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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.m68k
Subject: Re: Re: What's Nu with VME for Mac?
Message-ID: <1283@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Thu, 13-Nov-86 23:38:24 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1283
Posted: Thu Nov 13 23:38:24 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Nov-86 01:58:03 EST
References: <842@gould9.UUCP> <1240@hoptoad.uucp> <2652@hammer.TEK.COM> <401@intsc.UUCP>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 23

In article <401@intsc.UUCP>, tomk@intsc.UUCP (Tom Kohrs) writes:
>                                                If you think the VME 
> architecture is generalized talk to someone that has tried to put a non-68K
> engine on the bus, it is not trivial.

Who ever claimed that commercial computer design is trivial?

I appreciate that it is harder to put a non-68K on a VMEbus.  I'm
wondering if Tom has ever built Multibus systems out of 68K's.  (For
the uninitiated, Tom works at Intel, and the Multibus was an 8080 bus,
subsequently revised for 8086's.)  Byte order was a constant hassle (the
Tapemaster Multibus tape controller STILL requires the Sun driver to
byte-swap ALL THE DATA going to or from the drive, precluding
streaming).  You can make a good, saleable system using a "non native"
bus though -- we did.

We could all live with a bus that was hard for EVERYBODY to interface
to, but why bother?  I'd rather it be easy for at least ONE major chip
to interface to...
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
    "I can't think of a better way for the War Dept to spend money than to
  subsidize the education of teenage system hackers by creating the Arpanet."