The IWS-500 is a ruggedised rack Mount Amiga 500 with up to 6 additional serial ports (DB-25M) in a 3RU beige case.
This particular unit is marked as being used at Rod Mill - and looks to have been a controller for a CNC machine.
This unit has a Spirit RAM expansion board installed via the 68k socket.
The RAM and RTC board is damaged and even after basic repairs gives a blinking RED power light.
The Floppy button metal is damaged and may break off if not carefully removed as it kept getting caught on removal. The board is very tight in the casing.
The motherboard seems to be an Early REV 5
There is a special keyboard port which is a wide two row 15 PID Female D-SUB (think apple monitor) type.
The included floppy is damaged and boots to Amiga DOS but comes up with a read fault.
Spengat Technologies seems to have been known also as Spengat Computers based In Newcastle, NSW Australia indicating this product was designed and manufactured in Australia.
I have reached out to the only known employee I can find to see if I can get any feedback on the project or what it was for, history etc
I was able to obtain the history from an Ex staffer Paul who writes
"Yes I worked for Spengat Systems who later split into Spengat Computers and Spengat Technologies. The company directors were Mr Richard Spencer and Mr Baldamero Gato. I worked with them for about 7 years during the 1980s as a software developer of custom industrial control systems and custom business systems. The businesses were located in Newcastle, NSW.
The IWS stands for Industrial Work Station, the 500 represents that it was originally a Commodore Amiga 500 transplanted into an industrial housing. While I wasn’t directly involved in this particular project I believe BHP Engineering had a data logging application and Spengat had the job of industrializing the Amiga computers and adding the additional serial ports. This was in the era of 8086 and 80286 processors with CGA and VGA graphics the best available. The Amiga provided better graphics and multitasking capabilities, the reason it was selected for the project.
Our company, headed by two ex-BHP electrical engineers, sourced a lot of I.T. related contracts from the BHP Plant at Port Waratah, Newcastle. Projects mainly involved industrial control and plant monitoring projects that included PLC programming and SCADA control systems along with data logging projects using high performance RISC computers. The Spengat Computers division were the retail arm and a Commodore dealer experiencing great success in terms of Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga computer sales as well as PCs."
