Unknown "Schlumberger" expansion card - any ideas what it is?

[champagneandchips]

I've got this expansion card with a brand of "Schlumberger" and an identifier of 100103-B, 100104-REV that I am unsure of what it is (see details in the pictures below). It came in an IBM 5170 I'm restoring right now, and had long ribbon cables with a to me unknown connector type hanging out of the back. I think it was used to control some form of industrial equipment but so far any internet searches haven't come up with anything. The old MFM drive seems to be dead (haven't checked yet, the controller needs some repairs) so I don't have any clues based on the software on that machine either.

Thank you!

 

[SteveHere]

Interesting card. I know Schlumberger as a company involved in the Oil and Gas industry, but I guess they were involved in Test and Measurement, too. Thanks for posting!

 

[RetroTheory]

Just guessing at looking at the ICS but the two long identical ICs are double UARTs so that 4 UARTs and a lot of the ICs are RS-422 drivers. So it looks like a serial I/O control board that works in an electrically noisy environment.

With the card installed you could boot to DOS and use debug command to see if the serial ports show as COM ports.

c:\debug
-D 40:0
0040:0000 F8 03 F8 02 E8 03 E8 02
F8 03 = COM1 03F8h
F8 02 = COM2 02F8h
E8 03 = COM3 03E8h
E8 02 = COM4 02E8h

 

[alxlab]

Found this in th article Looking Back at Board Test

"Schlumberger-Factron, the board test arm of Fairchild Test Systems, a Schlumberger subsidiary".

Looks like Schlumberger-Factron is in the business of circuit board testing.

Maybe these people might have an idea if they still answer emails.:

http://schlumberger-ate.com/

There's actually a REV 3 of the exact same board minus the cable on ebay right now:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Factron-Schlumberger-board-100103-B-assy-100104-/262833913745?_ul=IN

Unfortunately no other info.

 

[Kai Robinson]

Factron S700 Testers

A blog about PCB reverse engineering using Microsoft Visio.

visio-for-engineers.blogspot.com

Looks like part of this -^

 

[champagneandchips]

I finally managed to get the computer back together after restoring all the bits and pieces, and even got it to boot from the built in drive, which dropped me into a Xenix System V boot prompt (how interesting!), but doesn't progress any further from there (sector issues reported). I'll see if I can discover the contents of the drive at some point but so far all attempts at logging in failed.

 

[drdoc]

Hillbilly 'splanation:

Schlumberger (shlum-burr-JAY in Texan) were very early adopters of workstation-driven test equipment. I think mostly because workstations were more easily adapted to mobile systems. "Mobile" as in deuce-and-a-half vans up to semi trailers....
I worked in the Texas oilfields in the '80s and Schlumberger was a major player in both downhole and surface testing. Everything from analyzing returned drilling fluid, to computing optimal cement formulation for anchoring well casing, to X-ray, sonar, and seismic searches for lost pipe, a mile plus down the hole.

With "rig time" costing $5000/hour and up - waaaay up - onsite analysis and interpretation were huge advances. Huge enough for companies like Schlumberger and Halliburton to spend millions on custom tooling and electronics. A lot of their development found its way into general computing and comms, and a lot didn't.

Looking at the 2681 UARTS and the 8255, your board could have interfaced anything from a lab-housed centrifuge to a field lab's downhole detonator...

 

[BFEXTU]

Schlumberger was an early player in ATE (inheritor of Fairchild's ATE business) and Factron was a circuit tester that could analyze fully-assembled PCBs for faults - the ROI was production/RMA salvage vs scrap. I was in the ATE space for a while. I think we made some Schlumberger test boards, but we mostly designed boards for Teradyne J750, HP83K/93K (Agilent and then Verigy), Eagle ETS-300 and high-end, custom prototype boards and systems -- all focused on global IC testing at semiconductor vendor manufacturing sites.

Assuming the ROMs on the board are functional and you can find some old documentation, you might be able to create a functional MAME emulation framework for it -- maybe a challenging project.