At 11:57 PM 3/15/04 -0800, you wrote:
On Tue, 16 Mar 2004, Joe R. wrote:
I picked up a couple of rack mount computers
last week. Most of them were
made by Harris and Texas Micro and are MOL standard passive backplace type
stuff. However one of them was made by Kontron and it has a very strange
power connector. It's a black cylinder about 1 1/4" in diameter and about 1
1/2" long that sticks out of the chassis. The back half of the cylinder is
threaded so it appears that the mating connector screws onto it. The front
portion of the cylinder is divided lenghtwise into five segments. Four of
the sements have holes in them with a male connector pin resessed into the
holes. I opened the chassis and found that it was marked as being built to
operate off of 72 VDC power and that all four connecotr pins are wired tot
he PSU. Is anyone familar with the type of connector or why or where they
use 72 VDC power? The computer doesn't look like anything exceptional. It
It probably ran off of batteries, possibly in a telco environment, where
that supply was readily available.
Sorry but the telcos all use 48VDC AFIK. I used to install CO equipment
and that's what was used in every office that I saw. They may use 72VDC or
other voltages overseas, I don't know, but AFIK all the offices in the US
are 48VDC. I wondered if this might actually run off of 48VDC but that's
about a 33% difference so it would be questionable in my mind. One of the
things holding me back from testing it is the lack of a suitable high
currect power supply. I have access to plenty of high current 48VDC
supplies (telco surplus) but high current supplies over 48V aren't that
common.
has a 10 MHz 286 CPU and uses a 9" CRT in it
for the monitor. The only
thing of real interest in it was a GPIB card. This one was made by INES
(IIRC) in Germany. I've never heard of this brand before. The chassis does
have one odd feature. The motherboard sits crossways in it and there are
cables that plug into the back panel connectors of the various cards
(they're now on the RH side of the computer since the MB is sideways) and
run around to the back of the computer and connect to connectors there.
Is there any shielding? I have an tempest-shielded IBM PC that's kinda
like this except the cards are in the standard orientation. Anyway, what
you describe reminds me of that system.
You might be right about tempest shielding. This is a VERY solidly
built unit with plenty of metal covers and such. I didn't notice any RFI
gaskets but they might not be needed. The back panel with the IO connectors
is a solid metal plate with no joints to act as slot antennas.
Joe