I stopped by the Free Geek Minneapolis today, and over on the free shelf was a strange looking box. Reminded me of the programming panel I built as part of the "How to build your own self programming robot" that I never completed. Guessing the DB0-7 are data bits. ISA board tester or primitive memory tester?















What's your guess? I don't know what it is. Is it worth saving for when Antiques Road Show comes around or send it to Christie's? Or just your everyday, unknown, homemade, handy trash?

That's well before my time, the earliest general purpose bus I could dig up was:


That's not even enough pins for an early 4bit computing bus AFAIK?


Got a pic of the other side of that board?

>> Trash80toG4 said:

Got a pic of the other side of that board? Click to expand...

Back of the board is nothing special.

I can only identify three of the ICs. It's one for the Road Show I think. '73 was two years after Intel released 4004, its first 4-bit CPU. 8008 released a year and your find's 8-bit world. I think your guess that it's a blinky light 8-bit data indication unit might be right. It's an interesting sub-set of the bus connector atop the box.

Maybe a PSU, programming board for an 8008 CPU card? Looks to be something a classmate's computer science prof. dad was playing with building his first microcomputer that year.

1973 really takes me back! Second semester of my freshman year, end of the draft and my backup plan to visit a Marine Corps recruitment station. :D

There are 3x 7400 (4ch NAND) and 2x 7486 (4ch XOR) on the board. Maybe from the 60s or 70s? DEC or other 8bit CPU era?

1973 date codes on ICs puts this into homebrew 8008 development board territory. What's the contact count on the slot? WAG would be base/PSU/manual programming input unit 8 (inverting data bit switches) for someone's 8008 build.