Convergent Technologies AWS
Some time ago I found on facebook marketplace a box of scrap electronic boards. In that box there were the remnants of at least two systems. A Honeywell Bull XPS-100 and the CPU board of a Convergent Technologies AWS.
Some time ago I found on facebook marketplace a box of scrap electronic boards. In that box there were the remnants of at least two systems. A Honeywell Bull XPS-100 and the CPU board of a Convergent Technologies AWS. For some time I had been planning on learning how to build a simple computer from logic chips and my hope was that I would be able to salvage some components from the facebook stuff. But after finding the AWS CPU board I had a change of plan and decided to attempt to repurpose it into a simple arcade machine, mostly as just a learning exercise.
AWS Overview
The Convergent Technologies AWS was an 8086 or 8085 based computer from the early 80s. The system could be configured with a maximum of 512k of memory and several configurations of floppy and harddrives. For a display it had a built in black and white crt capable of 80 columns and 29 rows with 256 characters. Later models of the AWS could supposedly suport color and bitmap graphics.
Turbo CPU Board
The AWS consisted of several boards with different functions, the board I found happened to be the “TURBO CPU” board which fortunately includes everything required for the system to run, at least to some extent. The CPU board consists of the 8086 microprocessor, 512k memory, serial interface, DMA controller, video system, programmable timer and bootstrap ROM.
The CPU board has three connectors labeled J1, J2 and J3. J1, J2 connect to the AWS’s motherboard which in turn connects to power, external connectors and other logic boards.
The J1 connector is used to conntect with peripheral devices like the keyboard, speaker, cluster interface disaply and reset button. It is also provides the CPU board with power and ground.
The J2 connector is used to conntect to the floppy and hard drive controller board, it carries the necessary connections for the CPU board to communicate with the rest of the system. At this stage I believe that the functions of the floppy and hard drive controller board are not absolutely necessary for the system to operate.
The J3 connector is an expansion port of sorts, the documentation suggests it was intended for a more advanced video display circuit. Unfortunately I have not been able to find one or any documentation, most likely they never made it into production. However Convergence Technologies did make a 512K memory expansion module for the J3 expansion connector.
CPU Board Connector Pinouts
I have been slowly working out the pinout of the connectors you can view the current pinout below.
Coming Up
In the next few blog post I plan to document my attempts to get my AWS CPU board working and perhap describe how some of it functions as I understand it.
Research
The majority of the information I have used to research the AWS came for two places, bitsavers.org and from the blog site Convergent Technologies IWS & AWS run by the user Forgotten Machines. Without the information they provided getting the AWS to function would be considerably more difficult.
Reference Materials
Bitsavers.org - Convergent Technologies Documentation