Deciphering the INMOS IMSB430

The IMSB430 is a rare, yet interesting and important TRAM. It’s been meant for hardware developers to easily build and test prototypes before producing actual PCBs.

Interesting enough, next to no documentation besides a sales brochure has survived. So it’s time for reverse engineering… again. This is also an official call for help – If you by any chance know more about this TRAM, please contact me!

Here’s the left side of this size-4 TRAM. The other half is just the prototyping grid with lots of through holes which we can omit here.
I tried to number all jumpers on the board starting at the top – numbers in brackets are the jumper-numbers actually printed on the boards silk-screen. That numbering is a bit confusing and seems not to follow any logic.

IMSB430 Map

IC connections

Buzzing through all lines from/to the GAL leads to this table so far:

1 ProcClkOut 20 VCC
2 A13 19 Mem0 (IC2B „/CE“ + JP26)
3 A14 18 Mem1 (IC3B „/CE“ + „J20“)
4 A15 17 1Wait (IO 2-above JP8)
5 notMemCE 16 2Wait (IO above JP8)
6 WaitSEL0 (JP8) 15 3Wait (IO below JP8)
7 WaitSEL1 (JP9) 14 SelWait (MemWait+ IO below JP9)
8 Map0 (JP10) 13 BLK0 (IO below JP10)
9 Map1 (JP11) 12 BLK1 („IO1“ below JP11)
10 GND 11 (I/OE) GNDed

Each SRAM socket is actually a “double row”.
If you seat your SRAMs aligned to the right, they will be accessed word-wide (16bit, D0-A15). When aligned to the left, they are accessed byte-wide (8bit, D0-A7). That’s why the silkscreen print says “IC2B/IC2W“…

Jumpers

This is the official press photo. It seems to show the default jumper settings (using the full 64KB SRAM, word-access):

IMSB430_official

Some jumpers are already identified (“JP” precedes the official jumpers, “J” is my numbering):

Jumper description
 1  MemWait (FIT=GalPin14, else ????)
 2  DisIntRam (FIT=use internal RAM)
 3  ProcSpeedSel0 (FIT=HoldToGnd T222)
 4  MemReq (FIT=no request)
 5  EventReq (FIT=no request)
 6  MemBacc (FIT=word access)
 7 (JP6)  ProcSpeedSel2 (FIT=HoldToGnd T222)
 8  BootFromRom (FIT=BootFromLink)
 9 (JP7)  ProcSpeedSel1 (FIT=HoldToGnd T222)
JP8 Set MemWaitstate Bit0
JP9 Set MemWaitstate Bit1
JP26 Connects /OE with /CE of IC2 (upper SRAM)
J20 Connects /OE with /CE of IC3 (lower SRAM)

The external RAM access wait-states can be set with JP8/9:

JP8 + JP9 = 2 clock-cycles per MemAccess
JP9 = 3 clock-cycles
JP8 = 4 clock-cycles
none = 5 clock-cycles

To be continued…

2 thoughts on “Deciphering the INMOS IMSB430”

  1. Actual pin designations for IC4 are:-

    Pin 1 Clk
    Pin 2 A13
    Pin 3 A14
    Pin 4 A15
    Pin 5 notMemCE
    Pin 6 Waitsel0
    Pin 7 Waitsel1
    Pin 8 Map0
    Pin 9 Map1
    Pin 10 GND
    Pin 12 BLK1
    Pin 13 BLK0
    Pin 14 Selwait
    Pin 15 3Wait
    Pin 16 2Wait
    Pin 17 1Wait
    Pin 18 Mem1
    Pin 19 Mem0
    Pin 20 VCC

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