[net.arch] vme bus couplers?

mark@umcp-cs.UUCP (Mark Weiser) (02/19/86)

I have recently been introduced to the conceptual beauty of bus couplers.
These are little animals which hang between two separate buses and pass
relevant addresses back and forth (optionally remapping those addresses).
Kind of like network gateways (to use an analogy I'm more familiar with).
I understand more or less how to build one of these for a pair of vmebuses
(or vmxbuses) but wonder if there are commercially available versions, or 
chips to help?  Thanks.
-mark
------
Spoken: Mark Weiser 	ARPA:	mark@maryland	Phone: +1-301-454-7817
CSNet:	mark@umcp-cs 	UUCP:	{seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!mark
USPS: Computer Science Dept., University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

-- 
Spoken: Mark Weiser 	ARPA:	mark@maryland	Phone: +1-301-454-7817
CSNet:	mark@umcp-cs 	UUCP:	{seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!mark
USPS: Computer Science Dept., University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

stern@tilt.FUN (02/21/86)

You can get VME Bus Extenders (or couplers, whatever you call them) from
two places that I know of:

	HVE Hal-Versa Engineering
	1684 Dell Avenue
	Campbell CA  95008
	408 370-4666

	
	VME Microsystems International Corp
	12021 N South Memorial Parkway
	Huntsville, AL  35803
	205 880-0444

We have ordered two extenders from VME Microsystems.  They cost 
about $1,200 each; this price includes a master card, a slave card, and 
three 96-pin 5 foot cables.  The slave card goes into the bus where
your main master is (ie, CPU) and the master card goes into a satellite
slave bus.  The only real restriction is that the satellite bus can
only have slave devices on it.  The VME Repeat Link from VMIC is
a full A32:D32 device, unlike the extender from HVE Engineering, which
drops a few bits (8, if I remember correctly).

--Hal Stern
  Princeton University
  {ihnp4, seismo, allegra}!princeton!stern