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Abby94 · 03-16-2019, 03:26 AM

I received a 48GX today that contained what appears to be a custom ROM card (was supposed to be a RAM card). There’s no battery and no W/R toggle.

The card is full of equations with sections like ‘Air’ and ‘HVAC’. I struggled to figure out what it was until I found an old business card inside the inner pocket of the case. It was previously owned/used by a Ford Product Design Engineer in Powertrain Operations. The card has stickers with his name and home address and no other marks. Just bare metal.

I’m curious to find out if the ROM card was produced by/for Ford or perhaps the engineer himself. And is there a way to determine who the manufacturer of the custom card was?

Raymond Del Tondo · 03-17-2019, 03:14 PM

(03-16-2019 03:26 AM)Abby94 Wrote: I received a 48GX today that contained what appears to be a custom ROM card (was supposed to be a RAM card). There’s no battery and no W/R toggle.
[..]
Just bare metal.
I’m curious to find out if the ROM card was produced by/for Ford or perhaps the engineer himself. And is there a way to determine who the manufacturer of the custom card was?

You could send a few pics of the card.
If the housing has a light grey color then it could be an EPSON OTP or EPROM card.

TomC · 03-17-2019, 05:02 PM

Pls send note/email. I happen to be employed by Henry; I'll see what I can find out.

TomC

(03-16-2019 03:26 AM)Abby94 Wrote: I received a 48GX today that contained what appears to be a custom ROM card (was supposed to be a RAM card). There’s no battery and no W/R toggle.

The card is full of equations with sections like ‘Air’ and ‘HVAC’. I struggled to figure out what it was until I found an old business card inside the inner pocket of the case. It was previously owned/used by a Ford Product Design Engineer in Powertrain Operations. The card has stickers with his name and home address and no other marks. Just bare metal.

I’m curious to find out if the ROM card was produced by/for Ford or perhaps the engineer himself. And is there a way to determine who the manufacturer of the custom card was?

TomC · 03-20-2019, 10:33 PM

???

I'm here to help!

???

(03-17-2019 05:02 PM)TomC Wrote: Pls send note/email. I happen to be employed by Henry; I'll see what I can find out.

TomC

(03-16-2019 03:26 AM)Abby94 Wrote: I received a 48GX today that contained what appears to be a custom ROM card (was supposed to be a RAM card). There’s no battery and no W/R toggle.

The card is full of equations with sections like ‘Air’ and ‘HVAC’. I struggled to figure out what it was until I found an old business card inside the inner pocket of the case. It was previously owned/used by a Ford Product Design Engineer in Powertrain Operations. The card has stickers with his name and home address and no other marks. Just bare metal.

I’m curious to find out if the ROM card was produced by/for Ford or perhaps the engineer himself. And is there a way to determine who the manufacturer of the custom card was?

Abby94 · 03-22-2019, 04:44 AM

Here are a couple pics of the card. I blotted out the owner's last name and address from the stickers.

[Image: JxCyLvy]

**rprosperi** · 03-22-2019, 12:31 PM

(03-22-2019 04:44 AM)Abby94 Wrote: Here are a couple pics of the card. I blotted out the owner's last name and address from the stickers.

FYI - Images are not available.

Eric Rechlin · 03-22-2019, 02:18 PM

(03-22-2019 12:31 PM)rprosperi Wrote:
(03-22-2019 04:44 AM)Abby94 Wrote: Here are a couple pics of the card. I blotted out the owner's last name and address from the stickers.

https://i.ibb.co/1sbdVrd/IMG-0891.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/WWvMCtm/IMG-0892.jpg

FYI - Images are not available.

Right-click and View Image and they should work. Though I also fixed the links in your quoted message so you can just click those.

Abby94 · 03-22-2019, 04:40 PM

Sorry, used the wrong links.

[Image: IMG-0891.jpg]

Raymond Del Tondo · 03-22-2019, 08:39 PM

Thanks for the pic.

Doesn't look like the EPSON cards I have seen.
The EPSON cards look like the HP cards, with metal slip shutter.
AFAIK there were OTPs, EPROMs, and RAM cards from EPSON.

Another company also made EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM) cards.

Your card reminds me of an OTP card which SMI used for their Surveying software,
with both sides bare metal, without a shutter, and the wider black plastic frame on the grip side end.

Is there somnething visible in the Library menu?
If yes, is there a button named "About" or alike?

Abby94 · 03-26-2019, 03:46 AM

I dug into it again and there is no “About”. I should have also mentioned it’s a 2 port card. This is the list of the top level of the card. I went into each one and didn’t find anything with info on what the card is.

CMBS, DUCT, ELEC, ENEC, FANS, GEAR, HIT.TR, HVAC, HYDM, PCYCL, SCRW, SPIN, WELD, AIR, PSYCH, SAT.T, SAT.P, SUPHT

burkhard · (This post was last modified: 03-26-2019 02:05 PM by burkhard.)

(03-26-2019 03:46 AM)Abby94 Wrote: I dug into it again and there is no “About”. I should have also mentioned it’s a 2 port card. This is the list of the top level of the card. I went into each one and didn’t find anything with info on what the card is.

CMBS, DUCT, ELEC, ENEC, FANS, GEAR, HIT.TR, HVAC, HYDM, PCYCL, SCRW, SPIN, WELD, AIR, PSYCH, SAT.T, SAT.P, SUPHT

The program names definitely suggest HVAC. It sure looks to me like something the Ford HVAC group might have produced internally in a small quantity for the use of their own engineers. Since no stickers / labeling on the card itself, it likely wasn't a commercial product. I was a GM engineer for many years (and still work in the industry) and this wouldn't surprise me based on the way we worked. An internal instrumentation group would write collections of special software tools for individual functional groups based on their specific needs. In this case, rather than for a PC, they did it for a common calculator used by (and probably issued to) the HVAC guys—probably it's a EEPROM card. Maybe they made a half dozen to a couple dozen of these, but that's just a guess.

I will add, that it surprised me a little that the guy's business card said "Powertrain Operations". I work on powertrain stuff myself but the program names here scream "HVAC" to me. But maybe he switched jobs within Ford. You might be able to find him online and send an email :-)

**rprosperi** · 03-27-2019, 02:06 AM

I can't identify the card or the manufacturer, however I recently acquired a 48SX/GX program card of identical hardware design (no shutter, bare metal sides, no battery, wide plastic grab-handle) with some kind of (I believe) Surveying application loaded.

Title: T&D Utility Pac
Version: 1.0
Company: Laser Technology, Inc.
Copyright: 1998
Labels: Laser printed stick-on on front side & "T&D Pac" in the hole in the plastic grab-handle

I think this supports Raymond's suggestion that these are either OTP or EEPROM cards, and used by various VARs and Corporate users for limited qty. runs of program cards.

I looked through later issues of the EduCalc catalog (all issues are on Jake's DVD) but could not find any listed; I was hoping there may be a photo in the catalog.

TomC · 04-08-2019, 03:45 PM

Abby94: Are you still there? Drop me an email!

TomC

(03-16-2019 03:26 AM)Abby94 Wrote: I received a 48GX today that contained what appears to be a custom ROM card (was supposed to be a RAM card). There’s no battery and no W/R toggle.

The card is full of equations with sections like ‘Air’ and ‘HVAC’. I struggled to figure out what it was until I found an old business card inside the inner pocket of the case. It was previously owned/used by a Ford Product Design Engineer in Powertrain Operations. The card has stickers with his name and home address and no other marks. Just bare metal.

I’m curious to find out if the ROM card was produced by/for Ford or perhaps the engineer himself. And is there a way to determine who the manufacturer of the custom card was?