What's the rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you own? [Tek 4132]

[Steven M Jones]

On 01/15/2017 08:23, Al Kossow wrote:
> 
> 
> On 1/14/17 7:20 PM, allison wrote:
> 
>> If the 32016 had a second generation
> 
> It had several generations. The 32532 saw some use in laser printers.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS320xx

This kind of "buries the lead," however -- the NS32532 inspired the
pc532 by George Scolaro and Dave Rand at the very end of the 1980s. This
very capable and fairly complex design was freely available, right down
to the Gerber files and PAL equations.

Dave and George had previously worked on a PC/AT coprocessor board using
the 32016 for Definicon. The pc532 eventually supported MINIX, Mach, and
NetBSD ports. Phil Budne and some others on this list participated - I
could only afford to cheer from the sidelines...

NatSemi reworked various 32k chip designs into versions for embedded
use, eventually. The 32cg16, based on the 32016, had a healthy run in
printers for several years before the 32gx32 came along.

Off the top of my head, I can only recall the pc532 and the later model
of ETH's Ceres workstations as examples of "single-user" machines using
the '532. And of course if anybody wants to get rid of one, I'd be happy
to oblige... ;)

Links:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC532
   http://www.netbsd.org/ports/pc532
   http://cpu-ns32k.net/index.html

--S.