granroth@iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu (Larry Granroth) (01/23/91)
Awhile ago I asked for info on A/D boards with imbedded SCSI controllers (to handle a high sustained data rate to an 8mm tape device) for ISA PC's, but apparently no vendor carries such a beast. I did find support for EISA bus PC's, but I'd rather spend the same bucks on SPARCstation IPC's. Hence, my current request . . . I would appreciate any info on S-bus A/D data acquisition boards. Again, we would like to digitize two simultaneous streams at 8-bit resolution and 100kHz sample rates, plus two auxiliary streams at 4-bit resolution at the same rate. The SPARCstation should (hopefully) be able to move the resulting 300kB/s data to an Exabyte 8mm tape device on the SCSI bus. Vendors should feel free to send specs and (educational) pricing info. Larry Granroth, Sr Programmer/Analyst Dept of Physics and Astronomy Van Allen Hall The University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242-1479 -Larry Granroth@IowaSP.physics.UIowa.edu IOWASP::GRANROTH
phil@east.Berkeley.EDU (Phil Lapsley) (01/25/91)
These aren't quite what you're asking for, but they're the only boards that I know of that come close. Ariel Corp. has a board called the "S56", which is a SBus DSP56001 card. It has a 56k running at 27 MHz, 16K or 64K of memory, and a NeXT-compatible DB-15 that brings out the 56001's SSI serial port. You can use this to hook up A/D and D/A converters, etc. Price is (I think) about $1500. Berkeley Camera Engineering has a board called the "S56X", which is also a SBus DSP56001 card. It is also a 27 MHz 56k, comes with 32K of memory, and has a LSI Logic DMA controller and a Xilinx 3030 or 3042 programmable gate array. The 56001's SSI port and some Xilinx pins are brought out on a DB-37 (which, with an adaptor, can be made to look just like the NeXT DB-15 port). Price is (I think) about $2000. The similarity of the product names can be explained by the fact that Ariel sells the BCE S56X board as well. BCE includes device driver source code with their product, while Ariel only includes binaries. BCE can probably offer slightly better technical support on the S56X, since they designed it. I've observed the S56X to do about 1.2 Mbytes/sec DMA into main memory on a Sparc 1 (note that's to main memory, not to disk!). Whether/how long you can sustain 300 kbytes/sec to disk depends on a lot on your disk, how much buffer space you can devote to I/O on the 56k, and what else your sparc is doing. The DMA controller on the S56X makes it much more attractive for this sort of thing than the plain old S56, however. (In fact, the S56 may not be able to do this; I don't know, I've never tried). As to analog I/O boards, Ariel sells some stuff, and so does Spectrum Signal Processing in Canada. The Spectrum boards are for PCs, but they can made to talk to the S56X. Addresses: Ariel Corp. 433 River Rd. Highland Park, NJ 08904 Phone: (908) 249-2900 FAX: (908) 249-2123 Berkeley Camera Engineering 3616 Skyline Drive Hayward, CA 94542 Phone: (415) 613-5113 Spectrum Signal Processing Suite 301 3700 Gilmore Way Burnaby, BC V5G 4M1 Canada Phone: (604) 438-7266 Disclaimer: I was a beta-tester of the S56X, and I am a user of Ariel products, but I have no other relationship with BCE, Ariel, or Spectrum Signal Processing. Phil Lapsley phil@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU ...!ucbvax!phil