Hi welcome to Tear down Tuesday Yes, it's vintage time again and we've got not vintage computer, but vintage microprocessor development tool. We've got a Microtech 8086 in Circuit emulator or Ice tool and we'll take a good look at it in detail I Scored this baby on eBay for 99. I was the only bitter fantastic. Came in the original box with all the original manuals, all the original cables, all the pods and zif sockets and everything Beauty Can't believe it and yep, check it out.

There it is. This is the Um 8086, but um, this particular unit supports the 8088 processor and the NC equivalency, um V20 and the V30 as well. if you remember the 8086 or the 8088 was what was used in the original IBM PC back in the early 80s and that's what all modern um Intel uh, Wintel type PCS are based on. and this was an incredibly valuable development tool back then.

if you were developing a PC or hardware for a PC something like that, you really or even software, you really needed one of these in circuit emulators or Ice. Now as you'll see later, I'll show you the real thing, but it basically is a box like this which we've seen cables coming out. We've got pods which then go off and plug into the socket on your processor. Now you might think that um, well, these aren't uh used anymore, but well, they effectively still are.

An in Circuit emulator is the penultimate tool for embedded system design and embedded Uh computer, you know, software debugging Hardware debugging stuff like that, and um, you might be familiar with, say the Um Pck kit. Uh, three, You know, microcontroller debug tools. These are not in circuit emulators. These are in circuit debuggers or Icds.

And they work differently because these are what are known as intrusive. Uh debuggers. That means that you have to actually put code into your Pck chip or your AVR chip when you're actually developing it to. You know to debug and breakpoint and stop and look at stuff and play with it and debug it.

And well, that's not your final code. These things do not. These in circuit debuggers do not allow you to debug your final code and that's important. And that's where these in circuit emulators.

Um, you know they might be called emulators. They go under various names, but they're generally known as an Ice or an in Circuit emulator. That's where these come in. These are nonintrusive.

These emulate the actual processor, so they've got specific Hardware in here and they emulate the whole chip. They're very complex uh, things to actually uh design and hence they're very expensive. and well back then in the day they were very big as well. There'll be a lot of circuitry in here, which we'll take a look at now in Circuit emulators are still used today, but there are generally still quite an expensive and rare tool to have, but absolutely essential when you want to do non-intrusive debugging on a design.

There is no substitute for it. Really? On um, uh, microprocessor based Um systems that have separate memory and you know the processor separate IO chips and separate memory. Really old school stuff. Instead of the embedded uh micro, uh processors and microcontrollers we have these days, you could use a logic anal analyzer or something like that.

That's another nonintrusive technique to debug your applications, but eh, they're not the best. You cannot beat an in circuit emulator that allows you to know monitor your code real time, trace your code in real time, see exactly which uh, part of your C program is executing. all that sort of stuff, break into it. Break points: Do your usual debugging stuff on your actual release code and that's a vital part of it.

So anyway, I Think these things: This is going to be really well. It's going to be interesting inside, but unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to power the sucker up because well, it comes with a Um plug-in Isa bus card for a p see I don't actually have the original software for this either and I don't have an 8086 Target system to play with either, but hey, we'll take it apart and uh, see what's inside I Expect a whole bunch of through hole 80s technology. Let's go now. I just expand on this in Circuit Cometry a little bit more.

Here's a um pretty old. You'll notice a date code there 9804 uh pick uh 16 C74 a um, micro controller but you know it's a typical uh, still a fairly typical micro controller these days and everything is built into this thing. All of the memory, All of the Io and uarts, and you know, various other stuff are all built into there. And how do you emulate this thing? Well, you can emulate it using a um You know, a dedicated Hardware That um actually emulates the chip, but you always wonder, well, how accurate is that? And of course, we can't get in there to actually uh, probe any of the signals.

Normally, if we use the regular chip like, we can't break into the memory and um, simulate it. and well, you know, uh, program the memory, trace it, examine the contents, uh, put contents in there, do all that, sort of uh Jazz because in fact, uh, the ROM memory in this one is U UV erasable. It's not a flash memory, hence W has this Clear Window on top. You have to actually erase this thing under ultraviolet light.

Well, in circuit Uh emulators, they work uh, differently. even if you got a flash-based controller in circuit, Emulators will generally use um RAM memory fast volatile memory to simulate The Flash or the ROM memory in a system so you don't have to, uh, wait for the flash memory to be programmed or something. You can just do it very quickly, almost instantaneously in static memory. So how would you actually Uh, probe into a system like this to do this? Well, you have to actually rely on the manufacturer.

um, and manufacturers still manufacture these uh these days I believe. But uh, back in the old days, they definitely, uh, did it all the time. They would manufacture a special version of the chip called a Bond Out Chip and what it does, is it actually, um, instead of all the regular pins on there, it uh, bonds out extra wires out to extra pins which are then um, able to, uh, tap all the internal parts of the circus. you like the memory and um, you know all sorts of other peripherals and uh, various important points within the microprocessor.

You can break those out and then use that uh special, very expensive uh chip. Usually to develop an in circuit emulator so it emulates the real chip. but often with these Bond Out chips they would lag behind the real production versions of the chips if there silicon bugs and the production chips are being fixed well, whoops, you know you're in circuit. UL Using that Bond Out chip could be uh, out of date and it was always a struggle to uh, keep up with these things using uh, Bond Out chips.

But yeah, the manufacturers would actually manufacture a special version of this chip. Um, they didn't make many of them cuz these in circuit emulators don't sell in you know, the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. like the little you know pit kit, uh uh, debuggers and stuff due these days, these were very expensive, very specialized chips, and of course, as you might be aware, a lot of modern microcontrollers have built in um, sort of. you know, in circuit emulator and in circuit debugger type functionality already built into the production die.

That's why say you know on the microchip, you can use the Um in Circuit Debugger which actually has some circuitry already built into the D that allows you to do basic break break points and basic debugging stuff like that. And for those who love to see the original boxes, it's I've got all the original Uh foam, uh inserts in there. I've got a Um, the universal symbolic Uh debugger users manual as well as well as the original Uh disc for the Uh symbolic debugger. Fantastic stuff.

Um I've got all the uh, all the connecting ribbon cables for the things I've got the PODS of course which will, uh, take a look at complete with the original, hopefully all the pins intact. Ah, all the pins intact. Fantastic That plugs into your circuit under test with your Uh Zif sockets. I've got actually there's a couple of those.

they're both for the 8086 and it supports the 808 Uh7 as well. There's the emulation micro processor fantastic stuff and comes with the original Isa Uh board control board as well. Copyright 1986 Microtech Although I think this actual Uh unit is about um, well the manual says 89 or there about so but it could have certainly been manufactured in the very early uh '90s and various other connec in Uh leads as well. There the uh, that's the trace pin output leads so oh yep, going into some Micro Grabbers down in there.

Ah, even got the warranty card. fantastic and whole bunch of stuffff brilliant. all for n ah, there's a third. There you go.

I've got a third pod which doesn't have the Uh 8087. it's only got the 8086 socket in it. So here's how the thing would hook up. You would uh, have your Isa PC card running the Um emulation software which allows you to do all the onscreen Uh displays, the waveforms, the debugging, the whole Uh works, and all the timing stuff.

and that would plug in and connects to the cable on the back which we'll have a look at and then you would plug these lovely long ribbon cables here. There we go. This one's specific for the 8086 F I'm not sure what uh, different cable would be for the 8088 uh for example, but they would these would plug into there like that Bingo there you go and then you would plug your actual microprocessor that you wanted to emulate into here and your 8087 as well if you were using the 8087 and then this cable would Connect into your circuit under test, it would plug into your microprocessor socket. So instead of this processor pluging directly into the socket like normal, you'll put all this circuitry and this in circuit emulator or ice in between it.

Now this is actually um, uh, not so much an emulator cuz it's not actually emulating the microprocessor. The circuitry inside this thing is not emulating the microprocessor. it's just it's using a real microprocessor and it's tapping into that and just uh, tapping into all the memory signals and the clock signals and everything else required to run the PC Because the processor is just that. It's just a processor.

It needs all external memory and everything else. So that's why you could do this with the Uh 8086, which you couldn't do. For example, on that uh pick we saw earlier, you would have had to use a Bond Out version of the chip. Now this is Um.

using the real micro processor of course is much much better than using a a circuitry that you know is like a Plld or an Fpga that's just emulating your microprocessor because then you don't know if there's any uh, bugs or any issues with your emulation at all. You don't know if it's 100% but when you're using your real actual production silicon in there, you can be 100% sure it's a true emulation now. one of the issues with Ins circuit emulators which is still true today. You can't get around it.

It's basic physics are the speed limitations. Now when you talking about big cables like this, which um, you know, break into your circuit under test, look at all this. These signals have to be broken out. Go into here.

all through the circuitry in here, all through these huge cables in here, all to the circuitry inside this box and that is a lot of extra copper. Remember that um, you know, uh, signals travel it roughly. Rule of thumb: um 15 cm per Nan So every 15 cm on this cable is going to represent a 1 nond delay and well, that can be a huge problem if you're working at a processor pretty much in a system. uh, like this with you know, the connecting cables and stuff like that.

Um, once you start talking um, three digits or 100 mahz. these types of systems aren't really going to work anymore. Um, so you know this one's only working at 10 MHz maximum cuz that was the upper speed of the 8086 back then. So these types of systems with the long cables and breaking in or it all worked just a treat.

But on Modern processors working at many, many hundreds of megahertz in circuit emulator design is a real art in itself. And uh, Trying To minimize the Uh physical interconnections for various things, even for art, bond out chips and stuff like that, you have to be very, very careful. Signal Integrity Uh becomes a huge deal and uh, flight time on the copper cables or any interconnects at all can really ruin your day. It really is quite a difficult art to design these in circuit emulators.

Huge R&D dollars go into these things and they don't sell many of them, so they're usually pretty darn expensive. And that's the reason why they've put the Emulation Micro Processor as close as physically possible to the Um to the connection pins. Here is because they really need to keep that signal Integrity as best they can If this Emulation Micro Processor was inside this box and had to go through all these huge long cables to get there. which is, you know, a physical requirement.

you know this box can't be You know, inches away from your system, your device under test, or your DT Um, you know it can't be several inches. You've got to have all these buffered cables. so there will be all buffer circuitry and stuff inside here to drive all these long cables. and uh, also to drive out to the socket here.

but that's why that's physically kept as close as possible. And on the new High Speed Systems today with you know, processors with many, many hundreds of megahertz, you know you won't even get this distance you you know only get maybe an inch or or the circuitry has to be built in to Clips which specifically go onto the processor or they have to build it onto the die. So although this thing is called an in circuit emulator, it's not actually emulating the microprocessor, it's using the real uh silicon, your real production silicon. Plug it in there and it just breaks out everything around it allowing you to do full in circuit emulator uh capability like memory mapping and stuff like that.

Now let's take a quick look at the Uh manual here for those who want to see it. Unfortunately, it didn't come with the Uh software like it did. uh, the 5 and A/4 inch floppy we got with the Uh Debugger software. but anyway, oh well, what the heck? Third, Ed uh Third Edition January 1989 there.

So really we are talking but it could have been manufactured uh uh, you know, early '90s or something like that. Originally Copyright 86 Microtech International All Rights Reserved And let's have a look at some basic specs of this puppy and uh blah blah blah blah blah maybe I'll uh no, haven't got time to scan any of this. sorry too hard I was going to but um, it allows you to emulate Um 8086, 8088, 8087 Co processor. The NC V20 and V30 goes up to 10 MHz external clock The emulation uh memory is important.

That's the amount of static Ram buil in as I mentioned because uh uh. Even with you know modern systems with flash program memory and stuff like that, you know they've got a limited uh ride cycle, limited uh, life in them. so really static Ram just allows you to do um, infinite and also pretty much instant um, changing of the uh, emulation program memory. Now it's only got 256k so I'm not sure what you'd be doing if you um, had like if you were debugging or emulating a 640k uh system.

For example I'm not sure if you can, you can probably Bank it or do something like that up to 464k segments. um, it's got seven realtime uh break points, four execution break points, and two bus uh break points which allow you to get um, you know various things cuz not uh, there's a lot of Hardware that's actually required to do that. So that's why you can't just have an infinite number of uh, complex. These are often called comp complex uh break points.

So it uh Taps into the address data status and uh, some counts as well and it can do interrupt I read and uh stuff. all that sort of uh, breakpoint stuff and it's got One external hardware breakpoint as well. And it does realtime uh, tracing of the address data, all the rest of it. The trace buffer is only 2K and 76 bits wide.

uh, what else we got reg. you can display modify. you can single step. oh you can single step through um and uh.

the time measurement has a resolution of one microsc. You can do cycle steps Trace start, stop H All the memory commands you can do and the various interfaces. So there you go. That is a basic introduction if if there's anything more interesting I haven't actually, uh, read it yet but here we go.

Here's the system block diagram. Aha, it tells us what cards we've got in here. We've got our Lamb card I'm not sure what that. the top card is called the EPM card, the middle one is called the Emm and the bottom one is the next one down is the Lamb card, and then we've got a CPM card.

So it looks like we've got four boards in this thing and they're all going to I'm. sure they'll all be uh, dip and through Hoold technology and we'll open up the Pod as well. but uh, the Pod I. Don't expect to see uh, buffers and things like that.

perhaps? Bingo There we go. We've got logic Lamb is logic analyzer module, Emm is emulation memory module so that that was a uh separate board and the CPM is the control processor module and a quick look at the front, we've got a 5V power lead. Everything's going to be 5 Vols No. 3.3 volt rubbish in this thing.

Um, the ation program run I assume that what's EP stands for green Lead green is good. Your program's running. It's got various uh slay, um uh, sync outputs, uh master and slave external trigger input and your Trace outputs as well which you can connect to your circuit under test. And then we've got our pod interfaces here and we've got a funky little recessed reset button and that's all there is to the front of it and on the back here we've got a uh, parallel and uh serial interface which goes off to our Um board.

We've got a fan and just I Mains input. that's it made in Taiwan Republic of China All right, What was that? like? 10 15 minutes of crapping on about uh in circuit emulators and stuff like that. Let's have a look inside this thing now. as I said I Reckon it's going to be all through hole technology A bugger.

We need a uh, let's have a look. Is that a that's a hex? We need a hex. No loser There we go. Do it by hand.

There we go. Um, we will find no doubt a whole bunch of uh through hole circuitry all dip stuff. I Mentioned this on the Amp Hour radio show this morning. actually I Um, presume that all the chips will be lined up like you can sort of see through the grills on the front a bit.

but all the chips will be lined up there in their lines. That'll be through whole packages and it'll all be jammed on there. I'm sure. probably like a four layer board each one of them or something like that.

Oh, does that come out? No. All right. looks like we have to. There we go.

and we've got four boards as we saw in the manual, so not a hugely interesting tear down. I mean you know the more interesting stuff in this is actually how like maybe the circuitry of how the emulation worked and stuff like that so you have to really go into there. we go. Deep technical de Tada Yep, there we go.

Exactly as I thought. So there you have it. There's the four boards we uh, saw before. nice little uh, retaining clps to pull them out.

I'll have to undo the screws there. but on the top here is our emulation uh, programming board. Then we've got our emulation memory module next. and then we've got our logic analyzer module there, which of course has the various Trace bits and stuff like that on it.

And then down the bottom is our emulation processor. uh no, our CPM control processor module. So there you go. let's undo the screws on here and whip this sucker out.

Going to have to. We used a hex driver here, but uh, this is how you designed. oops, oh no, it doesn't like that. Oh no, maybe I'm using the wrong.

Maybe it's Imperial I don't have an Imperial that small damn it. Bugger I Think someone's had a someone may have had a hack at those cuz this one. Work these two over here work fine, but the other ones don't anyway. I'm sure we can get those off with a pair of pliers.

Anyway, this is how you designed stuff back then. no large scale Integra Well, there's large scale integration in uh, you know, various uh 40 pin dips and stuff. but everything else is going to be uh, either Gat array logic or 74 series logic and this is how you laid stuff out. This is how you designed stuff back in the day.

you know, um, you didn't have oh well, you had uh, fpgas and stuff like that if you wanted to, uh, wanted to use them or you had PLS and uh and stuff anyway that you could certainly use. And those gate array Logics I can probably see I think I see maybe some gate arrays on there or something like that. So, but you design these all in neat rows like that and then you would typically have as we'll see on the boards, you typically had all all the traces on one layer going in One Direction and on the other layer going all the other direction and that's one of the good uses for Um Auto routers. Back in the day, in the Uh CAD software, you would, um, let the Auto router rip so you'd lay it out.

You'd put a bit of uh sense and order into the layout of course, but you'd lay them out all nice and neat like that with their individual bypass caps on each chip and then you tell the auto router, go for it and you come back. You know, come back at the end of the day and uh, your board would be done so I can get a couple of those out. No, they're probably held in at the back as well. So I'm not sure what's no.

There we go. we got one out. Oh that's neat. I like it so we'll have look at each board in a bit more detail.

It's got a daugh board on it. Oh no, there we go. This takes a bit of force to pop out. TDA that's our logic analyzer module and these ones.

I'll have to get those out with a pair of pliers and here it is and this is a classic example of how you would design, uh, something back in the uh, mid to late 80s. You would have you know, a whole bunch of 74 series logic. This is the Um imulation memory. uh Board of course the Emm and uh, you would lay them all out on boards like that and you'd plug them into a back plane rack based system like this cuz you've got all this circuitry which you obviously can't fit on one board.

There's no, you know, huge large scale integration and stuff like that. So you lay them out on multiple boards and very common to lay them out on these with these back plane bus connectors. you know you see almost every system uh, back in the day, every sort of you know processor, uh, system that did all sorts of logic stuff like this would be pretty much designed exactly the same way. Either a horizontal, uh, plug-in system like this, or a vertical, uh rack, uh, format one or something like that.

But yeah, classic old school. So this here is the Emm or the Emulation memory module. There it is. they call it the H Emm.

Revd: Copyright 1989. Uh, just have a look 92. There you go. 9235 on a couple of these.

Just have a look at the date code of a few of these chips 9224 so it looks like this one was manufactured late 92. There you go that dates this thing, but it was certainly Uh designed back in 1989. It would have had, you know, a uh, you know, probably a 5year, uh, lifetime or something like that before. um, people moved on.

but this one actually comes from the Australian um Air Force So you know they have to uh, maintain these old systems so you know there' probably still some people you know running these old tools even today because they still have to emulate the old Um, you know the old microprocessors like the 8086 and various others. Um, you know, if you're working on, say, um ICBM technology for the military Intercontinental Ballistic missiles they're all based on, you know, 60s technology and stuff like that. So you know they still have to keep alive these development tools. That can be a big challenge in itself to maintaining old systems like that, especially in military uh type things where you have to keep things working for you know, 10, 20, even 30 years or so.

Crazy stuff. It can get real difficult so you know, don't throw out those old floppy discs and you can see the uh classic card Edge um release clips like that. Absolutely classic. I Can remember designing many a board back in the day to uh, slot in there.

We've got a um metal, uh, strengthening, uh bar across here. You'll notice that it's probably held in yeah, it's held in three locations. so there, there and there and that just uh strengthens the board at the back as it plugged in because when these you know, on really big boards, they could actually um, sag in the middle. So when you actually went, a common issue back in the day is when you put them in the slide rails like that and you pushed them in.

Sometimes there'd be a lot of weight on these things, especially if they you know I've done boards um, like, you know, double this size almost and uh, and in the middle they can actually sag like that if they don't have one of these uh, strengthening bars and then then the connectors at the back like this, don't uh, line up so that can be an issue. So that's why they've added that metal strengthening bar on the back just to keep it all lined up when you go to plug it in. Although the these connectors are pretty good, it's pretty. You know, self-aligning all that sort of stuff.

but you really didn't want to hear that big crunch sound as they sort of self-aligned when you pushed them in. But there you go. Attention to detail. Now, as I mentioned, this is a classic layout for a board of the ERA this would be a full layer board.

You can actually see by the dark bits in dark bits in there. It's actually a uh, well, it's at least a four layer board. They wouldn't have done it as a three layer. Of course, it' be ground and Power in there.

So two inner layers and there'd probably be very little, uh, few if any traces on the inner layer would just be the Uh Power plane and all of the routing is done on the top and the bottom layer. And as I said, this was a classic use for um, uh, Auto routers. Back in the day, you know I'm not a big fan of Auto routers. Well, this is where they came in handy cuz these weren't uh, huge.

You know, high frequency uh systems? these are only you know 10 MHz um 20 MHz Something like that. With a big ground plane, lots of decoupling, you can easily get away with uh, well, you, you had to get away with it because you had to make these systems work. You had to use all these chips. Spread them out over large boards like this with uh, back planes.

but signal Integrity wasn't on on the PCB level wasn't as huge a thing as it is today with uh with all of today's uh, you know, high-speed uh, serial lines controlled impedance and all that sort of stuff. these things weren't controlled impedance, You just laid it out with one big ground plane. You'll notice they got decoupling chips on each one, but you'll notice how they're all laid out in nice lines like this. You would lay them out like that and typically, um, this is not a good example of uh, that one.

but this isn't a particularly good example either. This is the Uh processor, the emulation processor module. But they're laid out in neat lines like that. and if you didn't have the ground plane often, they would run the ground and Power Trace between each chip like that and run it across the board.

so you'd have one big uh Power bus down the side and then You' Branch the power off along each particular chip like that, especially if you had moldy voltages or you know, something like that, you'd typically you might have a different voltage bus on each side or something like that and you would route them under the chips. That's why you line them up like that so that you could run those two traces, ground and power. That's the only thing you'd have running under the chip in that direction like that, and you dedicate a particular layer to that direction of running all of those power signals. but they obviously haven't done that here.

They've um, just used a Uh a one big Power plane. It's all running at 5 Vols ground and Power in there. but each chip. They've given a bypass cap on each one, but they've still laid them out in neat rows like that.

Because the routing algorithms you would you know it may I don't know if this one was Auto routed or not may or may not be. Um I've both used auto routers and uh, laid out these types of ones uh, manually as well. Well flip it over and have a look. But as I mentioned back at the start, these things they're uh, typically will dedicate one particular layer to a Direction.

So this bottom layer here, you'll notice almost all the traces go in this direction. this um x axis Direction Here you know there's a few traces, which sort of, you know, come down here like that and then go o I'm going to go down there like that. But generally the routing algorithms were quite advaned and they were optimized for these Uh two layer boards. In fact, um, the Cad packages these days were probably still have the algorithms built in and you tell it that I want to run my traces in that direction on this layer and on the top layer, you run them in the other direction there.

So here it is. All the ones on the top here, pretty much all just run in this direction like this. and this is why you know you can't just put your chips anywhere willy-nilly have to actually uh, you know, especially with uh, memory and stuff like this. This is all banked, all common uh, address and uh data lines so you're going to put them in um, right, aligned all the way up like that and the buses just run directly through them like that.

and absolute classic example of how to lay out one of these uh, four layer 1980s vintage digital boards. So of course you did have to put some thought into the Uh layout of this thing. Component Placement: As I've always said, PCB layout is, you know, 90% component placement. You do good placement.

The autorouting routines can work just fine. and of course you know if you had to get a signal from here right over there, you didn't care how you know it might jump across on the bottom layer. Here, jump up back there, back back. it'll just you know as it's easy to find a route when you first start laying out the traces.

but when you know you get to that 9080 90% uh routing Mark and well, you haven't got much room left. You really have to jump all over the shop here, but this one is quite efficient. I mean they? it's probably, uh, put a lot of thought into it. Laid it out by hand because you can't see too many uh vs in there.

There's a couple, you know, there's a few, but there's not. like you know, hundreds and hundreds of Vas and uh, stuff like that. So they really, you know I'd say uh, somebody has probably manually uh routed this thing and took some pride. but for some complex one ones where the signal Integrity isn't critical.

Yeah, just let the auto router rip on these boards. It's fun to watch and check out the ancient uh bypass capacitor package there. They've got uh, standard uh 3 in uh, spacing on these things, designed to integrate and butt right up next to chips for high density in uh quote marks, uh, logic designs like this one. Absolute classic.

You don't see packages like that anymore I'm not even sure if You' will be able to get that sort of package. and of course we've got a tanum here as well in one of these weird ass um, you know, bullet type packages. Okay, let's start out and look at each board in a little bit more detailed. Look at some of the Uh technology that's used on here.

This is the top board. We looked at the Uh EPM or the emulation programming module and uh, you can see this one is where it connects directly to the Uh pod using this dual height. Riser ID C Connector Like that, it's rather quite neat. Um, you know, nothing fancy there at all.

It's just a 40 way. um, leave it IDC connector We've got a couple of couple of dip uh, resistor networks here. Series Resistor networks I'm presuming that they're a H? I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

I think they're a series resistor networks there. and uh, then we've got some Uh 74 LS stuff around here. It's all. a lot of this is going to be standard 74 LS logic.

So if you want to know what each one of them does, uh, by all means, uh, go and look up the individual data sheets if you're not familiar with your 74 series logic, but anyway, they're using Um LS Series uh Logic for presumably uh, around the interface. um, stuff here. we've got some ALS So we're really going to have a mix of Uh 74 series technology here. I Have no idea what these Sony parts are here.

Check it out. Sony Cxk 5814 P Well, of course the dash 35 on the end of that's a dead giveaway, that's some type of memory and I did Google it and sure enough it is a 2K By8 SRAM So very fast SRAM there on the input. Then we go down here and we find 74f series logic. So we've used moved.

F stands for fast folks and uh, they are incredibly, uh, fast. They take a lot of um, uh, current as well so you really need a bypass cap next to each one of those. So and these ones with stickers on them. There's a couple of them there and uh, up there as well.

They would be Gat arays. Um, like a Pal device or a gate array or something like that. cuz um, when they've got a serial number on them like that, you can bet your bottom dollar that they're programmable. So let's peel that off and oh damn, can't see it.

One of those difficult to read ones, Let me try and get in there. Yep, there you go. It's a pal. It's not even a gal, it's a Pal 16 R8 Absolute classic.

They're just using that for some glue logic there. and if we have a look around the rest of the board here. LS1 123 up there with some, uh, large, uh, traditional radial caps there, but pretty much, um, 74f series. Um, as far as I can see pretty much in terms of uh, you know where it's deemed to be critical speed.

There we go. We got a Cyprus um, uh, Cy7 C122. Once again, it's A-15 so that would be a memory I'm not going to bother to go look that one up. You can, uh, do that yourself or 74f series logic driving the Uh back plane down in there.

and of course, each one of those has to have its own bypass cap CU Those things just gulp the current, but it looks like 74 LS Um, with the we did have a ALS up here, where was it? Yep, there we go. So we got a small mix of different technology there. we've got. they've chosen to use 274 ALS ones there instead of Ls or F in that particular circumstance.

looks like some somehow coupled into that uh memory. And down here we've got the classic um, it's an NEC branded, but it, uh, lots of companies made this. It's the Classic 8255 uh programmable peripheral interface and this was used on the IBM PC and uh, standardizing part. You know the Intel architectures and stuff like that, but they're just using it as a Uh I think they've just standardized.

They got four of them here. They've just standardized on those as their Um 8bit peripheral addressable peripheral. uh bus interface I Won't go into detail on how the 8255 works if you're not familiar with it. um I'll link in the data sheet to it and you can check it out.

It's just a generic way for them to uh address and uh read stuff on Dat bus uh based systems. and there's the main clock up there 24 MHz Crystal oscillator and that's pretty much all she wrote. so it looks like we got three combinations um of family on there F predominantly LS second and then ALS as well. And next up, we've got our emulation memory module which contains all the uh mapping memory in here.

Once again, they've got some gal St G or Pal stuff happening down in there, but these are all Sony uh, Cxk 58257 70 nond srams are more than fast enough for a 10, uh, 10 mahz um emulation uh system. They decided to go with 70 nond there. pretty bug standard they use. You could have substituted these with, you know, any one of dozens of Brands available at the time.

and what was that? It had 256k uh total. So there you go. Once again, they got all 74f series logic all driving that I Guess they determined that LS wasn't fast enough for any of that. All you know, classic 245s and 244s and all sorts of stuff all over the place.

Yeah, there's some more 244s and once again, they're throwing in just a couple of ALS little Bank of a ALS ones going down here. and uh, there is another I'm not sure what that one there is. Once again, it's another memory. It's of sorts.

It's got a -15 so anytime you see like a -1 five on the end, especially in this old stuff, you can pretty much tell that that's a speed grade and that will be uh, usually um -15 um means well, that could mean 15 nond or it could mean 150 depending on the Uh technology -70 here I Definitely know from experience would be 70 nond but uh, might try and Google that sucker I'm not sure who that manufacturer is off hand. Well, there you go. that one is from a company called P Pyramid Semiconductor. I'm not sure if they're still around these days, but uh yes, it is a Um small SRAM yes it is 15 NS very quick.

Uh, it's at 256 bits Time 4 so it's you know it's incredibly small I'm not sure what they're using that for just some sort of little smaller buffer or fast counter or something like that perhaps. But uh, here you go. we've got our 825 FS Again, so that's all our generic interface stuff. 74 FS all over the place.

48255 and uh, another memory down the bottom there. But yeah, I know what can I tell you? Sorry folks, it's all just 74 series logic. And here's our Lamb or logic analyzer module. Once again, that's uh, these are the uh Trace um outputs here and the various uh, sink and uh, trigger um inputs here.

but this is the logic analyzer module that allows them. Oh there we go. impal lamb. Once again, we've got a uh oh actually that wonder wonder who or what that is under there.

Just curious cuz that looked like a National Semiconductor and it is. There you go. It's a pal 14 Pal 14 L4 Woohoo! State-of-the-art technology folks in the late 80s no Fpga in this baby and uh, looks like yep, 825s absolutely everywhere in bucket. Loads all over.

Once again, we've got uh, some more of those um 2K srams there I think and yep, a whole bunch There we go. Whole line of them. In fact a whole line of srams on the logic analyzer module. And if we look at the manual, we should be able to find um, that is like the probably the trace buffer or something like that.

and yep, I was right. This is the Uh Trace buffer memory along here because the manual as we saw earlier in the video the manual um states that it's got 2K 2048 uh, Cycles Deep by 76 bits wide Trace memory. Of course these are all 8 Bits each. So in theory you need nine and a half of these chips to make up that Trace memory.

but they've got more than that. these a 2K by 8 each. So they got 2, 4, 68, 10, 12, 14, 15 and they got another one there 16. but I don't know how they're are being used and implemented.

but definitely the trace buffer and a slightly different mix of Technology Again, 74s 260. So we got 74s series logic mixed in with our LS and our F all around there and we've got an NEC d71 054 c Not sure what that is, um could be another memory doesn't have a dash grade after that. Once again, these are all um, late week 91 sort of manufacturer. so yep, 9223.

So there you go. we've got some more Sony 2K memory uh SRAM there all over the place. but yeah, well. we got a lead, something different.

and last but not least, we have our CPM board. No, it's not a control program for micro computers as in the CPM operating system. it is the control processor module. and TDA we actually have something different in a genuine I might add.

Check it out. genuine 3M text tool socket there beautiful I Like that. What do we have? We have an Intel Tada 80886. Now there's actually no reason, um, that I know of why this actually needs to be an 80186.

It doesn't need to be that particular uh type to emulate this uh processor because it's not doing emulation. it's just doing uh, control basically. So that could have been any processor they just happened to use an 80186. Um, they probably use the same thing for their Um emulators for other brand uh, micro controllers as well, not the 80888 8086.

So there you go. There's our system ROMs there. So this just you know, it's the main control processor. It's right into those 8255 uh uh.

programable peripheral interface chips on the various other boards and you'll notice that the uh, all of the traces on there. They've gone all a bit willy-nilly in there. Look at that. But anyway.

I'm not sure what that puppy is there. x2212 P It looks like a some sort of custom branded thing I'm not actually not entirely sure what that thing is, but yeah, once again, some. Uh 74 LS Serious stuff surrounding that: the main clock is 16 MHz For that system, they got some memory there and looky down here. we have a Zylo Sec or Serial Communications Controller I Love it.

Copyright 1981 Things Ancient, but that was still manufacturing it more than a decade later in 92 Go figures and that's running from a 3.68 64 megahertz Crystal Why that particular frequency? I Hear you ask? Well, it's very common because that is a uh, direct multiple of the serial uart interface. So if you punch that in 3.68 640 on your calculator and divide it by a typical Uh uart board rate, say 19,200 you'll get an exact binary multiple. so you can get an exact frequency and that's why they use that Oddball frequency Crystal There it is quite common, but apart from that folks, um, that is all she wrote on there. Sorry.

It's uh, not not terribly exciting at all. There's a bottom board on there, but doesn't look like there's anything interesting, just a few passives and some resistant networks for the uh, um, serial and parallel interfaces there. But I suspect there'll be a lot of annoyed people if I don't just uh, pop open this uh 3M Tex tool socket here. So here's the bar and hey, there we go.

Tada there's our what is that like an LCC something like that? There it is. Look at that gold ah thing of beauty and a joy. Forever and For Those Keen to see inside the power supply I don't like to include power supply stuff. we've been looking all this digital but ah, nice change of pace.

Look at this very neatly. uh laid out, quite sparse. There we go. the main controller down.

there is a TL 494 absolute classic and uh, very neatly laid out. Heat sunk over. here. you can see the seal pads on the transistors over there along there.

this is like a couple hundred. Watts Well, I think this thing takes like 100 Watts total or something. takes a hell of a lot, but they've actually gone to a bit of effort. Look, they've folded this case in here which has the uh voltage selection switch on the back here which protrudes from the back.

The cable runs all the way down to the bottom down here. looks like we have some M protection. There's the main uh Bridge rectifier. These are the two high voltage uh caps couple of main switch Transformers but yeah, eh, it's a power supply and let's just have a quick look inside the emulation pod here.

it just uh. one of them was actually uh, damaged and there is actually a difference here. between this is just the 8086 on its own. You'll notice it's got more circuitry around here.

lack of relay is a bodged part up in there I'm not sure what that what that sucker is. We'll have to take a good look at there there, but you can note the nice 3M text tool sockets Lovely. I mean I got this whole thing for 9? You got to be kidding me? Um, but the uh yeah, the one with the 8087 doesn't have nearly as much uh, circuitry around here and it's got three reays up here on the top. so I don't know.

they're probably uh switching, uh Power or doing something else. not quite sure what resistant Network down in there, but yeah, it's basically uh 74 ALS uh, 244s for ALS 257s and you know pretty much they're only just basically doing H buffering on this board. Pretty much there we go. 245s, 244s so yep, nothing particularly special.

Oh, we've got a Uln uh 23A um transistor driver there so they they'd probably be driving the relays actually because the other board probably you won't find that. you will end $2 3 Classic I know sorry there's a uh little relay there. What am I talking about it? Uh no, you don't really find it. It's got some extra circuitry so there are some uh, differences between these two modules.

Certainly. So there you have it, that's a look at the Microtech M or Mice 16 86f in circuit emulator. Absolutely. Uh, Classic.

at first. Well, I'm not sure this particular model, but their first model came out in9 1981. According to the Uh their website, they're still around Microtech and this is still all they do. They do um in circuit emulators, but you know there doesn't seem to be much on their product page.

Still looks like they focus on like Intel and one or two other architectures. So there you go. Um, go figure. if anyone has any further info on this thing, especially schematics or service manuals or anything like that.

or heck, even if you work at Micro Tech Still, uh, please, let us know, jump on over to the Eev blog forum and discuss it and I'll whack in some highres photos as always. Um, usually for my tear. Downs I Also, take some highres photos as well and they will be on my Flicker account website which is always Linked In down below and on the website. so hope you enjoyed that bit of retro development in circuit emulator technology.

Brilliant Classic 1980. Catch you next time.