QL with a very unusual expansion board

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Andrew
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QL with a very unusual expansion board

Post by Andrew »

QL with a very unusual expansion board on Ebay
I presume this is some custom industrial expansion board - Does anyone knows what this might be?
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Pr0f
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Re: QL with a very unusual expansion board

Post by Pr0f »

My guess would be stepper motor controller and driver...


Martin_Head
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Re: QL with a very unusual expansion board

Post by Martin_Head »

The screen shot says it's an engineering company.

Could it be a IEEE interface for driving things like milling machines.


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dilwyn
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Re: QL with a very unusual expansion board

Post by dilwyn »

I asked my son, as he works with modern engineering machining systems. Not being a QLer, he couldn't identify it specifically, but agrees with comments made about what it might be. He says that there is still a company called Hurn Brothers (engineering) Ltd in Dereham, Norfolk UK, although that might be a coincidence of names.

CST made a SCSI interface for QL back in the 1980s, though this doesn't look like the pictures I've seen of those.

A SCSI interface would commonly have a 50 pin connector.

Hope whoever won this auction on eBay is on here and can give us the lowdown on what it was!


RWAP
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Re: QL with a very unusual expansion board

Post by RWAP »

Would be worth contacting the engineering company to see if they have the software still (or even any QLs still in use!)


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Ruptor
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Re: QL with a very unusual expansion board

Post by Ruptor »

Andrew wrote: Mon Jun 24, 2024 9:54 amI presume this is some custom industrial expansion board - Does anyone knows what this might be?
Probably servo motor control as steppers were not so prevalent back then when CNC were coming in.
https://united-kingdom.exportersindia.com/stebon-ltd/
https://www.daxautomation.co.uk/part/pa ... d40/338615


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tofro
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Re: QL with a very unusual expansion board

Post by tofro »

I think the question is mainly about the QL expansion board.

Without the two obviously missing chips, what remains is the EPROM and a bit of address decoding, and it's nearly impossible to tell what might have been in the two empty sockets. But they somehow yell "UART" at me. In the mid-1980s, serial comms was ubiquitous in controlling machinery. From the pin count, the missing chips could very well be Intel 8251 UART chips.


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