Tom's computer pages

October 2, 2020

The promice ROM emulator - My units

I have had the actual hardware since about 1991, and it is still working well. Probably the biggest reason this has not ended up a useless piece of electronics scrap is that it was supplied with source code for the software, and I have managed to keep track of the software.

I have 3 units, as follows:

Unit "A" - My original unit (misplaced somewhere)
Unit "B" - which is a P1010
Unit "C" - which is a P2160-90

Unit B - P1010

Opening it up, I see chips with 2002 date codes. The microcontroller is a Signetics SC87C451CCA68, which I am guessing has an 8751 core. There are 4 big RAM chips in big DIP packages. Three are Hyundai HY62256ALP-10 and one is Sony CXK58257-10LL. Each of these is 32K, so the four of them gives the 128K of emulation RAM. So, it will emulate ROM's up to 27010 devices.

This unit has no parallel interface (though "parallel" is marked on the front panel and the PCB has pads for a connector with two empty sockets nearby.) The serial port is via an RJ-12 connector to a flat cable (which I have) that can have a DB-9 or DB-25 at the other end (a modular system). I only have the DB-25 "end" for this cable.

This unit came with LoadICE-2.4 software, on a floppy as I remember, which I have managed to keep through the years. I have the manual on paper copy, but it was never available to me as a PDF file or other machine readable form.

When I cable this unit up and run loadice, it identifies itself as:

 ID 0 uCVer:5.0b MemSize=131072 EmuSize=131072 FillChar=FF

This confirms that we have 128K of emulation RAM. Also we are running version 5.0b of the firmware, which is not as new as what is running on unit C, but has always served me just fine.

Unit C - P2160-90

This was a kind gift to me from someone who no longer had use for it. It is a cadillac unit. It is a dual unit, meaning that it has two places to connect ribbon cables to the target system (allowing even and odd rom setups or else fancy adapters to PLCC-44 sockets or other 16 bit rom devices.)

There are two PCB inside, with date codes of 1997. The lower PCB is labeled "promice master rev 3.5, 1996", the upper PCB is "promice slave rev 3.4, 1996. Each board has 4 big RAM chips, Hitachi HM628512ALP-5. The "-5" indicates these are 55 ns parts. Each of these is 4 Mbig, so 512K by 8 bit. Therefore each 8 bit section of the unit has 2 Mbytes.

It uses the Signetic SC87C451CCA68 controller, just like my unit B. Interestingly, each board has a big 1 farad capacitor. My unit B does not have these, but does have a battery (soldered on) which this unit does not.

This unit has a 9 pin D connector (female) in lieu of the RJ-12, which I like. I drag out a USB to serial dingus and find a cable that will work. I type:

picocom -b 19200 /dev/ttyUSB1

I press reset, then after I type several returns, I see:

V8.2B(C)97GEI
M>
M>

It talks, but not any protocol I know how to type commands to. So, I copy a loadice.ini I have laying around hack on it so it will use /dev/ttyUSB1 and 19200. Then I run "loadice" and I get:

Link is up
 PROMICE units:
  ID 0 uCVer:8.2B MemSize=2097152 EmuSize=2097152 FillChar=FF
  ID 1 uCVer:8.2B MemSize=2097152 EmuSize=2097152 FillChar=FF

So, even though this unit was made in 1997 or so, it has newer firmware (8.2B) than my "unit B" made in 2002 (which is running firmware 5.0b).

Some notes on part numbers

GEI used the following scheme to designate units.

P always began the part number.
1 or 2 came next to indicate a single or dual unit.
3 digits next indicated the amount of ram per 8 bit unit.
after a hypen the memory access time and/or other options.

Memory size codes indicated the capacity of each 8 bit section.

512 - to 64K (27512 eprom)
010 - to 128K (27010 eprom)
020 - to 256K (27020 eprom)
040 - to 512K (27040 eprom)
020 - to 1M (27080 eprom)
020 - to 2M (27160 eprom)

Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org