencing kit)

At least 1 transputer-like MPC card was produced, the MacDSP MB/A from Spectral Innovations, Inc. It had a 60 MHz (!) AT&T DSP32C dsp in addition to the onboard 68000 (the latter being dedicated to managing nubus transfers). I believe it was sold bundled with MATLAB (for ~$4k) and was supported by a (very) few other high-end packages.

There are (were) probably several other custom 3rd party A/ROSE-based boards out there in very small numbers - Apple for a time sold A/ROSE prototyping boards with the MCP hardware populated.

-vga4life

 

[martinws]

I've been digging through these old NuBus cards and found a
NB-DMA2800 (national instruments) to help control stuff via LabView.

2 ColourMax cards (appears only can run a big old Hitachi Monitor with a special sync rate is this correct?)

2 Apple Data Voice Mac II, I assume this is an IDSN (Video Conferencing card)

Martin