R321BR02 Card for SOPHIA Systems Hello, I opened my Sophia System and I found this card. It's indicated R321BR02. There is a external connector for plug something into (seems to be a DB9 connector). Does someone know what this card and plug are used for? Thanks
Never seen that before, very interesting! From the label and the connector, I assume it's some kind of debug interface. It possibly just adds a general purpose I/O port over a serial connection for simple debug purposes, but that's speculation more than anything else. It looks like there's a FPGA chip there, so it might actually do a hell of a lot more than that. Can you post some more pictures, in particular, where does that grey cable go? Also, does the board connect to the SH2 board or anything else below it? I can't figure out how it's attached from the picture. Also, do you have an EEPROM programmer by any chance? It'd be great to get a dump of the contents of that EEPROM. I assume it's just the layout file for the FPGA. I don't really know how to make sense of that, but someone else might.
A better shot of the piggyback board would be great, I could identify some of the chips and derive its workings
Hello, Thank you all for reply. I've updated the first picture for more details. Look at the next pictures, you'll easily understand how the thing is plugged in and where the grey cable goes into : I don't own EEPROM Programmer but I'm agree to dump this thing. Maybe I can found stuff for dump cheap somewhere?
My guess is that it simply holds an A-Bus rom with whatever content can be placed here. Replacing this EEPROM with your own you can debug cart loaders. Altera MAX7000 is an FPGA indeed (though it should be called CPLD by today's standards), but it store configuration in the chip, so no external memory required. I suppose its function is to detect access to some address (maybe 0x04003678?) or address range, and report it to some other part of the Sophia.
Thank you all for information. If someone is still interested for dump, could you provide me one cheap stuff name for that?
Never seen one before, but here are a few guesses based on the parts: 1) The port plugged into CN1 is a standard serial port - this is based on the UPD4723, which is basically the NEC version of the Maxim MAX232 line driver/receiver. 2) The EPROM seems to be directly connected down to the header - so the effect on the rest of the system is the same as if it was plugged directly into the main board. 3) The only other chips on the board are a pair of 'LS125s (quote tristate buffer) and an 'F521 (8 bit comparator) 4) The comparator seems to be used for decoding high-order address lines - the B inputs are tied to static logic levels and the A inputs seem to go to the address lines on the EEPROM 5) The input pins on the 'ls125s seem to be connected to signals on the CN2 header Conclusions: It's mapped into part of the address space of the ROM, with the comparator handling part of the address decode and some logic in the CPLD handling the rest - the CPLD also seems to contain a serial interface. The only additional feature seems to be a read port that picks up the levels on the signals fed into CN2 and allows the SH to read them. Probably the only way to figure out exactly what it's doing is to dump the ROM.
Found one in one of my sophias too. Also, unlike my other units this Sophia came with 2x SH-2 CPUs installed... it also needs a good clean
