🚀 go-pugleaf

This is the second of many installments summarizing what happened at
the 1988 Annual MUS meeting held in Danvers, MA from Tuesday,
April 19th until Thursday, April 21st.

Initially, I will summarize those things I personnally took notes on.
Any other persons who want to submit summaries, please do so. Also,
opinions expressed are obviously mine. Other opinions are welcome.

This one will summarize the new product annoucements most notably the
MC6XXX series.

Four computers were announced. Three can ship during summer. One will
have to wait until fall. 

All computers annouced use the Motorola 68030 CPU @ 25Mhz. All computers
are multiprocessor-capable. All computers are designed to work with
the new Super-Lightening Floating Point Chip Set (Described later).
All computers have the ability to interface to VME cards. Base prices
(for systems, not building blocks) start at $24,900 list. All computers
run RTU and can use the DACP front end. All computers support at least the 
GA1000 graphics. All computers support ECC memory. The CPUs support 64K
of cache each and up to 120Mb of high-speed (private memory bus @ up to
26.6 MB/sec) memory. Each CPU comes standard with a 68882 floating point
co-processor.

The new high end computers are the MC6600 and MC6700 computers. They
are built into the same cabinets as the 5600/5700 computers. In fact,
owners of the 5600/5700 computers have been able to upgrade their computers
to what is in effect a 6600/6700 since last Novemeber when the PEP for
that line  (PEP-567-30-B) was announced last October. The important new
thing annouced here is the support for VME bus in the backplane. According
to the marketing data, you can support 30 Multibus and up to 20 (6U) VME
cards in the MC6700 and half these numbers in the MC6600. The number of CPUs
supported in these computers are 1-3 for the MC6600 and 2 to 5 for the MC6700.
When asked why they were supporting fewer CPUs in the high-end MC6700, the
reply was lack of power. Representatives of MASSCOMP sensitive to problems
with power supplies in previous products (like the 8-slot MC500) stated that
the power supplies shipped in all the new computers are capable of handling 
more cards that in previous products when they were annouced.
[They also commented that those customers with power problems should look
into some power upgrade options available currently for the MC500-series.]

The press release sez "A full comfigured MC6700 system provides maximum
performace of 35 million Whetstone instructions per second." These systems
support the GA1000 and GA800 graphics systems. The GA600 is not listed on
the marketing information.

While these two computers strongly resemble the MC5600/5700 computers,
the other two computers are the real new technology. The MC6300 and MC6400
(the MC6400 will not ship until fall) are built around a single board
computer that is built on a 9U VME card. As such, these computers do not
support any Multibus boards without the use of a VME-Multibus bus adapter.
[In fact, Masscomp will be shipping MC6300 with graphics boards that
are multibus cards with these adapters until the new graphics sub-systems
come out.] This single-board computer has can have up to two cpu's, up to
8Mb of parity memory and two super lightening FPA's. It also has 
ethernet, SCSI, and 4 RS232 ports standard.  The MC5300/5400/5500 cannot be
upgraded to these computers because of the different bus structures.
The MC6300 comes in a pedistal package. The MC6400 comes in a rack-mount
package. The MC6400 will support either STD-BUS+ cards in the
front or more VME cards. One of the things holding up the shipping of the
MC6400 (we are told) is how this part of the packaging will work.

The MC6300/MC6400 support only the GA1000 graphics subsystem according
to the marketing information. Additionally, two 9U slots on each system
can support VME (9U) that match Sun Microsystem's pinout. This means
that many cards built for Suns can now be used in a MASSCOMP (not
Sun CPU or memory cards, though).

The other hardware annoucement of interest was the Super Lightening Floating
Point Accelerator. Unlike previous FPAs from MASSCOMP, this is a chip set,
not a board. However, it is software compatible with the current Lightening
FPA found on the MC5XXX line. As such, applications should port easily. 
The Super Lightening is $3000 and performs at 7 million Whetstones per second.
Super Lightenings only work with the MC68030 CPUs in any of the MC6XXX 
products. Those who have MC5600/MC5700 who upgrade to MC68030 CPUs can 
trade in their Lightenings for the new product and pay only $1000.
[The older Lightening FPA's will work with the new MC68030-bases CPUs.]

For those considering an upgrade or replacement and wish to move 
disk drives from older systems to these new systems, you should know
that some disks supported on the MC5000 series will not be supported
on the MC6000 series. Please be sure to check with your sales person
before assuming it will be supported.

Additionally, in the hardware area, MASSCOMP is moving to a new
cartridge table drive for all computers. This tape drive will allow
up to 150MB to be stored on one tape. MASSCOMP hopes to start shipping
software updates on cartidge tape at some point. When asked if MASSCOMP
would upgrade all the older cartridge tapes currently on the MC5XXX in the
field, the answer was "We don't know." Owners of MC5XXX should probably
voice there opinion about this issue to their nearby sales person.
[The new tape drive is called the ST-8 (Cabinet) or the PT-8 (Pedistal) or
the TD-150 and costs $2100 and is actually cheaper than the older 45MB
1/4-inch tape (PT-2 or TD-Q6400 @ $2500). If you are ordering a new system,
get the new tape drive.]


This is the end of summary 2. If you were there and you disagree with
my statements here, please drop me a line.

Stan Barber, Immediate Past President
Masscomp Users' Society
Moderator of comp.sys.masscomp