The MIT 6.270 board

This board is the “parent” of both the Miniboard and the Handyboard. It was designed by Dr. Fred Martin and Randy Sargent. It was the “brain” in the robot that students were required to build out of Legos to win some particular competition. These competitions created some very interesting robots!

Like the Handy board it has an LCD display and 32KB of battery backed RAM. It also has 6 motor controls (five! (5) L293D’s with the bottom four running in “stacks” to get more current capactiy.) There are a couple of pushbuttons, a “frob knob” and a place to put an IR beacon. There are a bunch of analog inputs that route through a CMOS switch to the I/Os on the CPU. Programmed in “Interactive C” this board is truly one of the milestones in modern hobby robotics.