brew-your-own-unibus boards?

From: meltie <lists_at_microvax.org>
Date: Mon Jan 19 19:11:33 2004

On Monday 19 Jan 2004 9:24 pm, Brad Parker wrote:
> der Mouse wrote:
> ...
>
> >Once, years ago, I was involved in building a designed-on-the-spot Qbus
> >board.
>
> Which raises a question I've been meaning to ask.
>
> Has anyone made their own unibus boards? Is this fool-hearty?
>
> I have half a mind to look over the "IDE for Soviet unibus" zip file I
> found and make my own uniboard board with a modern day CPLD and IDE
> interface.
>
> How crazy is that?
>
> I have 4-8 layer PCB's fabricated regularly and have a reasonable CAD
> setup to do that, so design, layout & fabrication is not a problem, nor
> is TTL design (heh, especially at unibus speeds :-) And I write VHDL for
> CPLD's all the time and program them.
>
> Seems like a 4 layer board with gold fingers would work - the few boards
> I've handled seemed pretty thick, however. I'm guessing the thickness
> needs to be correct.
>
> I have not (yet) looked at a unibus card schematic - would be it hard to
> create a bus master IDE interface?
>
> Is a unibus controller a relatively straight forward TTL design ?
>
> I should probably ask on the PUP list also, but I thougth I'd see if
> anyone here has opinions.
>
> And, if I did manage to create a realiable IDE interface, would anyone
> else want one?
>
> (I realize cost would be the overriding factor - believe it or not on
> small runs like I do the PCB is by far the most expensive part)
>
> -brad

Second to Chris Cureau's post, if you did a qbus version you'd have a small
business on your hands.
Received on Mon Jan 19 2004 - 19:11:33 GMT