Wierd military computer boards

What did these come from?
High-res pics at http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/milboards.html

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• raytheon
• pcb
• boards
• military
• CPU

[Zed1967]

I'm an ex Royal Navy Weapon Engineering Mechanic (Radio) but the only thing I know about those is that they are deffo military and made in the USA. The two digit number in the NSN (Nato Stock Number) is 01 which is the code for the USA, 99 is the code for the UK. Those boards when new would have been frighteningly expensive too, deffo thousands of pounds possibly even tens of thousands. Little lamps used to illuminate buttons when pressed were about £40 each in the 1980's :O

[mwarrenus]

A Raytheon VAX 860 (the militarized version of a DEC VAX 6000) was tested in space in May 1991 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during STS-39. Maybe these boards were in orbit! (Discovery's next launch, STS-48, delivered the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite or UARS into orbit which will fall back to earth later today!)

[spvillano]

Hmmm, I'm not sure those I/O boards are space rated. Too little shielding on the various chips, compared to the CPU and memory boards. Unless those were atypically installed and shielded by the other boards and structure of the body of the chassis, which is doubtful.

Still, nice mil spec work IS a thing of beauty.

For those talking about "industrial electrolytics", you're thanking tantalum capacitors, not only industrial. :)

[Riskteven]

@dtiydr Ah Ofcourse! There are also "industrial eolectolytic capacitors" maybe they were used in meters like Fluke or such. I asked about meters and that technican said they didn't use, for meters like Fluke, Hameg, etc. those normal consumer appliance grade capacitors you could find in washing machins, TVs etc.

[dtiydr]

@Riskteven Based on that this in not capacitors for the normal market it would most likely be more expensive to get to the right capacitance by buying several smaller ones then to buy one with the right capacitance right away and several also takes more room.

[Riskteven]

@dtiydr And then connect them in parallel to get more out of them.

[dtiydr]

@Riskteven I would not be suprised at all if they would have been totally banned in more or less critical systems if not in all systems. Ceramic capacitors are very reliable but expensive as hell at higher capacity but the militatry and NASA dont give a shit about that since only best is good enough.

[Robbob9933]

These were designed for extreme environmental conditions as well as vibration. NSN traces to ADCIS computer assembly. USAF equipment unlikely due to presence of hermetic coating on boards. Lack of this caused the B2 to crash on Guam. A decent production quantity, NSN assigned in 1991.

[6363cmj]

I worked at an US eastern seaboard aerospace manufacturer in the 90's and 00's which had qualified sole-source MIL and NASA (F14,F15 programs, much retrofit work out of WR AFB, and a life support sub-assem for Ham-Std on the Shuttle's EVA suits !). These samples are beautiful! Having done advanced bench tech work there, I fully appreciate the engineering behind them. I agree with a previous poster - have them nicely mounted in a glass case and display them as artwork !

[TautvisssBOOM]

@mwarrenus OMG the first, second and the forth was in orbit!!! look at the serial numbers and google!

[mechnicl]

This is an extensive mechanical repackaging of DECs VAX computer by Raytheon. Thanks all for the complements. I was very proud of this design. And no, I don't have OCD, and whoever said this was common in the USSR, you are quite inaccurate. The die feature sizes were not.available in the Soviet Union till around ten years later. @andreasm

[Riskteven]

Did I see that there were no electrolytic capacitors? This makes sense because others have told they are not very reliable everywhere.