YEKTA@mit-mc@sri-unix.UUCP (10/03/83)
From: Yekta Gursel <YEKTA@mit-mc> godd machine which will handle all of our requirements. To make sure that these people are OK, Our group leader visited their Factory, and he was very impressed. SO, we ordered one. It is arriving this week. Here is some information about MassComp, and their machine: MassComp is a company formed by former DEC engineers. They are making machines which are suitable for real-time work. Mc-500 is a multi-68000 machine. One 68000 does the number crunching, another handles Memory and IO, yet another one ( this is actually in their terminals ) handles the graphics, color, etc... Each of their terminals has a 68000 in them. As a result, the graphics is very high resolution, and it is very fast. The machine runs REAL UNIX. I think it is the berkeley version with all sorts of extensions. When I played with it, it had SIX editors for example... Masscomp extended this UNIX in the sense that it can now do REAL-TIME stuff. This is where the MC-500 outruns its competition. It is DESIGNED to do real time stuff. Their A to D cards have intelligent processors on them. They have several busses present in the machine: One 8 Mhz bus (proprietary) to handle data transfers, Standard Multibus, and STD bus. Multibus and STD bus have their own card cages. You can plug in any Multibus or STD bus board in them. I can go on and on... Maybe I should stop. One last note: They started delivering their machines about a year ago. If you have the money, you CAN buy one. Ours, Full of A to D boards, interfaces, winchester, and 9 track tape drive, about 2Mbytes of memory, a black and white hig resolution graphics terminal, a normal terminal, etc. costs about 60K. I'll answer one question before I go: The machine is fast BECAUSE OF THE HARDWARE. Let me know if you have other questions... Best, Yekta ( YEKTA@MIT-MC on arpanet )