HPC Microcontroller Development System

In my last post I introduced the HPC Microcontroller Development System from National Semiconductor. Lets take a closer look at the outside.

Here is the product information label

Serial Number: HK1193

Part No: 970420191-1

Voltage: 115/230 VAC

Amperes: 60Hz 3A

Model No. HPC-DEV-ISE 1

Here is the back panel. On the fight is the fan, product label power switch and power outlet. On the left are connectors for three serial ports. One of these would be used for a terminal to access the internal software. This could be  dumb terminal bus was often a host computer where software could be compiled and downloaded to the device. The others ports could be used to connect a printer, and also to connect to other dev systems. You might do this if you were developing a device that had multiple HPC processors.

On the front panel you can see two switches, one resets the development system. The other switch is related to the ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) socket on the front panel which is an EPROM programmer. The switch is used to change the programming voltage for the EPROM. At the bottom of the front panel is the cable going to the processor interface pod.

Here is a look at the processor interface pod. On the right side is a PCB with a PLCC connector on the bottom that plugs into the socket where the processor goes. I am not 100% sure what the other four connectors are for. The databook for the system mentions “eight external event inputs” and the ability to trace and breakpoint on external events. It also mentions “trigger output for logic analyzer”. I assume the connectors are used to support these functions.

HPC Microcontroller Development System

A while back I acquired this interesting piece of hardware. I knew it was an in circuit emulator (ICE) but didn’t know much more about it. In this and upcoming posts I plan to take a detailed look at this device.

An ICE is a device used in the development of microprocessor based systems. It plugs in in place of the microprocessor/microcontroller and allows software to be transferred to the system under development from a host system. It also normally has a series of debugging features, for example the ability to single step code, view and edit memory, set break points, etc.

This particular ICE is for the National Semiconductor HPC series microcontroller. The HPC series was released in the late 80’s and was a 16 bit microcontroller with on-chip RAM, ROM and various peripherals.

You can find information about this processer in the databook on Bitsavers:

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/components/national/_dataBooks/1989_National_Microcontroller_Databook.pdf