My bad on that "FPGA". I got out my 'serious' reading glasses, looked
at it more closely and it's a Z180 processor. There's a lot of connectivity on
these boards, so it makes sense they could have been part of a POS system: serial lines to
communicate with the terminals.
These are really well made boards, and about half the chips are socketed. -- Ian
________________________________________
From: cctalk-bounces at
classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at
classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of
Chuck Guzis [cclist at
sydex.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 11:40 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Weird cardset - any ideas?
On 25 Dec 2008 at 23:07, Ian King wrote:
Google is failing me on this one. A while back, I
picked up some
random boards on ePay. The boards all have the name TRIAD, and they
include a passive backplane, what appears to be a central controller
with an FPGA and a bunch of RAM, and several boards that each contain
two Z80s and ten 8530 serial communication chips. One of the oddest
things in the silk screening is the identification of two of the
ribbon connectors across the top of these latter boards: "LAMB/DROID,
ODD HALF" and "EVEN HALF". (Ironically, I just finished a really good
science fiction story regarding a sheep, entitled "The Android's
Dream"....)
Triad used to be very big in POS systems, particularly in the auto
parts business. Does that make any sense with your gizmo? Is that
an FPGA or just a custom gate array?
Cheers,
Chuck