🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <id.IO0W.TLE@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
>I've seen two versions of this: one successful, one less so. The Convergent
>Technology bookshelf unit is a very nice design, with a positive mechanical
>lock and no arbitrary limits to the bus length. The Amiga expansion port is
>less successful, because it has no lock and the signal definition was never
>designed for multiple piggybacks. The original Amiga design would have been
>much better: basically stacked units with a bus running vertically up the
>back of the stack, using gravity for locking. It was abandoned because it
>would have added a several dollars to the cost of manufacturing a $1500 PC.

A modular block design is going to be slightly more expensive due to
case/connection cost.  I'd like to see the Convergent box sometime. 
I've never encountered one before.  Is the BUS architecture closed?

But imagine if it was standardized. You could buy a pre-fab block with
standardized mounting points for a circuit board and connectors, and
plug a project board into it.  Drive goes out, snap it off, and snap
another on.  This of course would require that:

>I'd like to see the bus specifics decoupled from the software, so you had
>some sort of interface that you told "go to unit so-and-so and send this
>control/read this data". Then you could use a low-cost hookup with ethernet
>type cables, or a high-speed bus type option, without impacting the software.
>You could even plug a low-speed adaptor into a high speed bus to hook up
>your laptop when you get home.
>
>If course this would logically be a LAN (um, CAN: Computer Area Network?).

Yes, exactly.  You could even make the thing somehow know how far off it
is, like contact the device 3 hops from the mother block, etc.  The
ethernet idea of unique Umpteen bit addresses somehow scares me. 
Perhaps use one decoupled bus pin, as a serial address marker that is
gobbled, incremented and passed down to the next device on the same pin,
sent every second or so until a block is connected and acks the address,
which would then pick up it's address, increment it ... 

>> <SIGH>  not in my lifetime I suppose.
>
>Go get a Burroughs/CT bookcase unit. UHaul uses them here in Houston, or
>call your local Unisys rep.
           ^^^^^
Hehehehe :) :)!


I'm sure It's not an expensive box :) :)!
-- 
Keith Smith          uunet!ksmith!keith            5719 Archer Rd.
Digital Designs      BBS 1-919-423-4216            Hope Mills, NC 28348-2201
Somewhere in the Styx of North Carolina ...