Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!vuse.vanderbilt.edu!abbott
From: abbott@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Ben Abbott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: RE:   PC transputer boards under VM/386???
Message-ID: <9002232006.AA05418@signu>
Date: 23 Feb 90 20:06:58 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 40



My 386 PC / Transputer host is shared by 3 Students along with myself.

The approach I use follows:

We use ix-386 Unix with the VPIX dos shell.  (This allow multiple DOS sessions)

The final system is such that each user finds a machine on campus
and then gets on the 386 via rlogin.
Then he moves to the DOS/VPIX environment.  If the Transputer is available
he gets it.  If not, he may only compile (LSC is a cross compiler) and
keep trying to get the transputer.  The rule is to only give yourself
access to the transputer while running a program.  So yes, we share it,
but only one program runs at a time.
I only have one b008 but am positive that multiple cards
could be used in the same fashion.  Each being fought for.

Under VPIX: control access of devices is quite easy and requires no programming.
            (Just run through some menus)
VPIX handles the issues of physical memory/io address coordination.


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Another approach I have used was to stay only in unix.
I wrote my first unix device driver (a massive hack) to support the
transputer as a unix device.  I ported the LSC stuff to unix as well (actually
this required simply copying the source to unix setting some
switches and running make  -- Thanks K.B.).
I do not have the kids work from this environment due to documentation
differences.  It is quite easy to put together a unix device driver to support
multiple boo8 cards (but I have not done it -- I only have one interface card).

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I hope it helps.

Ben Abbott
Vanderbilt Univ.