Re: [N8VEM-S100:1374] S-100 Bus Terminator

[Paul Birkel <pbi...@gmail.com>]

Andrew:

Being a congenital penny-pincher, as well as a "tweaker", it strikes me as a lost opportunity to define a PCB like this with *lots* of unused space (and yet sucking up a full S-100 slot).  At a minimum, how about filling the remaining space with a through-hole proto-area array?  It would/could be accompanied by appropriate regulators along one edge but the setup/layout would be spatially similar to the buffered proto-board (replacing the buffer-area with the line-clamp area).  This would leave opportunities for experimenters (with legacy S-100 backplanes) to wire-up small accessory circuits -- else no impact on the termination function?

Alternatively, place the bus-terminator circuitry onto the unused area of the bus-extender card and get three-in-one functionality with extension, termination, and probe functions.  An example of this approach of combining termination and extension was the VTE100a "EXTERMINATOR"; see:

http://maben.homeip.net/static/S100/vamp/cards/VMP%20VTE%20100-A%20Terminator.pdf
http://maben.homeip.net/static/S100/vamp/photos/VAMP%20VTE-100%20Exterminator.jpg
http://maben.homeip.net/static/S100/vamp/photos/VTE%20100a%20Exterminator.gif

If trying to go 3-in-1 ends up running into real estate issues then just combine termination & extension like the VAMP.

Another possibility would be to commit all/part of the (above) proposed proto-area to specific generally-useful functions.  Two possibilities would be a configurable basic UART serial I/O port and/or a configurable 8 or 16-bit (E)EPROM handling up to 1 MB chips.  I believe that someone pointed out recently that it would be useful to have a board with these sorts of basic functions in order "bring-up" legacy CPU PCBs in a minimal configuration.  One could possibly swap one of these options for the probe in a 3-in-1 configuration?  Unfortunately it seems to me that when including the extension-function that the resulting routing problems when adding something like I/O or ROM might require a lot of accessory over-board wires to effectively provide a (minimal) third connection-plane.  So that might not be a good idea.  But the VAMP illustrates that termination+extension go together quite well.

My preference would be to leave the existing probe+extension PCB alone, and instead look towards combining termination, Serial I/O, and (E)EPROM into a single card.  This plus legacy CPU and RAM cards would result in a functional system on any "naked backplane".  If some RAM could be squeezed into this multi-purpose board, so much the better :->.  We have all of these circuits in tested-form, the only issue would seem to be routing.  This sort of board would also be useful to a wider audience who could only populate the subsections of immediate need (e.g., not actually use the termination section if employing a self-terminated backplane) -- and this would increase the board-orders and therefore the likelihood that we'll quickly reach a good ROI threshold.

The bottom line for me is that a pure termination PCB seems like a lost opportunity.  And might not easily reach critical-mass for a board-order :-<.

On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 9:19 PM, Andrew Lynch <LYN...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi

 

Attached are the schematic and PCB layout files for the S-100 Bus Terminator. 

 

Please review and send any changes and/or corrections to me.

 

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "N8VEM-S100" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to n8vem-s100+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.