Nubus connectors

[Unknown_K]

Anybody who ever wants to design some home made Nubus cards might want to buy these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/90-NEW-Tyco-Amp-650473-5-Connectors-VME-VXI-Eurocard-C-/400223940816

90 pcs for $58 shipped (or make an offer) is under $1 each, as cheap as it gets.

 

[trag]

Tempting. I'm trying to live by a policy of never ordering anything until the moment I'm about to use it, though. Plus, Digi-key still has these for about $5 each, but $3 each if buying 100. Not nearly as good a deal, but good enough, if one decides to run off 100 of a new NuBus card.

I looked through my inventory list. I have a couple hundred of this connector but with the straight pins, instead of right angle. Sigh. Getting the gender and right angle vs. straight correct is a pain.

A couple of years ago, before my "never buy anything until you're ready to use it" policy, I would have jumped on this.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I have the same policy. Strangely, I now have disposable income "again."

 

[Unknown_K]

Connectors with straight pins would be useless for a Nubus card I would think.

Generally if I think I will need some part and the price is way below normal pricing I tend to snag it (in quantity). Thing is I don't have the expertise to design a Nubus card so they are useless to me. I figured somebody here could use them, and the price seems super cheap.

 

[Bunsen]

They could also be used as Nubus right angle adapters I think.

 

[trag]

Connectors with straight pins would be useless for a Nubus card I would think.

Yes, that's exactly the problem. I carefully looked at the Item Descriptions for the connectors I bought. Correct family. Yep? Correct row and pin count? Yep. Etc. Didn't think about or was confused about right angle vs. straight.

It doesn't help that the convention is to list the gender of the *pins*, not the gender of the *housing*. So the connector on a NuBus card, that's male, even though the logic board connector fits into the card connector. Because the NuBus card connector has the pins that stick out and go into holes in the logic board connector. And the logic board connector is female, because it has holes for the pins.

So, I may have paid attention to right angle vs. straight, I don't remember exactly any more, but the gender designation may have messed me up.

Generally if I think I will need some part and the price is way below normal pricing I tend to snag it (in quantity). Thing is I don't have the expertise to design a Nubus card so they are useless to me. I figured somebody here could use them, and the price seems super cheap.

Those are super cheap. And very tempting. Especially because parts for that era aren't likely to turn up again. This could be a get it now or not at all kind of deal.

Most of my interest is in PDS cards though. If one is going to build a modern card for old machines, modern components allow unreal performance in the old machines. Limiting the bandwidth of the new card with NuBus seems counterproductive.

 

[Unknown_K]

Depends on what is on the Nubus card. If you decided to make a processor on a card with video/memory/HD interface then you only need the Nubus slot for power and I/O which is low bandwidth anyway. Asuming all that stuff will not fit or uses too much power you just daisy chain multiple cards to each other and not send all that data over the Nubus slot (kind of like DSP cards attached to Video capture cards).

PDS cards are great if you intend to keep using the machines built in CPU, but are limiting since you have to tailor each card to the CPU speed (different PDS sockets) and varying RAM speeds plus there are plenty of machines without PDS slots (840av, IIx, IIfx, IIcx, IIfx and its oddball non working PDS, etc).

These days something like a super computer on a Nubus card would be cool (Radius Rocket on crack).

 

[olePigeon]

Or a USB card.

 

[trag]

Or a USB card.

If you'll write the drivers, I'll build the hardware...