> The reversed DCA adapter is so strange. There must be a reason
> behind it... (or maybe the layout person messed up that bad and
> they decided to punish him by releasing the board as-is :-D)
I have the 8-bit version - and it is "reversed" the same way! Of course, it doesn't have the equivalent of the 'AVE' bus connection, despite the same "GRAPH INTERFACE" header. Let's ponder that for a moment in the weirdness that the adapter is in an 'AVE' slot but it's not - There aren't (m)any moving targets of microchannel systems it could go into.
SWAG is that there was an adjacent adapter in both instances that tied into the "GRAPH INTERFACE" and had a video output on the 8-bit system to a proprietary display - another '3270 PC' of sorts. On the microchannel side, it used the 'AVE' (so that the "GRAPH INTERFACE" board could be shared, maybe still with an optional display output). What information is going over the AVE bus in that instance? - It seems like this hasn't been commented on before.
I'm guessing that Peter had at least one adapter to mark-up the adapter ADF image with the text the way he did...