Mysterious Industrial PC - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Minifig666
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2013, 01:21:02 pm
content: Hey All,Recently I've come to acquire a rather mysterious industrial control computer, and it has me a bit perplexed. The only info I really have is that it was pulled from a printing press, and that it's about 2001 vintage. It would appear nobody wanted anything of it, as all the cables were simply snipped off, besides the power lead.On the rear were 5 PCI cards each with 2 SMA connectors, running into BNC adapters, then off down some chopped coax. There was also an intel twin ethernet card which is now in my machine!There was also a random DE-25 connector, whcih only had two populated pins, crossing my fingers, I attached it to a VGA display, but got nothing.Inside are 3 SCSI disks, unfortunately, I have no way to get at the data on them, so I cant get any clues as to what it runs.Here you can find some images of the machine itself,https://www.dropbox.com/sh/son7ve1hyzl488m/K4EkUKfYLC.If anybody has any idea as to how I can talk to this machine, any info on it, or if there's anything interesting I can do with it, especially the pixel magic PCI cards, please let me know.Thanks in advance, Mini

author: apl175
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 21, 2013, 01:59:06 pm
content: Going to go out on a limb...based on google searches of various numers and phrases on the boards you have, it looks like this is from a Kodak Nexpress printing press. These presses ran the real time operating system VxWorks by WindRiver.

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2013, 01:59:21 pm
content: looks all customthey probably made like 100 of them, and they all cost 10K a pop

author: Minifig666
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2013, 02:15:50 pm
content: Quote from: apl175 on September 21, 2013, 01:59:06 pmWow thanks, could you tell me what you searched using please? My google-fu must be failing me.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2013, 02:26:31 pm
content: The CPU is a Power PC (seehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_7xx), so the OS is going to be some Unix. The cards with the SMA connectors got 2 CY7B923 which are highspeed transmitters and a SN75976 (9-Channel Differential Transceiver) for the mini centronics connector. The PixelMagic IC seems to be for image processing. I'd guess those cards are sending image data.

author: Minifig666
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2013, 02:44:35 pm
content: Yeah, I found a video on a more modern Kodak Nexpress system that mentioned the traditional KYMC process, followed by a 5th head for printing additional materials like gloss coats and stuff, so I'd guess they provide processing before the data goes to the print heads themselves. Unfortunately I don't really know my way around the printing world.I might just try popping one of the cards into my PC and see what windows makes of it.Thanks for all the info so far.-Mini

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2013, 03:46:05 pm
content: they look PCI, but that doesnt mean they areit might result in a lot of smoke

author: fluxcapacitor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2013, 08:45:33 pm
content: Quote from: Minifig666 on September 21, 2013, 02:44:35 pmHi,i think these are the videos you found :http://www.johnkosh.com/index.php/business/kodak?highlight=WyJrb2RhayJdTheres also a list of POST eror codes ,when you boot up see if theres any codes displayed e.g.22 Error I2P-Motherboard RTC-Battery Test Failurehttp://www.johnkosh.com/index.php/business/kodak/83-work-related/90-i2p-motherboard-error-codes

author: macboy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 22, 2013, 12:13:08 pm
content: The CPU as already mentioned is a IBM PowerPC 750CXE. It might run up to 700 MHz, but probably less. The system controller (akin to "north bridge" on an Intel PC) is a Marvel GT-64260. There are also a couple of other Marvel chips implementing something called "GalNet" which I am not familiar with.Someone said it runs VxWorks, this is quite likely as it is popular on PowerPC embedded systems. In that case you should be able to get a boot-up sequence over the serial port (DB-9) in the second picture. If you are lucky you will also get a vxworks debug console. Linux can run on a PPC750/GT64260 if you are clever and you know how to configure the memory maps to match your board - if VxWorks boots you should be able to use debug console tools to determine all kinds of hardware information.If you are lucky the HD-15 connector on the back panel will have VGA video on it. Or maybe those two pins carry composite video? Try scoping them.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 22, 2013, 02:30:27 pm
content: Quote from: Rasz on September 21, 2013, 03:46:05 pmThese are almost certainly PCI, image capture cards.There's a siteselling one for rather a lot, so maybe they are worth quite a bit (especially if you have 5 of them!)Edit: interface appears to be dual-SDI. The image processor IC is thePM-36.

author: Minifig666
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2013, 11:38:29 pm
content: Completely forgot about this post, nobody emailed me that people had replied! Sorry about that.Thanks for the info on the cards, unfortunately the link to the cards up for sale appears to be broken.Given that they're likely to be PCI though, I might just stick em in my machine and see what I get. No SPI data sources kicking about though, surprisingly for me!Never thought of having a look at what's coming out of the parallel port, so that'll be one to try once I get round to it.Thanks for the help thus far guys!