Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!pur-ee!pur-phy!piner
From: piner@pur-phy (Richard Piner)
Newsgroups: comp.realtime
Subject: Re: VME 680X0 Boards
Message-ID: <2829@pur-phy>
Date: 1 Dec 89 22:34:25 GMT
References: <4667@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Reply-To: piner@newton.physics.purdue.edu.UUCP (Richard Piner)
Organization: Purdue Univ. Physics Dept., W. Lafayette, IN
Lines: 49

In article <4667@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> news@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu (USENET News System) writes:
>I am trying to set up a VME based system for a real-time robot control
>application. I had previously posted a request for VME info. Now I have
>found several large companies out there and would like to hear about any
>experiences you net folk may have with them. The companies are below:

>1. MATRIX: Produces VME and STD bus boards They don't have 68030's yet
>2. MIZAR: 
>3. FORCE
>4. THEMIS:
>5. MOTOROLA
>6. HEURIKON:

>We have several special requirements such as I/O capability directly off
>the processor using daughter boards with parallel and serial I/O which
>reduces the list of available candidates.
>
>Has anyone been using boards from these companies, how are their tech
>support, the boards etc. Also, for people integrating imageprocessing
>with VME, are there any image processing boards which down load data not
>just through the VME but also through an external channel so that the
>image data does not bog down the single bus?

I put together a VME system to run an STM and process the images.
Some of the details are in the October issue of Review of Scientific Inst.

I used a combination of Mizar, Datacube, and Heurikon stuff.
The Mizar boards were just simple I/O boards. We used their boards
because they had some simple cheap boards and that was all we needed
or could afford. The CPU and system came from Heurikon. Their stuff
is top rate. We just got a new system from them a couple of months ago.
The CPU card does it all. SCSI, serial i/o, parallel, 4 Meg of memory, etc.
The system only cost $8K (+ $700 for OS9/68K and C compiler).
They also have UNIX and VRTX, but they cost more.
For what it's worth, I heard that Heurikon has bought OS9000 and
is porting to some of their systems too. I think Heurikon can meet your
needs. We bought a five slot system, and four of the slots were open.

To process our images, we are using Datacubes MAX-Graph. That card
plus software plus a monitor cost under 3K$. It works well, but there
is still some sort of bug in the driver's interrupt handler.
Datacube makes all kinds of frame grabbers, displays, convolutions,
etc. The boards are connected through cables on the front panels
and commands can be queued in each board. If you want to get
some impressive image processing done and don't mind writting
some complicated code, you can make it go real fast. Datacube's number
is 508-535-6644. They support both UNIX and OS9.
Hope that helps.
					R. Piner


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