Date   : Mon, 30 May 2005 13:13:32 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: BBCs and phone exchange monitoring

Chap handed me a bunch of ICs the other day which he said were pulled
from BBCs being used to monitor telephone exchanges here in the UK.
Anyone have such a beast or knows what they consisted of?

I seem to have the following chips:

SAA5050
SAA5020
Disc Doc EPROM
EPROM labelled "K10540"
Two more unlabelled EPROMs
Z80 CPU
6800 CPU

... which all seems rather an oddball collection. I could see a Z80
being used; I mean maybe the machines ran CP/M. Why the 6800, I don't
know. Or the SAA5020; the beeb only uses the SAA5050 if I remember
right? I'm almost tempted to say this is nothing to do with some kind of
phone exchange system despite what the chap said!

If it's likely any such machine was some sort of modified BBC though
(either rack-mount or having interesting hardware mods) I'll see if I
can get some more info out of the guy...

cheers

Jules