Rapic Transmitter
Technical details

The Rapic transmitter comprised a power supply and seven printed circuit cards plugged into a card cage utilising the multibus standard.

These cards initially were (a second generation soon followed)

• ZBC-80 Main Processor - a Z80 card manufactured by Matrox
  All operating software was contained in one 256k EPROM on this board. It managed the input/output and interfacing. and provided all interfacing to technician's terminal.
  
• Mega 4 -a four mega bit memory card by Matrox
  This card provided the Data storage. Buffer between input and output of data.
  
• Comz Card
  Output data to the receiver systems. It was given a radial of data by ZBC-80, and converted it to suitable format and transmitted it.
  
• Clock/Angle Card
  Handled most Radar interfacing, including synchro angle data and also included clock and NVRAM functions.
• Analog Card
  Interfaces radar video and trigger signals. Also provides test points for video/trigger signals used in calibration.
• DVIP Card
  Processed the radar video data, providing radials of both Normal and PE suppressed data for leveling and gating by the ZBC-80. Also provided PPI video signal but this was never used.
  

The specification of the Rapic Transmitter

PC-8201 Maintenance Terminal
The NEC PC-8201 was manufactured from 1983 until 1987 and was one of the first lightweight, battery-powered notebook computers.
It is approx. 8.5" x 11" x 1", with a 40 character by 8 line black and white reflective LCD display. It has a standard RS-232 serial port and a standard parallel printer port. It was a sister to the Tandy Model 100, Model 102 and the Kyocera KC-85, and the Olivetti M-10 laptops.
The PC-8201 has three built-in firmware applications, (1) the BASIC computer programming language, (2) the TEXT editor, and (3) the TELCOM terminal emulator. It has no hard or floppy drives.
The TELCOM terminal emulator and RS-232 serial port made it so suitable for the role of a technician maintenance terminal for the Rapic transmitter. Though it could be powered by four AA batteries, the Radar Interface associated with the Rapic Transmitter provided the required DC supply voltage.