13 Dec
2008
13 Dec
'08
11 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
There are certainly transputer boards for the PC. The
most common in my
experience si the B004, which is am ISA card with a T4 or T8 chip on it,
rows of DIP DRAM, the link interface and ISA bus logic and not a lot
else.
All that DIP RAM was usually 2Mbytes so that you could run the occam
compiler in it. Remember, this was in the days of 640k PC memories.
It has the nromal link connectors on the rear bracket
so you can
hang more transputers off it. There's at least one non-INMOS clone of
this board.
It used 0.1-inch Berg connectors, which were notorious for falling
out when you least expected it.
There was also a TRAM motherboard for the PC. I forget
the number
(B008?)
Yes, the TRAM motherboard for the ISA bus was the B008.
It has the link interface (with ISA logic) and IIRC a
C004 link
swithc on it. You can fill it with TRAMs (TRAnsputer Modules, the
simplest being transputer + RAM, but ones iwth SCSI, GPIB, ethernet, etc
interfaces exist, as does one with a vector processor chip (alongside the
transputer).
The Zoran chip?
Anyway, the so-called BOO boards were (as best I can remember them):
B001: Single Rev.A transputer and SRAM on ITEM card
B002: Single Rev.A transputer and 2Mb DRAM on ITEM card
B003: Four transputers and RAM, on an ITEM card
B004: Transputer and DRAM on ISA card
B005: M212 disk transputer with MFM hard disk and floppy disk
B006: Early TRAM demo board with T212 TRAMs
B007: transputer with VRAM, 6545 and G170 palette chip, ITEM card
B008: TRAM motherboard for ISA bus
B009: A100 DSP chips on ISA card
B010: NEC PC version of B004 (?)
B011: TRAM motherboard in ITEM card format (?)
B012: VME card with transputer and memory
B013: Never built!
B014: TRAM motherboard (with C011 and C004) for VME bus
B015: NEC PC version of B008 (?)
B016: VME bus master card with T801 transputer
B017: TRAM motherboard on MCA card for PS/2 hosts
B018: Special TRAM motherboard for B300
B019: Special differential link I/O board for B300
B020: Transputer with SIMM memory and G332 graphics chip
B042: 6x7 array of transputers for burn-in, used in-house
The ITEM (INMOS Transputer Evauation Module) was a sub-rack holding
a dozen or so extended-Eurocard-sized boards.
The B300 was the ethernet gateway, with four differential links
accessible via TCP/IP.
I worked for INMOS 1989-1994, writing drivers for some of these boards.
--
John Honniball
coredump at gifford.co.uk