Unknown System
In February 2021 I got an email from Steven. He asked me whether I know the board which he has bought at ebay in December 2020. I was surprised by the photo which showed me a system which I have never seen before.
It is an impressive pcb. The design looks very professional. The CPU of the board is the NS32032 running at 10 MHz. There is no RAM. This was obviously located on another board. The board has two connectors for a system bus.
Unfortunately no hint for the manufacturer can be found. This is unusual and may be a hint for an industrial control system. The board may be designed by a small design company and build by a big industrial equipment provider.
The previous owner of the board lives in Germany. After some time I got in contact with him. He told me that he saved this board and an IO board from the scrapyard 20 years ago at the University of Tübingen. I asked the head of the electronic laboratory there whether he can remember anything. But the answer was no - no big surprise after 20 years...
Now the last hope are the EPROMs on the CPU board. Maybe there is a text string which tells us more.
Fig. 1. This nice CPU board was for sure not build only once. If you remember this board please tell me!
The photo above is available in higher resolution here.
Fig. 2. The front side of the CPU board: two full-size serial connectors, a led display for status and a red (of course) reset button are placed there.
Fig. 3. The backside of the CPU board looks perfect: no wire was necessary to get the desired functionality.
The backside is also available in higher resolution here.
As an add-on Steven got an IO board obviously from the same company like the CPU board. Also there is no hint of the manufacturer.
The processor of the IO board is an Intel P8040AHL from 1982. It uses 8 kBytes of EPROM and 2 kBytes of SRAM. The text on the board says that this is a tape and disk controller. But none of the typical controller chips can be found on the board.
Fig. 4. This board is a disk interface. But it has not the typical connectors for a disk...
The photo of the IO board is available in higher resolution here. The text "B-Seite" at the upper right connector can be a hint that the board is being made in Germany.
Fig. 5. According to the text one can connect a tape drive here. But why has the IO board a red reset button? Only for the IO board? Unusual...
Thanks to Steven for providing me the high quality photos.
Fax Machine
At the VCFe event in May 2026 a visitor showed me a board with a Series 32000 CPU. It was the NS32FV16A CPU which is an embedded CPU especially build for fax machines. This was the first time I saw a board with this CPU. Unfortunately on the board was no hint for the manfacturer. Again unfortunately the 32-pin PLCC sockets for the EPROMs are empty. Their content can be a source for further informations.
The two 32kx8 SRAMs KM62256 are from Samsung. The Siemens device is a 1Mx4 DRAM. The name HYZ is unusual for a Simenes product. The standard name is HYB. I guess that this DRAM has more broken bits than could be repaired by the redundancy of the chip. Therefore it cannot be used in a computer. But it can be sold to applications which can live with this "feature". For example answering machines are using such parts. If you see on your fax some black dots, this is not due to a transmission error, but the picture memory has some defect bits.
The NS32FV100 is the system controller for the CPU. Its datasheet is available here.
Fig. 6. The top side of the unknown board shows many connectors.
Fig. 7. Many resistors, capacitors and ICs can be found on the back side.
Maybe the board manufacturer was not the system manufacturer. The date code of the CPU and the system controller is 1995. Fax machines with this board could be on the market since 1996. This is now 30 years ago. The probability for finding a complete machine today is very low.
This chapter was last modified on 5 May 2026. Next chapter: Vince