3002 Test Board

We have released a simple (its our least expensive board yet) Test Board for the Intel 3002 Bit-Slice Processor.  The Intel 3000 bit-slice processor family was introduced in 1973 and were made on a  Schottky Bipolar process. The 3002 series was also second sourced by Signetics, Siemens, and Intersil, and clones were made by the USSR and Tesla  (Czech).  The 3002 CPE is a 2-bit ALU and register file that can perform logical and arithmetic operations, left/right shifting and bit/zero value testing. The 3002 also includes 11 registers (R0-R9, T), an accumulator and a Memory Address Register (MAR). The 3002 CPE elements execute micro instructions generated by the 3001 Microprogram Controller Unit (MCU) based on micro code stored in PROM.
Its only $69.95 (including FREE shipping worldwide)

Order it on the 3002 test Board page.

In other related news, we are also developing a test board for some other BSP. Hopefully we’ll have a single board (with expansions) that can handle AMD 2901/03/203 and MMI 6701 processors

Often times its easier, and cheaper to break a big job down into smaller more manageable chunks.  The same goes for processing, and back in the 70’s and 80’s was fairly common.  ‘Wider’ processors were available, but were expensive and often not very flexible.  Bit slice processors were invented to fix this. a BSP is essentially an ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) that was 2 or 4 bits wide.  They could be put in parallel though to make processors of any width you needed.  intructions and control would then be fed to them by a control/sequencer chip.  Perhaps the most famous was the AMD 2901, a 4 bit slice device which is still in production today by companies like Innovasic.

Signetics 3002 BSP

Intel also made a BSP, called the 3002. It was 2-bit slice processor and was second sourced by Signetics, as well as Intersil. Released in September of 1974, it was clocked at 6MHz, very fast for the time, and another reason BSP’s were so popular. Above is a Signetics made 3002 in an all white ceramic package. Fairly unusual in that the lid is also white.