HP test digital/hybrid PCBs The HP 3065 board test family from Hewlett- Packard is for testing digital and hybrid PC boards.

The architecture in- cludes a local computer (vector processor) in each test station. Hew- lett-Packard says that more than 30 ICs can be tested per second.

The HP 3065 pro- vides software for auto- matic generation of tests. ASCII data from a CAD system can be used to describe the board. The screen editor can execute commands Board-testing computer

without compiling. Two types of station are available,

the HP 3065D and the HP 3065H. They can test A/D and D/A converters and also multi[ogic boards and custom ICs. The HP 3065D performs shorts, digital in-circuit testing and analogue functional testing. The HP 3065H also performs analogue incircuit testing.

The HP 3065C controller can

manage up to three programming stations and three test stations (or up to six programming stations) simul- taneously.

Links are provided for networking to other systems, eg HP 306x testers, HP 1000 and HP 3000 minicomputers. (Hewlett-Packard Ltd, Eskdale Road, Winnersh, Wokingham, Berks RG11 5DZ, UK. Tel: (0734) 696622)

Winchester disc controllers on Multibus Intelligent Multibus disc controllers for storage module drives and for ST506 and SA1000 Winchester disc drives have been announced by Mini Computer Technology in the US.

The MCT-4300 for storage module drives and the MCT-4500 for ST506 or SA1000 Winchester disc drives are microprocessor based. They support both 16- and 8-bit wide direct memory access data transfers. Either can control up to four different drives.

'Our new Multibus line allows us to apply our broad based controller tech- nology, developed around DEC, Perkin Elmer and Data General, to the micro and supermicro markets,' said president of Mini Computer Technology, George Rivers.

Both controllers are IEEE 796 bus compatible. Retry on error is auto- matically performed by the firmware. Before read and write commands, the

firmware automatically scans a table of defective sectors.

The user selects and programs the disc parameters (sector size; number of sectors, heads and cylinders; seek type). Parameter tables and defective sector tables are checked internally for errors during every seek operation.

Mini Computer says that both devices have unlimited sector interleave capability and unlimited byte counts. The device address and interrupt level are strap selectable.

Error detection in the MCT-4300 uses 16-bit CRC. The 32-bit ECC syndrome for error detection in the MCT-4500 is available for correction for single bursts up to 5 bits long.

The MCT-4500 can be used by more than CPU at a time. (Mini Com- puter Technology, 696 Fast Trimble Road, San Jose, CA 95131, USA. Tel: (408) 942-1616. TWX: 910-338-2281)

NEC microcomputer chip has 8k ROM The/aPD7809G microcomputer from NEC Electronics (UK) contains an onchip ROM of 8 kbytes and 256 bytes of onchip RAM.

The instruction set includes 16-bit arithmetic/logic instructions. The instruction cycle time is 1 /as under 12 MHz, estimated at 1.5-5 times faster than that of conventional micro- computers.

The memory can be expanded up to 56 kbytes. The externally added memory is provided with battery backup operation applicable to some onchip RAM under standby mode.

A watchdogtimer is used to prevent a program from running out of control. Firmware of a 16-bit event timer/ counter is built in to reduce pulse width or frequency measurements.

The 8-bit comparator input lines have a reference voltage programmable in steps of one-sixteenth of the thres- hold voltage. They can be used for direct interface with the keyboard.

A duplex serial interface is available, as well as a programmable wait and a hold function.

NEC is also introducing a ROMless version,/aPD7807G, and an EPROM version,/aPD79P09. Possible applica- tions of the #PD7809G include data processing. (NEC Electronics (UK) Ltd, 116 Stevenston Street, New Steven- ston, Motherwell ML 1 4L T, UK. Tel: (0698) 732221. Telex." 777565)

UCSD p-System 4.1 supports 10 Mbyte disc The UCSD p-System version 4.1 from TDI Ltd supports an inl~egral 10 Mbyte hard disc for Sirius and Victor micro- computers.

A configuration program for direct- ing the system to boot from either the hard disc or the floppy disc is available as an add-on to the software develop- ment system.

The p-System offers Ramdisc support and has an 8087 floating point coprocessor. (TDI Ltd, 29 Alma Vale Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 2HL, UK. Tel." (0272) 742796)

348 microprocessors and microsystems