SOLVED. Crazy wired board found at work. What is it?

WOZ 1.0

Holy shit that is amazing.

Looks like something my grandfather would have mocked up when he was working for Wurlitzer.

Looks like a video board of some sort. With those pots, maybe it was to fade one video down and fade another in without having to make a hard cut? Would that make any sense in the context of your employment?

So fascinating! Can you read any of the numbers on the chips, or are they all covered by a sticker?

it's a time machine.

They do look like BNC connectors.

Pretty neat board though!

Post this on Reddit to cast a wider net. Link to it here so we can follow along. High school or college electronics project perhaps? It reminds me of the circuit board Doc Brown built for Marty to get him back to the future.

99.99% sure this was an "art" attempt.
It might have had also a purpose to go with it's art status (like a board montage which would disturb antenna signal and then display them on a tv to display that the power of tv can easily be manipulated by who ever has the knowledge and means)

BNC for video or network use?

Nope. It's a 455KC 10.7MHz Signal Injector for tracing/troubleshooting old audio equipment and radios.

-Note the marking along the edge for 10.7 MHz. The other various switches and outputs match up with audio signals as well.

Is it for sale?

Exactly what I was going to say. Dad was a ham radio operator. Looked like testing equipment with the bnc connectors

Googling around shows that 10.7Mhz is also a common intermediate frequency for FM receivers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_frequency

Fascinating

I second the suggestion to put it on Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/

Radio equipment I've seen and worked with does not have so many ICs in it. Could be hybrid (partly digital), maybe a signal scrambler or something like that.

You didn't ask?

My vote is some kind of signal combiner. Either video overlay or something to do with audio transmission or reception.

I'll need to see a high quality scan of the schematic from (for example) Staples ($2) or Kinkos ($6)....

I knew it wasn't artwork, but the person that put it together was an evil genius. I am sure it was drawn out on paper somewhere, but imagine trying to put that together. Great piece of history there and a good example of what the human mind and body is capable of.

That is a prototype of the board that replaced foil hats to keep aliens from reading our thoughts.

The current board resembles a pocket protector.

Steve (in Las Vegas)

Very cool! Although ICs are now ubiquitous and haven’t really been “novel” since the 70s, it’s still gives a sense of wonder to see a tangible example of the scale - all that complexity was destined to be shrunk down to 2-3 square mm, still amazing!

In that vein, I just finished building the kit below (kabtronics.com). It is a simple digital clock, but is designed with discrete diode/transistor circuits; the only modern part is the MOSFET in the nixie supply, otherwise this thing could have been built in the 60s more or less as-is. It ships with an unfinished wood plaque for mounting, but I think I am going to put it into a shadowbox and perhaps try to do some form of Pinstadium-style lighting to highlight the board in a dark room. (I highly recommend the kit - outstanding build manual, excellent parts/PCB quality, and great soldering practice.)

D2A8C98D-4079-49BA-B179-055F5BACDF5E (resized).jpeg

That's pretty cool! Are those IN-17's? I've got a bag full of them and I was once toying with the idea of building something similar from scratch since I couldn't find any nixie driver chips... but then I decided I'm lazy and would probably never finish it lol

This needs a Really Nice Frame.
Get it mounted for him. Perhaps he will give it to you later.

With all that board's signal processing components, and link to RCA prototyping in the era, I wonder if that board is related to RCA's long-delayed and doomed-on-release CED (video LP record player) format? You should try to find out. As far as "technologies that destroyed their companies" go, CED is rather infamous. I've always wanted to see one just for the novelty of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/flashback-1981-rca-introduces-ced-‘contact’-videodisc-player

I was messing around with google, trying combinations of "Floyd Tolle" and RCA, and ran across this gentleman:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/floydtoole/

I wonder if the name on the back is a misspelling of this guy's name? Maybe you should reach out to him and see if he recognizes anything about it or the part number on the back?

That is dead bug style at it's finest!!

Very cool thanks for sharing!!

There is a system 80reset board I like too but that's a different funny story this is really a nice piece.

I was more wondering if someone from RCA got a design from him or something, and in an effort to document it, they wrote his name down how they thought it was spelled. It's a reach, I know, was just surprised to sound someone very into audio with a very similar name.

May it remain a mysterious conversation piece forever. Seriously, that thing belongs in a coffee table or in a nice frame on the wall.

We had something similar (framed and all) in the lobby at the Rockwell Semiconductor Products Division offices and plant on Jamboree Road in Newport Beach. The plant primarily fabricated wafers for their 6500 series of IC's. Yes, these included the ones used in Gottlieb pinball machines.

The division was sold off and the plant is now owned by Jazz Semiconductors.

Those are IN-12s, soon to be replaced by a set of German ZM1100 I have on order. There is nothing wrong with IN-12s, but I have a boatload of them and have built a few other clocks with them, so I wanted to try something more rare and “exotic”.

A source for driver chips, high-voltage NPN and PNP transistors for building discrete driver circuits, and power MOSFETs for HV boost converter circuits:

https://www.pvelectronics.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=4_7

(Excellent seller, with fantastic kits that look professional and “high-end” as finished products and have a lot of neat features.)