Need Help IDing a BASIC stamp
Crosshair
Posts: 4
Hello everyone.
My boss and I were going through some old phone equipment and we were throwing away some phone switchers/cutoffs and I noticed what looked Like a BASIC stamp on them. I set them aside and I removed one. Sure enough they are stamps, but I am having trouble figuring out what model they are. I'll end up having about 10 of these and figure this is the perfect excuse to start doing things with BASIC Stamps.
The writing on the underside of the stamp reads: "BS2P-IC RevE ©1997 Parallax, Inc."
The stamp look like a BS2, but not exactly. Other than the main chip on the bottom, the other components are all switched around.
By the looks of the stamp, it's a BS2. The writing on the back of the stamp says it's a BS2P. Anyone know which is correct?
If you need me to I can post an actual photo later.
My boss and I were going through some old phone equipment and we were throwing away some phone switchers/cutoffs and I noticed what looked Like a BASIC stamp on them. I set them aside and I removed one. Sure enough they are stamps, but I am having trouble figuring out what model they are. I'll end up having about 10 of these and figure this is the perfect excuse to start doing things with BASIC Stamps.
The writing on the underside of the stamp reads: "BS2P-IC RevE ©1997 Parallax, Inc."
The stamp look like a BS2, but not exactly. Other than the main chip on the bottom, the other components are all switched around.
By the looks of the stamp, it's a BS2. The writing on the back of the stamp says it's a BS2P. Anyone know which is correct?
If you need me to I can post an actual photo later.
Comments
· The module you have is an older module that was silk screened incorrectly. That module you have is in actuality a BASIC Stamp 2 module.
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Respectfully,
Joshua Donelson
www.parallax.com
Shouldn't this mis-silk-screened BASIC Stamp be worth a cool miilion?
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·"If you build it, they will come."
Jim
Strike that, it's not possible. My local Torrance post office alone sets the annual record for mistakes. It is a blight on an otherwise fine city!
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·"If you build it, they will come."
"By the looks of the stamp, it's a BS2."
...I'm confused. How about pics of both sides just to see this curiosity?
DJ
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Here ya Go. Pic is high res 1.3 meg.
gra.midco.net/5937/BasicStamp.jpg
Now that I have removed all of the stamps from the DI boards I find that 8 have the incorrect silk-screening and 4 have the correct silk-screening. The first 4 that I removed all had the incorrect silk-screening.
Works for me.
··· If so, we here in technical support could buy a small island somewhere. No time like the present to get the new solar kit operational; can't go without programming·a sand-castle building robot on our small island.
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Respectfully,
Joshua Donelson
www.parallax.com
Interesting. These "switchers" were commercially available items?
DJ
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Yes, we still use them, just not this older version. The company I work for does the inmate telephones in jails across 5 states. These boards were part of the "Kaltech" Digital Informant phone recorder system that we install with our equipment. This item is referred to as the "DI board" by us. It sits between the phone system and the CO line controller. Each DI board had two basic Stamps and each stamp controlled two sets of lines. For a total of four.
It has several functions.
1. Split the phone signal into two outputs, sending one to the CO line controller and the other to the Digital Informant
2. Send out a ring voltage on the output to the Digital Informant. The phone systems we used to use could not output a ring voltage on the CO lines, thus the DI board did that function.
3. Ensure that the Digital Informant picked up the line. If the DI did not answer, the board would cut-off the call after 90 seconds.
The newer "Teleserver" Digital Informants that we use do away with these boards because the newer phone systems we use can output a ring voltage on the CO lines. Thus the DI picks up the call on one port and outputs it on another while recording the conversation. No splitting and less hardware.
The Kaltech setup had one major advantage to the Teleserver though. If the Digital Informant failed it could be easily bypassed by unplugging the DI board. Easy enough to do over the phone with the staff. While the Teleserver system, that doesn't use these boards, cannot be bypassed if the DI fails. Not much of an issue nowadays because the DIs are so reliable.
Of course the Kaltech DIs are now having trouble with the power capacitors going bad after a few years. I now re-solder those motherboards with new capacitors so we can continue using them. Kinda hard to get Pentium 4 motherboards with ISA slots nowadays.
I've actually gotten really good at resoldering these motherboards. Earlier this week I replaced 60 bad caps on 6 motherboards in less than 4 hours. I've probably done 25 motherboards so far and haven't destroyed one motherboard yet. I have another 7 I still need to do, but I was out on field calls the rest of the week. (Did a nice 1,000 mile figure-8 across Minnesota.)
Thanks for the background on the product. And I understand using slighty "less-than-current" items in products. We recently converted the operating system on one of our products to Win XP!
The reason I asked about whether the switchers were commercially available was because they actually contained a Basic Stamp *module*; the BS2. Understand I'm not slamming the BS2. It's just that the price on that unit is $50, whereas the *components* would be in the $20 range if mounted on a circuit board. I can see (very easily because I'm gonna be doing it) using the *module* for initial runs while having the pc board version on the side being checked out for release.
So, again...interesting...
DJ
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Just like with the motherboards I refurbish, I just got the caps with the longest lifespan and a much higher voltage rating than necessary. (I did the math and the caps I got should have a 21 year lifespan at the voltage and temp they operate at.) Sure the caps cost more than they needed to, but it's still cheaper on a whole than getting the bare minimum and risking that they fail early. After all, I'm only going to have to refurbish a few hundred motherboards at most and the costs of having to deal with component failure will quickly increase costs. Especially when you have to send a tech 3 hours one way to swap out a DI.
Agreed...he low-volume, semi-custom aspect would definitely be a candidate for the BS2 module rather than have a custom pcb layout done to accomodate the parts.
Regards,
DJ
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