johnc@rtmvax.UUCP (John Connin) (11/30/88)
Just recently I discovered this thread (ie. a construction project based around the 32532 NSC chip set) and have been following it with great interest. First a disclaimer -- At this point I am not familiar with the various versions of the NSC 32K chip sets. Configuration: As an alternative to the PC-bus or NuBus, why not consider a 'transputer' like scheme (lets call it a compute engine). The compute engine I envision would contain the cpu-mmu, provision for at least 4Megs of DRAM, a startup ROM, and 4 'Inmos' like 20 mega bit per second serial links. Initially the compute engine could operate in a host environment such as a PC. Subsequently, a second design activity could be initiated to replace the host environment, in whole or part, with various peripheral adapters which directly connect to the serial links. For example one of the peripheral adapters could be a serial-link SCSI host adapter permitting the compute engine to directly control disk drives et al. Why not just use a transputer in the first place? The transputer does not support virtual memory -- which in my humble opinion is an absolute necessity in a general purpose workstation environment. Case in point, consider the implications of running GNU Emacs without it. Concerning an operating system -- a message based OS such as Minix could be ported to the compute engine scheme. Yes I know there are those who suggest that Minix is a toy. But I submit that (1) the current version 1.3d is not a toy though admittedly it is not presently as rich as BSD4.3 or SysV, (2) with some restructuring and the addition of demand paged virtual memory it can be transformed into a first rate operating system, (3) 32k Minix ports exit, and (4) it fits the 'build it' verses 'buy it' objective (assuming the objective is the experience/pride/pleasure derived and not possible $$$ savings). Amoeba, a *nix like distributed operating system might be another possibility, however a source code license may be a problem. Please no flames -- but I sincerely do hope the above thoughts will generate meaningful discussion.