Intel ???? rescued, weekend finds

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Mon Jan 22 10:57:30 2001

> I went out to a scrap place yesterday and found a large white Intel box
>sitting out in the dirt. It looks like some kind of emulator. It's *about*
>12" tall, 24 deep and 16 wide. There's no marking on the front except
>"Intel" on the top RH corner.

This is "The ICEBox" an in-circuit emulator for Intel processors. It is a
great way to bring up new designs and defeat copy protection schemes :-)
There is a special bond out version of the 286 in the pod and when plugged
into a circuit that would take a 286 it could give you a complete readout,
both internal to the processor and external about what was going on. It can
also run at "full" speed. (ususally there was an 8 or a 10 marked somewhere
on the bod for 8Mhz and 10Mhz parts.) There were 8086, 80186, and 80286
pods for it, but I don't know if it could ever handle the 386. It was "new"
in the mid 80's (like 1985 when I was at Intel) and it combined with a
Tektronix DAS9000 series was the weapon of choice for tracking down chip
design bugs. Compaq used one in the design of the DeskPro 286 (and
complained alot to intel because at the time the bond-out versions of the
286 didn't come out at the same time as the new steppings of the chip.
(separate, by hand, assembly process)

--Chuck
Received on Mon Jan 22 2001 - 10:57:30 GMT