BusCard Project

Here I present information on the BusCard, an IEEE-488 and parallel printer interface for the Commodore 64. The BusCard, and subsequent BusCard II, were manufactured by Batteries Included Ltd. of Toronto, Canada. On my BusCard, the circuit board is labeled "Rev A" and "1983". I used it to provide IEEE-488 functionality to my Commodore 64 in order to use a 4040 disk drive and 8023P printer. It also provides BASIC 4.0 and comes with an assembler and disassembler.

Unlike the BusCard II, the BusCard does not contain any proprietary integrated circuits. As a result, I was able to successfully reverse-engineer it and produce an exact working duplicate. I used EAGLE CAD software for the schematic and circuit board design. All information required to produce it is provided below. If you would like to build it, you can send the GERBER files provided below to the manufacturer of your choice. You would only need EAGLE if you wish to change the board layout or circuit.

Properties of Original BusCard
  • Picture gallery
  • Manual (45 MB pdf) - I have scanned the manual into an Acrobat (.pdf) file. The manual was accompanied by a rather long and convoluted errata and I have cut and pasted the errata items into the manual and created a fresh table of contents to reflect the new page numbering.
  • Schematic (hand-drawn) (7.5 MB pdf)
  • Parts layout as an Acrobat file (10 KB pdf) and as a Microsoft Visio Drawing (35 KB .vsdx file).
  • Parts list (text file)
  • Datasheets:
    • NEC D8255AC-5 8-bit, 4 MHz, Programmable Peripheral Interface (367 KB pdf)
    • Texas Instruments TMS 2564 65,536-bit, Ultraviolet-Erasable, Electrically Programmable Read-Only Memory (EPROM) (447 KB pdf)
    • 75160 IEEE-488 GPIB Octal Bus Transceiver (2.4 MB pdf)
    • 75161 IEEE-488 GPIB Octal Bus-Management and Data-Transfer Transceiver (2.8 MB pdf)
    • 1N4148 Small Signal Diode, 200 mA, 100 V (975 KB pdf)
    • 2N3904 NPN Transistor, 200 mA, 40 V (416 KB pdf)
    • 2N4401 NPN Transistor, 600 mA, 40 V (976 KB pdf)
    • 74LS00N Quadruple 2-Input Positive-NAND Gates (3.2 MB pdf)
    • 74LS04N Hex Inverting Gates (3.2 MB pdf)
    • 74LS08N Quadruple 2-Input Positive-AND Gates (3.6 MB pdf)
    • 74LS21N Dual 4-Input Positive-AND Gates (1.9 MB pdf)
    • 74LS32N Quadruple 2-Input Positive-OR Gates (3.2 MB pdf)
    • 74LS139N Dual 1-of-4 Decoder/Demultiplexer (1.8 MB pdf)
    • Resistors 1/4 Watt, 5% Tolerance (570 KB pdf)
    • Resistor Network SIL Resistor Network, 4.67 kohm, 10 Pins, 9 Resistors, Bussed Arrangement (356 KB pdf)
    • CK05BX104K Ceramic Capacitor, 0.1 uF, 50 V, Radial (133 KB pdf)
    • 8-SPST DIP Switch (468 KB pdf)
    • Female Edge Connector 44-Contact (2-Rows of 22 Contacts), 0.1" (2.54 mm) Contact Spacing (Pitch), 0.2" (5.08 mm) Row Spacing, 0.062" (1.57 mm) Card Thickness, 3A, 250 V (4 MB pdf)
    • Clip Receptacle for cable to BusCard from C64 HIRAM and LORAM signals at R44 and R45. (17.6 MB pdf)
    • Clip Cable to connect to BusCard from C64 HIRAM and LORAM signals at R44 and R45. (808 KB pdf)
    • Micro Clips to clip onto C64 HIRAM and LORAM signals at R44 and R45 to then feed to BusCard. (26 KB pdf)
    • Shunt Female, 2-Position, 0.1" (2.54 mm) Contact Spacing (Pitch), 0.347" (8.81mm) Height (21 KB pdf)
Properties of Reverse-Engineered BusCard

P. David Buchan pdbuchan@yahoo.com

August 3, 2017