http://www.eBay.co.uk/itm/181458750852

It's an old rack mounted 6502 based system made by Cubio but I can't find anything about it anywhere. Now being a 6502 based thingie, we can be sure it is fairly simple and easy to bring back to life, but I'm concerned there is nothing out there about it.

The CPU card has a 7 pin DIN socket and what looks like a parallel port of some sort. It's got a couple of EPROMs on it, one is marked "BASIC 2" so I am guessing it has a copy of BASIC. Which means it is useable, if the correct I/O can be attached. I don't see much RAM on there. The other board looks like a quad parallel io card.

It's an intriguing thing, and not terribly expensive. The rack looks standard, so it'll be easy to get plates to cover the gaping hole.

Anyone got any ideas about what it really is? I think it's some sort of industrial controller.

Very nice construction! It looks like 3U VME, but I kind of doubt the 6502 was ever put on VME. I wonder if the name is not "Cubio" but rather Cubit which made 6502 STD-bus SBCs. If you want a nice card cage, it would be worth it for that alone!

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

If it's Cubit, this could be the circuit diagram:
http://mdfs.net/Info/Comp/BBC/CUBE/cube65.png
More info:
http://mdfs.net/Software/Tube/6502/CUBE/

Edit: it seems the company is CUBE, the model is Cubit. More info:
https://web.archive.org/web/20041013074 ... /eurobeeb/

I see Lee Davison figures in this. Anyone know what became of him?

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

One of your best resources may be the person who posted the ebay listing. Here are some possible google links:

http://mdfs.net/Archive/BBCMicro/2005/11/20/004015.htm

http://www.vintagecomputer.net/fjkraan/ ... ion_02.htm

http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org ... _2Proc.pdf

I think it is a Control Universal CUBE, which looks like it is derived from the Acorn System 3.

The second card is the CUBIO parallel i/o card.

The CPU card is not shown in any Acorn or Control Universal catalogue. However, I think it has 16k SRAM on board, a parallel port for the keyboard (which is just a simple matrix) and a cassette or serial interface (my money's on cassette as the serial interfaces used 8 pin DIN sockets and here we have a 7 pin DIN). In order to get it up and working it will need at least a keyboard and VDU card, assuming the rest of it actually works - which I doubt as there is battery chemical corrosion on the CPU card.

Speaking of the battery, I think it is used to keep a small bit of RAM alive when the machine is powered off; this is a 64 byte space containing ASCII characters that are fed to the BASIC interpreter on power up as a sort of boot sequence. It's got at least 4k Acorn ATOM basic on board, maybe better. Cannot be sure until the card is identified properly (there were several 6502 cards for it, and I have so far only seen one other photo that does not match).

An update after some discussion over at StarDot...

It turns out the CPU card is a Control Universal EuroBeeb, which is a sort of cut down BBC Micro used for industrial applications. There was an application you could run to bake your own MOS ROM which allowed serial comms only; there also appears to be a BBC Micro ROM that lets you use EuroBeeb as a co-processor for the BBC via its serial port (I bet it is a bit slow!).

I acquired a copy of the ROM building application - it's a program written in BBC BASIC with various binary support files - and ran it on a BBC emulator. From what it says, you can configure EuroBeeb to just communicate via its serial port, which jibes with its use as an industrial control computer. No VDU card, monitor or keyboard required. So this means - perhaps... maybe... - I can hook it up to a terminal (via an RS232 line driver circuit) or a BBC Micro (RS423, which I think will be compatible without line drivers) and program it directly in BASIC (actually, BBC Basic II, which I think is already installed on the card).

One thing the ROM creation program does is allow you to specify a boot line in BASIC, which means I was wrong about it being in the battery backed up RAM.

The card's battery supports a RTC but there is corrosion evident. I am hoping that none of the tracks are zapped. First thing to do, then, will be to take the battery out, clean the PCB and continuity check all tracks. Then, check the voltage levels on the power supply. There is plenty of research still to be done, and I need to make a serial cable. What fun!

PS: it's this one - http://www.eBay.co.uk/itm/181458750852

It looks like you were having a war of attrition with an automatic "bid bot". I have little experience with on-line auctions, but something like that would turn me off to the whole experience.

Mike

Yeah, I guess so. I assumed the other bidder just put in a high price (£150) and left it. I kept bidding in small increments, but by the time we'd got to £100 the "bid fever" took over.

I rather wish I hadn't bothered. Now I have to work out how to use it with no manuals or other documentation. But I expect it will be fun. Knowing what it is (basically, a BBC micro with BASIC II installed) is the first step. If only leeeee's web pages weren't all off line... Now, if I do get it running it will presumably be worth a whole lot more (not that I look to make a profit on these things, but it is nice to think I might, should I ever sell).

It feels to me that ebay auctions really work like a sealed bid auction, but they pretend to be an open ("English") auction. If someone bids a lot, ebay presents a series of increasing bids which win against lesser bids. That's even without sniping software, whereby someone puts in their bid in the closing seconds, using a tool.

But probably it's the same for any auction - decide what you would pay before you start.

Regard it as sealed bid, and it doesn't seem sneaky or unfair. Place your bid late, with or without a sniping tool, to avoid having someone else revise their idea of how much they are willing to pay.

Cheers
Ed

Quite right, Ed. And that is what I normally do, only this time I couldn't help tinkering with it and testing the limit of the other guy's bid. Seems he whacked in £150 from the start.

Oh well. You do know that if he was prepared to pay that much, and I was too, then there will be A. N. Other bidder that will do likewise.

I second that question... His web sites are all down as far as I can see.



Wayback Machine has tantalising snippets but no complete captures. And of course, it's Mr EHBASIC we're talking about, a bit of a hero to me...

Of more concern is Lee okay?

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Indeed, yes.