🚀 go-pugleaf

yatesbd@pharm.med.upenn.edu (Brian Yates) writes:

>What kind of machines (mainframes, microcomputers) commonly use VMEbus, and
>what OS's are best suited to the 68000 series in this architecture?

The Motorola Computer Group produces a full line of VMEbus based
computers using the MC68000 family and MC88000 family processor
architectures.  These are available with various enclosures with 3, 6,
12, and 20 VMEbus slots.  These systems are used in office
environments (handling electronic communications, software
development, document preperation, etc.), on the factory floor, and
embedded into other products (like medical imaging systems and postal
sorting equipment).

On the 68K architecture, we provide UNIX System V Release 3 operating
system software and our VMEexec real-time multi-processing
environment.

On the 88K architecture, we provide UNIX System V Release 3.2, UNIX
System V Release 4 MP, and VMEexec software.

Third-party software vendors provide other operating system software
(mostly real-time kernels, mostly 68K), libraries, and application
packages.

Whether to use a UNIX-based OS or a real-time OS depends on your
application.  Some of our customers use both, having a cpu in the
chassis running UNIX and one or more cpus in the chassis and/or in
other chassis running a real-time kernel (like that provided by
VMEexec).  You can get pretty wild with the flexibility of
configuration possible with an IEEE standard bus like that provided by
VMEbus (ANSI/IEEE Std 1014-1987).
-- 
Ron Heiby, heiby@chg.mcd.mot.com	Moderator: comp.newprod
"The centipede has a thousand legs, but he cannot tapdance."

In article <yatesbd-191192204110@pharm15.med.upenn.edu> yatesbd@pharm.med.upenn.edu (Brian Yates) writes:

> What kind of machines (mainframes, microcomputers) commonly use VMEbus, and
> what OS's are best suited to the 68000 series in this architecture?

Atari TT and MegaSTE have VMEbus. At least with TT, main applications
are hi-end graphics-adapters, TCP-IP interfaces, multiport serial
interfaces and similar.

--
*******************   "Jartsu"   **********************
***********   Jari                 Lehto   ************
****************   "I hate MS-DOS"   ******************
*****   Finger jartsu@vipu.hut.fi for more info   *****

jartsu@vipu.hut.fi (Jartsu) writes:

>In article <yatesbd-191192204110@pharm15.med.upenn.edu> yatesbd@pharm.med.upenn.edu (Brian Yates) writes:

>> What kind of machines (mainframes, microcomputers) commonly use VMEbus, and
>> what OS's are best suited to the 68000 series in this architecture?

>Atari TT and MegaSTE have VMEbus. At least with TT, main applications
>are hi-end graphics-adapters, TCP-IP interfaces, multiport serial
>interfaces and similar.



Gee., no-one's mentioned SUN yet!!! I suppose this is because their new
lines use their "SBus". but the old sun 3 line uses a VME bus. and they
are still putting out recent versions of SunOS for it. last I checked,
they definately has SunOS 4.1.1 for the sun3

-- 
  --------------------------------------------------
"How do I love sea? Let me count the waves.." |philb@cats.ucsc.edu
P.Anthony, "The Colo(u)r of her panties"      |philb@soda.berkeley.edu

In article <1em59sINN90u@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> philb@cats.ucsc.edu (Philip Brown) writes:
>>> What kind of machines (mainframes, microcomputers) commonly use VMEbus, and
>>> what OS's are best suited to the 68000 series in this architecture?
>Gee., no-one's mentioned SUN yet!!! I suppose this is because their new
>lines use their "SBus". but the old sun 3 line uses a VME bus. and they
>are still putting out recent versions of SunOS for it. last I checked,
>they definately has SunOS 4.1.1 for the sun3

Of the Sun 3's, only the Sun 3/xxx (i.e. 3-digit) suns had an expandable
VMEbus.  Although desktop systems like Sun 3/60 had a 2-slot VMEbus, both slots
were used by the system, hence making it non-expandable.

Some Sun4's also have a VMEbus backplane. Of the older models, there are the
Sun 4/260, 4/330, 4/370.  Of the newer models, the Sun SPARCservers (4/6xx ??)
still come with VMEbus.  However, as compared to the desktop SPARCstations,
they are really expensive, and hence not as many people buy them.  

I wish Sun stuck with some low-end VMEbus-based SPARCstations.   You could use
a Sbus-to-VMEbus adaptor, and hook up a VMEbus to a SPARCstation, and hence let
you access VMEbus devices from the host workstation.  However, there is a
severe limitation to this.  Each SBus slot can only address 16MBytes of memory,
and therefore you can only have a 16MByte window that can be seen by the host
workstation, unless you start hacking up the device drivers for the VMEbus
devices to use some kind of paging that might be supported by the adaptor.  For
example, a frame grabber can easily have 16MBytes of memory.  The SBus
limitations would prevent you from putting more than one frame grabber in your
system if you want to be able to map the entire memory into the host
workstation's address space.  This problem does not exist on Suns with a
VMEbus.

I believe the IRIS workstations also use a VMEbus, but I am not 100%
sure of this.

~dave

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David B. Stewart  - email: <dstewart@cmu.edu>            The Robotics Institute
snail mail:       - ECE Dept., Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Current Projects: - Chimera 3.0 Real-Time Operating System
		  - Reconfigurable Sensor-Based Control Systems

most bus extender companies can translate about any bus to VME.  For
example Bit 3 and Performance Technologies both make ? to VME
convertors. 
--
   John C. Schultz   +1 (612) 733-4047   schultz@halley.serc.3m.com
   How to include the taste of Glendronach in a multi-media system?

In article <By35rp.IvJ.1@cs.cmu.edu>, dstewart+@cs.cmu.edu (David B Stewart) writes:
> ...
> I believe the IRIS workstations also use a VMEbus, but I am not 100%
> sure of this.


The larger Silicon Graphics IRIS's have one or more VME buses.
In other words, one or more group of 4 or more slots, each group on
a separate VME bus connected to one of (or the) faster bus(es) in the system.
These slots are 9-U slots.

The Personal IRIS's, 4D/20, 4D/25, and 4D/35, had one 6-U VME slot.

The Indigo is the first IRIS in many years to not have any VME slots.

Some VME boards consisting of an IRIS have been built and sold.
I've never understood how many of those, if any, were not "specials."


Vernon Schryver, vjs@sgi.com

dstewart+@cs.cmu.edu (David B Stewart) writes:

>Some Sun4's also have a VMEbus backplane. Of the older models, there are the
>Sun 4/260, 4/330, 4/370.  Of the newer models, the Sun SPARCservers (4/6xx ??)
>still come with VMEbus.  However, as compared to the desktop SPARCstations,
>they are really expensive, and hence not as many people buy them.  

>I wish Sun stuck with some low-end VMEbus-based SPARCstations.


But gee, there's the 4/110, Which I have. then again, it insists on being
the only VME busmaster.. :-)

-- 
  --------------------------------------------------
"How do I love sea? Let me count the waves.." |philb@cats.ucsc.edu
P.Anthony, "The Colo(u)r of her panties"      |philb@soda.berkeley.edu

There are also some systems from MIPS, and CDC with VME Bus.

The systems did have R3000 or R6000 processors from MIPS as the main processor.
The VMEbus is used as an I/O Bus. 

Some of the models as I remember:

Mips RC3250 (= CDC CD4350), R3000 with some VMEslots for I/O
Mips RC3260 (= CDC CD4360), R3000 with some more VMEslots

MIPS RC6280 (= CDC CD4680), upto 4 R6000 with 60 or 80 Mhz (r6000 = ECL R3000),
                            upto 3 I/O Adapter, each I/O Adapter supports
			    upto two VMEbus (not Slots!) 30Mb/sec each.
			    The internal VMEbus (first I/O Adapter) has 6 slots,
			    the additional Bus'es are in an expansion cabinet,
			    9 slots each I believe (or 12, I'm not sure).
			    The maximum is 6 VME bus'es.

CDC CD437x                  This is SGI hardware, a large box with upto
			    8 R3000/40Mhz and lots of VME I/O slots.

The operating system is RISCos (a SYS V rel 3 with many BSD extensions,
SYS V Rel 4 in the newest version). CDC has EP/IX, which is RISCos with
nice enhancements. 

Sincerely,
Klaus

--
Klaus Steinberger               Beschleunigerlabor der TU und LMU Muenchen
Phone: (+49 89)3209 4287        Hochschulgelaende
FAX:   (+49 89)3209 4280        D-8046 Garching, Germany
Internet: Klaus.Steinberger@Physik.Uni-Muenchen.DE

jartsu@vipu.hut.fi (Jartsu) writes:

>In article <yatesbd-191192204110@pharm15.med.upenn.edu> yatesbd@pharm.med.upenn.edu (Brian Yates) writes:

>> What kind of machines (mainframes, microcomputers) commonly use VMEbus, and
>> what OS's are best suited to the 68000 series in this architecture?

>Atari TT and MegaSTE have VMEbus. At least with TT, main applications
>are hi-end graphics-adapters, TCP-IP interfaces, multiport serial
>interfaces and similar.

>--
>*******************   "Jartsu"   **********************
>***********   Jari                 Lehto   ************
>****************   "I hate MS-DOS"   ******************
>*****   Finger jartsu@vipu.hut.fi for more info   *****

I hate MS-DOS too.
skwong@se.cuhk.hk