hudson@hounx.UUCP (C.HUDSON) (10/28/86)
>From: joel@gould9.UUCP (Joel West) >Newsgroups: net.micro.mac,net.micro.68k >Subject: What's Nu with VME for Mac? >I know the Sun-3 is VME; aren't most of the other 680xx boxes >also VME? To my knowledge, only LMI (Symbolics?) and TI use Nu. The VME bus standard was designed by Signetics, Motorola, and Mostek. It follows that Motorola designs its 680** series to work well with the VME and would encourage the use of the VME. It seems very unlikely that a 680** box manufacturer would use anything but a VME bus. I'll stick my neck out and state "All 680** box-makers use the VME bus." (Anybody out there have a counterexample?) >Would anyone care to comment on the technical advantages to using >either bus? From a marketing standpoint, I would think VME would >offer a strong advantage. I don't know much about the NuBus. I know however, in the past, TI has designed busses which were not intended as general purpose, but were designed for the 9900 product family (e.g. T-Bus, E-Bus). Microprocessor-specific busses do not have much of a market advantage unless the microprocessor supported is a technical marvel. The VME bus provides a serial packet bus which operates autonomously of the main parallel bus. This feature provides a standard interprocessor communications channel, which facilitates distributed system/ multi- processing environments. Cathy Hudson ......ihnp4!hounx!hudson
jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (10/29/86)
In article <984@hounx.UUCP> hudson@hounx.UUCP (C.HUDSON) writes: > ... >the VME and would encourage the use of the VME. It seems very unlikely >that a 680** box manufacturer would use anything but a VME bus. I'll >stick my neck out and state "All 680** box-makers use the VME bus." >(Anybody out there have a counterexample?) The Perkin-Elmer 68K boxes use VersaBUS. The NCR Tower uses MultiBUS. Many boxes have no bus at all or vestigial buses (low end Alpha Micro). The New Frank Hogg QT-20X has a proprietary bus. The SS-50 bus is used by GIMIX. The SS-64 bus was used by Helix. I think Altos uses something different, but I'm not sure what. Your close enough though. Most good 68K boxes are VME. Still, I'm buying the Frank Hogg QT-20X. The prices is *much* better. -- James Omura, Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto ihnp4!utzoo!lsuc!jimomura Byte Information eXchange: jimomura (416) 652-3880
mcvoy@rsch.WISC.EDU (Lawrence W. McVoy) (10/29/86)
In article <984@hounx.UUCP> hudson@hounx.UUCP (C.HUDSON) writes: >It follows that Motorola designs its 680** series to work well with >the VME and would encourage the use of the VME. It seems very unlikely >that a 680** box manufacturer would use anything but a VME bus. I'll >stick my neck out and state "All 680** box-makers use the VME bus." I love when somebody makes a blanket statement like this :-) Masscomp uses the multibus in their 68010 machines. I think they also use it in their 68020 machines. Note: I'm not saying it's a good or a bad idea, I just be relaten da facts, jack. -- Larry McVoy mcvoy@rsch.wisc.edu, {seismo, topaz, harvard, ihnp4, etc}!uwvax!mcvoy "They're coming soon! Quad-stated guru-gates!"
paul@unisoft.UUCP (Paul Campbell) (10/29/86)
In article <984@hounx.UUCP> hudson@hounx.UUCP (C.HUDSON) writes: >It seems very unlikely >that a 680** box manufacturer would use anything but a VME bus. I'll >stick my neck out and state "All 680** box-makers use the VME bus." >(Anybody out there have a counterexample?) > > Cathy Hudson ......ihnp4!hounx!hudson I think most people know that we do a lot of 68XXX ports .... I would make a rough guess that about half of the boxes we see these days are VMEbus, (this is definitely an increasing trend) most of the rest are spread amoung (in no particular order) multibus, S100 (yes there are still some of them out there!), UniBus and proprietary buses (still quite common) Paul Campbell UniSoft Systems ..!ucbvax!unisoft!paul
jeff@gatech.EDU (Jeff Lee) (10/29/86)
Who (or what organization) should I contact in order to obtain A VMEbus
definition?
--
Jeff Lee
CSNet: Jeff @ GATech ARPA: Jeff%GATech.CSNet @ CSNet-Relay.ARPA
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,seismo,ulysses}!gatech!jeffclewis@spectrix.UUCP (10/30/86)
In article <2880@rsch.WISC.EDU> mcvoy@rsch.WISC.EDU (Lawrence W. McVoy) writes: >In article <984@hounx.UUCP> hudson@hounx.UUCP (C.HUDSON) writes: >>It follows that Motorola designs its 680** series to work well with >>the VME and would encourage the use of the VME. It seems very unlikely >>that a 680** box manufacturer would use anything but a VME bus. I'll >>stick my neck out and state "All 680** box-makers use the VME bus." > >I love when somebody makes a blanket statement like this :-) So do I - a single Spectrix XL machine has the following "buses": Multibus, Intel iLBX (actually, Multibus P2 connector), X-Bus (extension of 68020 pins), MX-bus (ribbon-cable), Intel iSBX bus and the FIFO. Not a VMEbus in the lot! :-) -- Chris Lewis Spectrix Microsystems Inc, UUCP: {utzoo|utcs|yetti|genat|seismo}!mnetor!spectrix!clewis Phone: (416)-474-1955
hsu@eneevax.UUCP (Dave Hsu) (10/31/86)
In article <2880@rsch.WISC.EDU> mcvoy@rsch.WISC.EDU (Lawrence W. McVoy) writes: >In article <984@hounx.UUCP> hudson@hounx.UUCP (C.HUDSON) writes: >>It follows that Motorola designs its 680** series to work well with >>the VME and would encourage the use of the VME. It seems very unlikely >>that a 680** box manufacturer would use anything but a VME bus. I'll >>stick my neck out and state "All 680** box-makers use the VME bus." > >I love when somebody makes a blanket statement like this :-) > >Masscomp uses the multibus in their 68010 machines. I think they also use >it in their 68020 machines. >-- >Larry McVoy mcvoy@rsch.wisc.edu, They actually use Multibus II in the '010 machines, and a slightly modified (?, maybe just more careful part selection and shorter cabling) version in the '020 units, to bump the bus speed up to ~30mhz. Most Sun 2's, I think, are still Multibus, as were the Callans and countless other Unix boxen. Strange how they ended up with Intel-derived things, isn't it... -dave -- David Hsu (301) 454-1433 || -8798 || -8715 Communications & Signal Processing Laboratory / EE Systems Staff Systems Research Center, Bldg 093 / Engineering Computer Facility The University of Maryland ** These guys disavow all ** College Park, MD 20742 ** knowledge of my postings ** ARPA: hsu@eneevax.umd.edu UUCP: [seismo,allegra]!umcp-cs!eneevax!hsu "The Dirt molecule..."
amen@quequeg.UUCP (Bob Amen) (11/01/86)
In article <2880@rsch.WISC.EDU>, mcvoy@rsch.WISC.EDU (Lawrence W. McVoy) writes: > In article <984@hounx.UUCP> hudson@hounx.UUCP (C.HUDSON) writes: > >It follows that Motorola designs its 680** series to work well with > >the VME and [...] > >I'll stick my neck out and state "All 680** box-makers use the VME bus." > > I love when somebody makes a blanket statement like this :-) > > Masscomp uses the multibus in their 68010 machines. I think they also use > it in their 68020 machines. And Masscomp is currently working on a VMEbus machine...all their newer machines will be VMEbus...that is when they get it all working, including a VME to Multibus card. In fact there are several 68000 machines on the Multibus because it was out there and controlers were available before the VMEbus was accepted here (it was originally called the Eurobus with some differences). > > Larry McVoy mcvoy@rsch.wisc.edu, > {seismo, topaz, harvard, ihnp4, etc}!uwvax!mcvoy Bob Amen Chesapeake Bay Institute/Johns Hopkins University UUCP: seismo!-\ >umcp-cs!\ allegra!/ \ >aplcen!quequeg!amen decvax!decuac!-----/
wsr@lmi-angel.UUCP (Wolfgang Rupprecht) (11/05/86)
In article <> hudson@hounx.UUCP (C.HUDSON) writes: >I don't know much about the NuBus. I know however, in the past, TI >has designed busses which were not intended as general purpose, but >were designed for the 9900 product family (e.g. T-Bus, E-Bus). The NuBus was designed by MIT, and sold to TI. It is quite easy to interface to from a logic standpoint, since *everything* is synchronous to the system clock. The whole bus runs on one 96 pin connector, with the center 32 pins being extra power and grounds for power hungry cards. The 32-bit address and data lines are muxed, so you can get by with < 64 address/data buffers per card. The bus arbitration is distributed on each of the cards, and uses an inherently fair algorithm. It was truly designed for a multiprocessor system. It definitely requires much less in terms of bus lines and support logic to make it work than the other 32 bit addr 32 bit data busses. All in all a good example of a bus designed by people that didn't need to make a particular processor look good. -- Wolfgang Rupprecht {harvard|decvax!cca|mit-eddie}!lmi-angel!wsr