news@santra.UUCP (news) (05/25/88)
I have heard the following (unconfirmed) about the RR AT-bus: 1. You cannot access it from the Sun OS. 2. Sun will not supply drivers for any add-on boards. Is 1. true or simply a missinterpretation of 2.? Has anyone acctually used a PC-bus add-on board (such as an intelligent I/O board, e.g. IBM RIC) with the RR? Any problems (SW or HW)? We are planning to use the Definicon Inc. Transputer boards and SW development kit running on MS-DOS with the RR. 1. Can we down-load applications from the development system to the board on the AT-bus? If so, do we have to write our own driver? If not, why not? 2. Can we interface an application running under MS-DOS-emulation with the Transputer board without writing lots of driver SW? 3. Can we do the same with an application running on Sun OS? Obviously we need to write our own driver here? Can there be some reason why this should not be possible at all? Any info on HW and SW compatibility of the AT-bus and especially real-life experience and/or references would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Arto Karila
lalonde@nicmad.UUCP (John Lalonde) (05/27/88)
In article <13155@santra.UUCP> atk@hutcs.hut.fi, atk@finhutcs.bitnet writes: >I have heard the following (unconfirmed) about the RR AT-bus: >1. You cannot access it from the Sun OS. This is definitely false. You can access the AT Bus from SunOS. No tricks or gimmicks. You can have memory mapped I/O access or I/O port access. >2. Sun will not supply drivers for any add-on boards. I believe that currently this is true. However this is also true for Sun VME based systems as well. Generally it is up to the add-on board manufacturer to provide the driver(s). >1. Can we down-load applications from the development system to the board > on the AT-bus? If so, do we have to write our own driver? If not, why not? Yes, you can download applications and Yes, you will probably have to write a driver, unless you can get the board manufacturer to provide one. The "driver" could be a Mush-DOS driver or a SunOS driver. The 386i can go both ways. -- John LaLonde Systems Engineering Group Nicolet Instrument Corporation uucp: {ihnp4,rutgers,decvax,harvard}!uwvax!nicmad!lalonde
stan@sdba.UUCP (Stan Brown) (05/31/88)
> I have heard the following (unconfirmed) about the RR AT-bus: > > 1. You cannot access it from the Sun OS. > Don't Know. > 2. Sun will not supply drivers for any add-on boards. > Sun apears (acording to conversations with local office) to have taken the postion that it is not in the PC bussiness & therefore *ALL* suport for AT bis cards (except the egae/vga emulator board (which *will be a SUN product)) must be by third party baord OEM's . For what it's worht our needs for this machine had a requirment for a fair number of serail ports & the local SUN office was able to put us in touch with an approraite OEM on very short nottice. > Is 1. true or simply a missinterpretation of 2.? > Has anyone acctually used a PC-bus add-on board (such as an intelligent > I/O board, e.g. IBM RIC) with the RR? > Any problems (SW or HW)? stan -- Stan Brown S. D. Brown & Associates 404-292-9497 (uunet gatech)!sdba!stan "vi forever"