#1939

[@franjp3]

I'm the seller that sold these boards on Ebay (electronics-plus). When I sold out of them in 2 days I figured that someone had posted a blog or youtube video about this board :) I'm glad they are still useful for parts 50 years after they were manufactured. Great video and thanks for the business everyone!

[@laverdanick]

I’ve found a couple of adverts online from 1981. The Navtec Hyperloc 1000, was an interface/remote for existing Loran C receivers and could be used to display, distance and bearing to waypoint, ground speed and other features.

[@jgc3620]

Look like to me as a LORAN C receiver for use in the maritime field. Receiver is a 100KHz analog.

[@radarmusen]

Exactly my thoughts was thinking of the bendix KNS 660 system seeing this.

[@AppliedCryogenics]

The US did have Transit (aka NAVSAT) in the 1960's. It relied on doppler shifts from radio transmitters passing overhead. (They didn't launch an actual GPS satellite until 1979.)

[@ChrisSmith-tc4df]

Like many, an 8085 job later taken over by the 8051 once it came onto the scene.

[@RideGasGas]

There is some court action where Raytheon and Navtec are involved that mentions LORAN C. It appears that Navtec went bankrupt and Raytheon was trying to have the rights and royalties assigned to them. But yeah, a LORAN C product as others have noted seems to be the most likely answer.

[@ivolol]

In the book "Exactly" by Simon Winchester (I think it'd be SUPER up your ally actually, also available on audible) he talks about when young being entrusted with navigating a oil platform pulling tug into the best match of coordinates possible for anchoring, as previously established by geologists, for drilling. In that time it was using land-based radio networking for trilateration; before GPS. I think in the process of explaining the complexities of GPS itself. So this might be a similar system. I'd guess it can do phase tracking of two different signals. You might be able to find some interesting signals at the ends of the analog circuits, although maybe they'd need to be receiving particular transmissions. Nowadays with GPS existing, you could use this and some comparators to make a GPSDO with PLL, comparators might be able to do that

[@ats89117]

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”

[@bborkzilla]

I built a repeater controller around an 8085 for a grad project at university in 1988. That's still one of my favorite microprocessors.

[@herbertsusmann986]

I also was going to say 100 kHz Loran C based on the chunky magnetic parts on that analog board. Would make sense for a marine navigation system of some sort. Now one could do so much more with modern microprocessor etc. Still for 1979 that was pretty state of the art.

[@romancharak3675]

That sounds like a very interesting project !

[@johnwest7993]

The transformers on the analog bd are impedance matching the high impedance of a relatively short receive antenna to the receiver's input stage, because you have a LORAN C positioning receiver working at 100 kHz, receiving high-power coastal transmitter positioning signals from around the world, from a time before the satellite-based GPS network took over. Towards the end of the system's life they were also used by pilots. I tried to convert one to receive WWVB at 60 kHz, but it was more trouble than simply building a TRF receiver for the frequency ref and then decoding the amplitude switching data for the time.

[@bayareapianist]

Have fun with that as you said.

[@TheLemonhawk]

They also had satellite navigation via the Navy transit satellites, not unusual for Loran C and transit sat nav to be combined.

[@milloons2847]

Nice. You have the main parts to make a INTEL SDK85 evaluation board. My 1st steps into assembly and mnemonics back in 1977 ...

[@mikesradiorepair]

I seem to remember GPS becoming available to the civilian world after a commercial South Korean plane got shot down by Russia in 1983 or 1984.

[@ricksharpe6895]

While LORAN is a strong candidate it’s also possible this was from an OMEGA receiver which gave worldwide coverage for both ships and aircraft.

[@pgqneto]

What operating system do comercial airplanes use, or if not, what programming language is used on them?

[@lelandclayton5462]

I would hook up a serial terminal and see if it outputs anything on the RS232.

[@X-OR_]

There still on ebay: Great Parts Board

[@lelandclayton5462]

Got a link? I want to get one.

[@edgeeffect]

GPS might not have been round then but what about INMARSAT and stuff like that..... and people on here keep reminding us of TRANSIT too.

[@lizardkeeper100]

I just googled this so it might be wrong but apparently navtech invented gps in 1973 with the help of the military so I would guess this device uses gps.

[@mnoxman]

GPS circa 1979 would have been military only. Loran and Omega would have been the only "civilian" choices. The transistors are way to slow to be GPS. 2n2221 tops out at 300Mhz unless you make a mixer to put GPS 1.1-1.6 ghz signals down to a 300mhz but you'd need one really good transistor.

[@mr1enrollment]

if you ever want to dispose the 10.000mhz osc part,... let me know

[@GeorgeGraves]

Why would you put the clock all the way on the opposite side of the board? Seems like a fast signal that you would want next to the CPU, no?

[@IMSAIGuy]

used for the navigation hardware decoding first. the 10MHz goes to the other size and is divided by two before the uP uses it.

[@bayareapianist]

I remember 8085 needed 2x clock speed to run. Maybe it was a 2.5 MHz chip. Z80 clock was 1 to 1.

[@Spookieham]

5mhz clock isn't really fast enough to make a difference

[@bayareapianist]

@@Spookieham back in 70s, it was like 5GHz CPU vs 2.5GHz.

[@edgeeffect]

Don't add RAM... it's more fun with less than 1K to work in. ;)

[@nickcaruso]

LORAN maybe?

[@douro20]

That's a TCXO not an OCXO...

[@mikesradiorepair]

Looks like a OCXO (oven controlled crystal oscillator) to me. TCXO's (temperature compensated crystal oscillator) tend to be much much smaller because they do not have a "oven" box to heat the crystal.

[@IMSAIGuy]

they can be small: kzbin.info/www/bejne/e5qkpImYjr6XkJIsi=YqJSl_OvKFuhoTPx