What are these boards for?

[stevenhoneyman]

I've been lurking on here waiting for Raspberry Pi release day... but in the mean time, I have a question to any electronics/microprocessor expert!

I have a box full of these boards, which appear to have a 16-bit MCU and an EPROM on them. Can anyone tell me anything further? I googled the text on the larger IC, but found nothing.

[Lynbarn]

stevenhoneyman said:


I've been lurking on here waiting for Raspberry Pi release day... but in the mean time, I have a question to any electronics/microprocessor expert!

I have a box full of these boards, which appear to have a 16-bit MCU and an EPROM on them. Can anyone tell me anything further? I googled the text on the larger IC, but found nothing.


Have you tried asking Frazer Nash?

[stevenhoneyman]

Admittedly, no! I will try that.

By the way, there is one more dupe topic posted to delete (pesky site lag!)

[spurious]

Google'd .. could be ethernet controller, or part for car .. or neither...

might help if you knew where you got them

[grumpyoldgit]

What is this bard for?

[Lynbarn]

Grumpyoldgit said:


What is this bard for?


Is this a Raspberry Pi which I see before me,

The Broadcom toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

[stevenhoneyman]

spurious said:


Google'd .. could be ethernet controller, or part for car .. or neither...

might help if you knew where you got them



I got them in a bulk purchase of electronics bits on ebay around 10 years ago... just uncovered them in a clear out!

[liz]

What is this beard for? (I have questions about the hat, too.)

[tzj]

http://www.frazer-nash.com/

[zippy]

Dump the eprom if you can, that will likely give some clues.

The big IC could be an 8051 based microcontroller, it has the same package type and number of pins and was used extensively in eg. car ECU's in the 90's.

[jojopi]

I believe the NEC V20 is an 8088 clone.

[johnbeetem]

U4 looks like a NEC V20, described by Wikipedia as follows: "The NEC V20 (?PD70108) was a processor made by NEC that was a reverse-engineered, pin-compatible version of the Intel 8088 with an instruction set compatible with the Intel 80186."  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEC_V20]

U2 looks like a Fujitsu MB84256-A which is a 32K x 8 CMOS SRAM.

So you have a general-purpose 8088-style computer, a small amount of SRAM, an EPROM and a mystery chip.

[johnbeetem]

tzj said:


http://www.frazer-nash.com/



Yep, it's got the logo right on the PC board.  Some sort of controller for power electronics?

[Andre_P]

Thesys was the name of a Fab (Fabrication Company, where they make the ASICs).

It's now known as X FAB.

So at some point Frazer Nash asked for an ASIC to be created, they either got it done in house or asked for it to be created by a third party, I used to be part of a team that did that kind of thing and I think we used Thesys at some point.

I think they tried to do something very very silly once, they tried to charge for their standard cell library and lots of people told them fine we can go elsewhere to make our chips.

[johnbeetem]

U3 is a Thesys TH1008.1.  Thesys was a German semiconductor manufacturer, now part of Melexis, which makes a lot of automotive electronics such as intelligent motor control.  My guess is that it's an ASIC made for Frazer-Nash, probably mixed-signal electronics.  What it actually does is a poser.

[Andre_P]

I'm sorry guys, something seems to want my posts appear twice

yup sorry got some wires crossed here, Melexis took them over not  XFab.

[grumpyoldgit]

liz said:





Brian began to suspect that his talk on seal clubbing to the local branch of PETA wasn't going down too well.

[Bad Wolf]

Grumpyoldgit said:


liz said:





Brian began to suspect that his talk on seal clubbing to the local branch of PETA wasn't going down too well.



Brian was feeling some pain, it was getting harder and harder to keep younger engineers excited about the FoxPro developer cult

[spamel]

Here's hoping it is part of a Flux Capacitor, I want a pet velociraptor!