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From: davecb@yunexus.YorkU.CA (David Collier-Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: PC/AT clones with RISC cpu
Message-ID: <17122@yunexus.YorkU.CA>
Date: 5 Nov 90 13:06:23 GMT
References: <2081@aber-cs.UUCP> <16976@yunexus.YorkU.CA>
Organization: York U. Computing Services
Lines: 76

davecb@yunexus.YorkU.CA (David Collier-Brown) writes:
>  Interestingly enough, there is at least one 68k-cpu pc around: the
>Institute of Space and Terrestrial Studies here at Ork helped develop
>a machine called the "lab 100", which is a small 68xxx-based system
>which uses at-style peripheral controllers and acessory boards, and fits
>in one of the small-footprint pc cases.  


  OOPS: that should have been Lab30!  Tyler Ivanco wrote back in
response to my posting and gave the specs, which include OS9 instead of
Unix, in part for its rtealtiem capabilities, in part for the ease of
writing device drivers...

Tyler writes:
| 	Well here I am out in Calgary reading about this box.  Actually,
| it is called the Lab30. Avy Moise at york (x55359) can show you the unit.
| Briefly:
| 
| 	16-20Mhz 030/FPU,
| 	High Speed SCSI,
| 	8 32/16/8 bit DMA channels,
| 		Any of the 8 channels can be "connected" to any request
| 		source.
| 	23+7 Vectored Interrupt channels,
| 	Series of high resolution timers,
| 	4MB on board DRAM,
| 	32KB SRAM,
| 	128KB EPROM,
| 	2 1Mbit serial channels,
| 	Real Time Clock,
| 	8/16 Bit AT bus (doesn't support bus master mode),
| 	LABus (just the 030 bus signals) to permit memory expansion,
| 		etc.
| 	Split board sandwich.  The PCB can be altered so that it can
| 		be cut in half and sandwiched thus reducing the footprint
| 		but about 50%.
| 	PC keyboard interface,
| 	OS/9 Real Time O.S. with support for the following:
| 		NI GPIB,
| 		SCSI H.D., Tape Drive, Optical Drive,
| 		Serial channels both on the motherboard and AT card,
| 		Real Time clock,
| 	 	Parallel port (on an AT card),
| 		General Purpose event card (custom design for one of our
| 						experiments).
| 	Device drivers in development:	
| 		Keyboard 
| 		floppy disk
| 		ATI VGA graphics
| 		OS/9 Windows 
| 		OS/9 Internet (via ethernet)
| 		AT Ethernet card
| 
| 
| 	Most of the work is real time based hence the reason for OS/9.  This
| 	O.S. is field proven and mature.  It is also easy to create, debug,
| 	and install device drivers.  The system can run without mass storage.
| 	Unix could be run on the system, but we have no plans to port as there
| 	are many other UNIX platforms out there that can do this job quite 
| 	nicely.
| 
| 	Anyway, hope that this help you.
| 
| 						Tyler
| 
| 	Talk to avy.  He can give you a more complete description.


  Alas, this tends to support both my and Henry's points (:-))

--dave
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | davecb@Nexus.YorkU.CA, ...!yunexus!davecb or
72 Abitibi Ave.,      | {toronto area...}lethe!dave or just
Willowdale, Ontario,  | postmaster@{nexus.}yorku.ca
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