The PC532 was a "home-brew"

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...

design created by George Scolaro and Dave Rand in 1989-1990, based on the

National Semiconductor National Semiconductor was an American semiconductor manufacturer which specialized in analog devices and subsystems, formerly with headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The company produced power management integrated circuits, display drive ...

NS32532

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

(a member of the

NS320xx The NS32000, sometimes known as the 32k, is a series of microprocessors produced by National Semiconductor. The first member of the family came to market in 1982, briefly known as the 16032 before becoming the 32016. It was the first 32-bit general ...

series). Full hardware documentation for the design, including

schematic A schematic, or schematic diagram, is a designed representation of the elements of a system using abstract, graphic symbols rather than realistic pictures. A schematic usually omits all details that are not relevant to the key information the sc ...

s and

PAL Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...

programming data, was made freely available, and a short run (around 200) of

motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

PCBs were produced for hobbyists to populate and assemble into fully functional systems.

Hardware specifications

PC/AT The IBM Personal Computer/AT (model 5170, abbreviated as IBM AT or PC/AT) was released in 1984 as the fourth model in the IBM Personal Computer line, following the IBM PC/XT and its IBM Portable PC variant. It was designed around the Intel 802 ...

form-factor motherboard * NS32532 CPU and NS32381 FPU (25 MHz) * 4 to 32 MB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

* National Semiconductor DP8490

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

host adapter * Adaptec AIC-6250 SCSI host adapter * Four SCN2861 DUARTs (providing 8 serial ports) * 27256 32 kB

firmware In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...

EPROM An EPROM (rarely EROM), or erasable programmable read-only memory, is a type of programmable read-only memory (PROM) chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. Computer memory that can retrieve stored data after a power s ...

Operating systems

The following operating systems were ported to the PC532: ;MINIX: A port of MINIX 1.3 to the PC532 (sometimes referred to as MINIX-532) was released by Bruce Culbertson in 1990. ;Mach: Mach 3.0 was ported to the PC532 in 1992 by Johannes Helander, Tero Kivinen, and Tatu Ylönen; some work was also done by them on porting a Net/2

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

-based Mach server (''bnr2ss'') to provide BSD

UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

emulation. ;NetBSD/pc532: A project to port

386BSD 386BSD (also known as "Jolix") is a discontinued Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was released in 1992 and ran on PC-compatible computer systems based on the 32-bit Intel 80386 microprocessor. 386BSD inn ...

0.1 to the PC532, initially called 532BSD, was started by Phil Nelson. This was integrated into the

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is a ...

project in 1993 and became NetBSD/pc532, with Nelson as the port maintainer. On January 9, 2008, NetBSD/pc532 was dropped from the NetBSD source tree, as GCC support for the NS32532 microprocessor had been dropped.port-pc532: Death of NetBSD/pc532
/ref>

References

PC532 Notes by Julian H. Stacey

Mail list, new 2017, supersedes defunct lists on bungi.com & netbsd.org
* tp://ftp.berklix.org/pub/pc532/ FTP archive, new 2017, several on mail list have write access Personal computers