Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!mcnc!ncsuvx!news
From: bank@lea.ncsu.edu (Dave The DM)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware
Subject: Re: Microchannel Specs Wanted
Message-ID: <1991Jan18.233856.17774@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 91 23:38:56 GMT
References: <85TA02Rz04Ep01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com>
Organization: /etc/organization
Lines: 34

In article <85TA02Rz04Ep01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> jnb10@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Joe Boucher) writes:
>I am looking for as much technical info as I can get on Microchannel.
>
>I have a 55 SX and would like to build some interface boards. Is the
>information itself licensed by IBM, or is it freely available as it is
>with the AT bus? I can't seem to get an answer from IBM reps as to whether
>or not the info is in the Technical Ref Manual.
>
>Does anyone have any suggestions for any books that might have complete
>specs (enough to design from), or anywhere else that I might try.
>
>Thanks in advance.
>Joe Boucher

   You'll have to get the specs from IBM, as far as I know. I don't
know what the cost involved is, but I do know that part of the bus
design involves embedded ROMs with, you guessed it, throughly
copyrighted code.

   As clean as the bus design might be, its a tangle of legal
ownership, patents, and copyrights.

   You're pretty much stuck with IBM as your sole source of info,
unless you want to try to contat a company that has made an
MCA board and weasel it out of them.

   I don't see that Big Blue would be all that reluctant to give you
the information you need to build an expansion board. It's to their

advantage in the end. One of the things that made the old AT bus
so popular was the wide variety of expansion cards for it.

Dave the DM
bank@lea.csc.ncsu.edu