The next board we are going to look at is the Personality Board. Unlike the Brain Board which is common to all version of the development system, there is a different Personality Board for each processor.
The databook lists the following details for this board:
“The Personality Board consists of a firmware Monitor, 16k bytes of shared memory,
2k x 48 Trace memory, Port recreation logic to recapture the pins used for emulation, emulation hardware, and an In System Emulator, ISE, cable.
Up to eight external events as well as 16-bit address and 16-bit data busses can be traced in the 2k deep trace memory.”
A,B – MCM2018AN45 – 2048 x 8 static RAM
C – AM27512 – 64K x 8 EPROM
D – Brain board connectors
E – This 40 pin socket seems to have been intentionally left empty. Not sure what purpose it served.
F – This is where the buffer board plugs in which connects to the interface pod.
G – (4) MCM2018AN45 – 2048 x 8 static RAM
H - TC55464 – 64K x 4 static RAM
I – (3) MCM2018AN45 – 2048 x 8 static RAM
J – (2) 71256 – 32K x 8 static RAM
K – Power connector
On the back of the board you will see a bunch of wire-wrap wires. These are manufacturing modifications to the board. When design problems were found with boards it wasn’t always economical to create a new PCB so it was quite common for modifications like this to be done during the manufacturing process. Most of these wires connect back to a EP8201 delay line IC that was added to the board. A delay line has one input and multiple outputs the delay the signal be specific amounts of time. Based on this they probably found a timing issue with parts of the circuit so had to make the modification to alter the timing.
