Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Thursday April 12 2018, @04:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the cool-tools dept.

Hackaday reports

Collecting old CPUs and firing them up again is all the rage these days, but how do you know if they will work? For many of these ICs, which ceased production decades ago, sorting the good stuff from the defective and counterfeit is a minefield.

Testing old chips is a challenge in itself. Even if you can find the right motherboard, the slim chances of escaping the effect of time on the components (in particular, capacitor and EEPROM degradation) make a reliable test setup hard to come by.

Enter Samuel, and the Universal Chip Analyzer (UCA). Using an FPGA to emulate the motherboard, it means the experience of testing an IC takes just a matter of seconds. Why an FPGA? Microcontrollers are simply too slow to get a full speed interface to the CPU, even one from the '80s.

So, how does it actually test? Synthesized inside the FPGA is everything the CPU needs from the motherboard to make it tick, including ROM, RAM, bus controllers, clock generation, and interrupt handling. Many testing frequencies are supported (which is helpful for spotting fakes) and, if connected to a computer via USB, the UCA can check power consumption and even benchmark the chip.

We can't begin to detail the amount of thought that's gone into the design here, from auto-detecting data bus width to the sheer amount of models supported, but you can read more technical details here.

[...] The list of compatible ICs is impressive: Intel 8085/8086/8088, Zilog Z80, RCA/COSMAC 1802, NSC800, Intel 8051 & 8048 are just a few of the currently supported series, and more are being added at an astonishing rate! Shields for RAM and BSP [board support package] are also underway.

Depending on interest, Samuel is considering a non-profit Kickstarter or Indiegogo, so be sure to comment if you dig it!


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:38PM (#666147)

    There was a similar comment on the Hackaday page.
    The response was like "Dude, you're at the wrong website."

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]