Tony Wuell wrote, regarding an unidentified OMNIBUS PDP8 Board
There is one DEC board that matches that description - the M837 'Memory
extension and time share control' (basically the logic to give you a 15
bit address bus, etc). I've just found the DEC printset, and it uses :
7 380 (bus receiver)
9 7400
5 8881 (bus driver)
5 8271 (latches/SR?)
3 8235 (AOI gates with common selects)
2 8266 (Mux)
1 8251 (3->8 decoder)
1 74H74
1 7474
2 7420
5 7410
3 7404
1 74H00
5 384 (Bus receivers again, non-inverting)
4 314 (7 input NOR gate with odd thresholds)
(54 chips total, I think)
This board has many of the same chips, and has 54 chips. I know that there
are more than 1 74H00 on there...I can count at least three on the mystery
board. It *seems* quite similar. Perhaps it is some 'third party'
type of memory 'bank' control similar to the M837?
I'll need to get out a magnifying glass (my old eyes just can't read the
numbers off the chips like I used to be able to), and do a complete chip
inventory on the board.
It doesn't seem complex enough to have much functionality, and it's
definitely
not some kind of I/O board, as there are no ins or outs other than the
OMNIBUS.
Could it be a clone of the above DEC board? Is there an M837 in
the machine
anywhere?
The mystery board came separate from my PDP8e, which DOES have an
M837 in it, along with 2 8K core stacks, a 3rd 8K worth of solid state
memory, EAE, RK8-E w/3 RK05's, PT8-E w/HS Punched tape reader/punch and
three M8650's.
Curiouser and curiouser...
Rick Bensene