29 Dec
2007
29 Dec
'07
7:27 p.m.
Roy J. Tellason said the following on 12/29/2007 10:18 PM:
I remember vaguely running into some literature that
mentioned multibus some
years back, but I never encountered any of the actual equipment. Heck, the
literature didn't even mention prices, though I got the impression that it
was kinda spendy compared to some of the other choices that were around at
the time.
Is there much of this stuff out there?
Any pointers to technical descriptions and such? I really don't know much
about it and I'd like to rectify that..
The Multibus was an Intel invention and has its roots in the bus
structure that was used in the Intel MDS-800. As I was told by Intel
reps, the Intel MDS-800, the development system, was so well received
that end users in industry wanted the pieces that made it up to use in
turnkey systems. Recognizing the market Intel developed an entire
family of boards, starting with the SBC 80/10, around it, at some time
naming it "Multibus". Over the years it was enhanced to handle 16- and
even some 32-bit processors.
The 80/10 was based on the 8080 cpu and had ram, EPROM, I/O, all on one
board. The bus was used in subsequent development systems such as the
MDS Series II, Series III, and several systems based on the RMX and
Xenix operating systems.
I'm sure others here will elaborate further, but that's kind of a
nutshell version.
Dave Mabry