24 Oct
2005
24 Oct
'05
10:08 p.m.
On Fri, 2005-10-14 at 17:43 -0400, Allison wrote:
Norsk Data made a NORD-100 on a 3/4 or full-length ISA board. It
cost
millions and millions of kroner (7 kr ~= 1 $) in RnD in the 1980s. I
think it was one of their biggest flops. I think the amount of units
sold barely made three digits. It might have been the first ND-100 in
VLSI. It would trap in and out of ND-100 mode using a special keycode on
the keyboard in the PC's they sold them with. When in ND mode it would
use the x86 as an I/O processor, and communicate with it using a memory
window.
IBM also had S/370 MCA boards implementing a microcoded S/370 on a
MC68000.
Circuit Cellar
had a Z8000 and on card for the PC once. Does anybody
remember
just what it ran? Other than 386's was there any other add on cards for
the PC?
Cards to add other CPUs to PC are many. At any time there were:
8751 (multiples for Mandelbrot calulations)
Z80
Other X86
Z8000
68000
16032
T-11 (PDP-11) All come to mind. Many had no OS as they relied on
the host processor for
support.
The '100 had a to me unknown amount of RAM, but probably no more than
1MB and no less than 128KB. It ran SINTRAN on the onboard RAM. I know of
the existance of one and will snap a shot or two of it next time I'm
there.
-toresbe