i860: Re: modern stuff

They were the routers. At the core nodes of the network, there would be a big RS/6000s (very early POWER1 types) that would each do about 4-5 high speed interfaces (FDDI, HSSI, and 10base2). Each interface was one of these cards, so each of the big RS/6000s would have about 4-5 of these cards. IBM tried to commercialize the design, but it was doomed - the routing engines were very fast, but the internet quickly outgrew the architecture of the engines, and they apparently needed a complete redesign to compete. IBM did release very few of these RS/6000s to the public (I think RS/6000-320Hs with a fancy tag - machine type 6767?). I have only seen one of these routers in the wild, but most of the real NSFnet ones (I was decommissioning them, one time with a Sawzall because of some live tangled cables). Possibly related, but that card is not one of the NSFnet ones. -- Will