HPC Microcontroller Development System–Front Panel

The final piece of the system to look at is the front panel. Here is the front of it where you can see the reset switch, a switch to control the EPROM programmer voltage and the ZIF socket for the EPROM programmer.

On the back there is a small PCB that connects to the two switches. Most of the circuitry on here appears to be to generate the EPROM programmer voltages. Below that PCB is the connector for the ZIF socket. The interesting part of this is that the whole front panel is actually a PCB itself. You can see where the ZIF socket is soldered in and the traces that lead to the connector.

HPC Microcontroller Development System–Pod2

This is the second board in the pod called the SUMMIT-POD2 board. The blue connectors connect to the buffer board and the part on the right connects to the processor socket on the target system. I will talk about that a bit more below. The board is composed of some standard TTL logic chips, a couple PALs and two large PLCC packaged chips. The U10 socket was empty on the board when I got the system. The top chip is an HPC46003V20, which is the processor that this system emulates. It’s not uncommon in an in-circuit emulator to have the processor being emulated in the interface pod where it can be physically close to the circuit that is using the processor.The second larger chip is labeled SCX6B48AHF. I believe this is a custom gate array chip designed just for this system. I assume this chip provides the interface between the development system and the processor being emulated.

Here is the back of the board. On the right you can see how the pod plugs into the socket on the system under test where the processor would go.

Here is a closeup of the ribbon cable that connects the two boards. The cable is actually manufactured into the PCB. The ribbon is sandwiched into the inner layers of the PCB. This makes the connection between the boards flexible so the pod can easily be connected to the processor socket.

HPC Microcontroller Development System–Pod Buffer

In my last post I showed the buffer board that was in the main unit. The board connected to the interface pod with a long cable which connected to another buffer board in the pod.

The board is composed mainly of bus driver ICs and DIP resistor packs. There are also PAL (Programmable Array Logic) chips. The connectors on the left appear to be for external trigger signals that the system can monitor and react to.

On the back of the board the three blue connectors connect to the other board in the pod, and there for connectors on the left are for the cable to the main unit. There is also two pin connector at the bottom the brings power to the pod.

The most interesting thing about this board is that it is the only surface mount board in the system, everything else is through-hole. I did notice that the chips on the other boards had date codes from the late 80’s up until 1990, but this board has date codes of 1994 and 95. I guess it’s possible this board was originally done as through-hole but at some point in the life of the unit it got replaced with newer board which was surface mount.

HPC Microcontroller Development System–Buffer Board

The next board in the system is called the buffer board. This board is the interface between the personality board and the long cable that goes to the interface pod. The board buffers the signals for the long run through the cable.

The component side is mainly 74 series line drivers and DIP resistor packs. The four connectors on the left are for the interface pod cable.

The back of the board has the connectors that connect to the personality board.

HPC Microcontroller Development System–Personality Board

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.

HPC Microcontroller Development System–Brain Board

Below is a picture for the Brain Board. As I explained in my last post there was a common Brain Board that was used across the different variations of the development system.

Along the left side are the three serial connectors that provide the user interface to the system. At the bottom is 5 pin power connector and a three pin connector that goes to the reset switch on the front panel. At the top are two connector (on the back side of the board) that connect it to the Personality Board. There are spots for two pairs of connectors but only one pair is populated.

I have labeled the major chips on the board.

A. Four 2764, 8K EPROMS for a total of 32K or ROM.

B. Intel 8253 programmable interval timer.

C. Eight, 4164, 64Kx1 DRAM for a total ok 64K RAM.

D. National Semiconductor NSC800N CPU. This is National’s version of the Z80.

E. Three Signetics 2561 Programmable Communication Interface, one or each serial port.

F. This ZIF socket is for the EPROM programmers. There is a ribbon cable that connects it to the ZIF socket on the front panel. I am not sure why they spent the money for a ZIF connector on the inside.

Most of the rest of the board is 74 series logic and a couple PALs. There is one odd chip labeled 8188-U40. U40 is it’s location on the board so I assume it’s some sort of custom chip.It is near the EPROM programmer so might be part of that circuit.

HPC Microcontroller Development System–Inside Case

Here is a look inside the system’s case. When you remove the side panels if reveals two compartments, once on each side. The first side contains a off the shelf switching power supply which provides a range of voltages to the the system.

On the other side of the case are the logic boards. National made three variations of this developments system. The one I am showing here is for the HPC processors, and there were also versions for the COP400 and COP800 microcontrollers. The large board on top is called the brain board and is common to all three versions of the system. The brain board has the microprocessors and supporting hardware that provides the user interface to the system. Underneath the brain board in the personality board which provides all the target processor specific hardware. There were three different versions of the personality board, one for each target processor. The small board in the bottom left is the brain buffer board which has the electrical buffering between the brain board and the interface pod. I believe this board is also unique to each target processor.