Source of Vintage CPUs: Vintage Burglar Alarms

Over the weekend I dissected two commercial alarm panels people had saved for me. While I was grateful for the thought, I didn't give my donors much credit for being discriminating. Boy was I wrong. When I opened the first panel, the board inside had a 6805 sitting smack in the middle of it. It also yielded a 2716, a 2764, a 6821, and a pair of 6116 static RAMs, along with numerous other Motorola-branded support chips and passives. I thought that was a pretty cool find, especially considering my short-sighted view of its potential. Panel #2, however, seems to have been the real gem. The large board within didn't look that interesting, just the usual myriad passives, and the panel was clearly very old (looked 20 years or more). It had a daughter board about six inches square and fully enclosed in shielding, hiding its contents. I removed the board, stripped it of its shielding, and found... an RCA CDP1806, two 1852s, an RCA-branded 6116, and three other support chips. The label on the 27128 EPROM on the board says "(C) 1984". Simple stuff, but I was jazzed. Classic computers are everywhere... --Patrick