Old IBM compatible PC/XT/AT cards

[electronicsguy123]

Scan of the magazine article

[Phil_G]

I have the Maplin 8255 card here on my desk & was thinking how useful it was back in the day. We used to do all sorts of tricks with the IBM printer port (parallel, lpt, centronics) but this was a dedicated I/O board which was really nice.
Heres the full article:

[Veteran68]

Just seeing this old thread since it was bumped recently.

I've collected and discarded countless old ISA, MicroChannel, AGP, and other legacy cards since the 80's.

Joe showed an IRMA card in his first post, which is what prompted me to respond. Back in the mid-80's I interned (later hired, but didn't stay long) for ICOT Network Systems which was probably IRMA's biggest competitor in 3270 cards. I wrote the character generator software (in x86 assembler) for those cards. I still have a greenbar printout of that asm code somewhere. Preserved for posterity, as it was my first "commercial" software product that I wrote entirely by myself.

[Canis Dirus Leidy]

Some old graphics card. The seller claims that it's a HGC clone.

[coromonadalix]

thoses capacitors are huge  loll

you have an pcie to isa interface ...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/324941937180?

[Canis Dirus Leidy]

thoses capacitors are huge  loll

(In)Famous К10-7В (AKA "little flags" or "clay capacitors").

In continuation of the "horrors of our town" theme:
PDP-11 for IBM PC/AT (It's not mine, so I can't tell if it's an original or a modern replica).
SM5300 tape drive interface board.
QBUS МПИ adapter board

[DavidKo]

I have not burned a CD in over 10 years and was looking forward to some much needed improvements in this area.   The new PC that is now almost 6 years old, running Windows 10, I have managed to put three CDs to the dumpster so far.   Some cryptic message because there is still not enough space on a hard drive to actually add some useful error messages.   I was going to try a small R/W disc but the idiots who designed the PC mounted the drives vertical rather than horz.  The disc fell into the drive as expected.  lol.   So it's sitting on top of a glass of water.   lol.   Of course, that failed as well.

I have a new burner sitting in a box.  Too bad it's not SATA and the new PC only supports SATA.   

 

I use SATA to PATA adapter for my LiteOn.  Something like this

[coromonadalix]

I have not burned a CD in over 10 years and was looking forward to some much needed improvements in this area.   The new PC that is now almost 6 years old, running Windows 10, I have managed to put three CDs to the dumpster so far.   Some cryptic message because there is still not enough space on a hard drive to actually add some useful error messages.   I was going to try a small R/W disc but the idiots who designed the PC mounted the drives vertical rather than horz.  The disc fell into the drive as expected.  lol.   So it's sitting on top of a glass of water.   lol.   Of course, that failed as well.

I have a new burner sitting in a box.  Too bad it's not SATA and the new PC only supports SATA.   

 

I use SATA to PATA adapter for my LiteOn.  Something like this

you have some bidirectional ones too, pata to sata or sata to pata ...   cheap prices,  i have some of them saved me a few times

[jrmymllr]

Now for my obscure card. It's just a FDC/HDD/IO card, but I think it's cool because it appears to be the reference design from SMC for the chip in the middle. And I can't find it anywhere else online.

Someone on a retro computer forum was even able to find the schematics on the SMC website using the Wayback machine. The card works if you're wondering, despite the empty sockets. From the schematics, they appear to be for an EPROM and PAL devices....for what purpose exactly I don't know.

[helius]

the empty sockets. From the schematics, they appear to be for an EPROM and PAL devices....for what purpose exactly I don't know.

The EPROM may be for an extension BIOS, which is useful for adding netboot or large disk support. PALs could be anything.

[jrmymllr]

the empty sockets. From the schematics, they appear to be for an EPROM and PAL devices....for what purpose exactly I don't know.

The EPROM may be for an extension BIOS, which is useful for adding netboot or large disk support. PALs could be anything.

That was my assumption, but what kind I don't know. SMC probably didn't specify and it was up to the user. The PALs I think were for address decoding for the EPROM.

[K5_489]

All my ancient stuff is long gone ancient history by now (multiple cross country moves tends to do that), but the early networking cards did bring up some good memories of my teen years in the 90s when I had gotten my hands on some surplus ARCnet twisted pair cards, and proceeded to wire up the house for networking...not because I needed to, just because I could...or so I thought    Turned out that using regular ol' telephone wire didn't work out all that well...

I got pretty dang good at hiding cabling though, so that Dad wouldn't figure out that I was drilling holes all over the house to run this stuff through the basement.  It wasn't until they sold the house years later, long after I moved out on my own, and they sold the house that I got a call from Dad - "You know anything about all this telephone wire in the house all over the basement, but not connected to the other phone lines???" 

"Maaaaaaybeeee"