Xref: utzoo unix-pc.general:5250 comp.sys.att:9338 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewsh!hoswjc!wjc From: wjc@ho5cad.ATT.COM (Bill Carpenter) Newsgroups: unix-pc.general,comp.sys.att Subject: Re: info about kits Message-ID: Date: 13 Apr 90 11:52:20 GMT References: <1990Apr10.060512.16231@i88.isc.com> <1142@icus.ICUS.COM> <1990Apr12.160906.157@i88.isc.com> Sender: bill@cbnewsh.ATT.COM Reply-To: William_J_Carpenter@ATT.COM (Bill) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 38 In-reply-to: botton@i88.isc.com's message of 12 Apr 90 16:09:06 GMT On 12 Apr 90 16:09:06 GMT, botton@i88.isc.com (Brian D. Botton) said: botton> Sorry netlanders, all I'm willing to say is I want to make botton> an expansion board so bad that it hurts, almost, ;-). Most botton> people aren't using any of their 3 slots and I figured there botton> should be something out there that will fill the void. All I botton> have to do now is find something that is relatively easy to botton> do, won't cost a fortune, and isn't already being done. When botton> I'm ready, I'll let you know. Brian probably has more than enough ideas and is just trying to whittle them down, but in case anyone else has a hot, steaming soldering iron, here's my idea for something relatively simple but potentially quite useful. I am too dangerous when it comes to hardware to get even this simple thing created on my own. What about a way to transfer stuff bidirectionally at high speeds to and from a PC clone? I know some time ago there was talk about building some kind of bus converter so that one could use PC cards somehow with the UNIXpc. I don't recall whether that turned out to be impossible or just impractical. What I have in mind, though, is something closer to the flavor of a truly birdirectional serial port that could operate at a fairly good clip (perhaps with DMA or its own buffering or something). The idea is that you run a cable from this thing to an equivalent bidirectional thingy on the two-dollar PC clone sitting on the next orange crate. Besides the device driver on the UNIXpc, you also need some small amount of software on the clone side. Certainly, you're not going to pretend that it's Ethernet, but it does give you software-assisted access to the PC clone bus. Given all that, figuring in the price and availability of low to medium power clones, and marvelling at all their peripherals and expansion cards, does it make sense (and is it do-able) to treat the clone as an intelligent peripheral controller? -- Bill Carpenter att!ho5cad!wjc or attmail!bill