14 Oct
2010
14 Oct
'10
10:12 a.m.
Ethan wrote about the AT&T Unix PC (7300 or 3B1):
It makes one wonder then how hard it would be to rig
up a card with a
Lance chip (7990) and either IDE or SCSI - I know there are "memory
expansion" slots, but don't know how finicky the machine might be
about borrowing some of that address space for I/O (or if the slots
could decode regions already _in_ I/O space).
There is plenty of I/O address space
available.
Years ago I wire-wrapped a card with a 5380 SCSI chip. I never got to
the stage of having a reliable driver. A wire-wrap board won't fit into
the computer itself; it took up three slots of an expansion box.
One impediment to making cards for the Unix PC is that the 99-pin
three-row DIN-style connector is no longer made. If I remember
correctly, one actually needs some of the contacts at both ends, but
perhaps one could butcher two 96-pin DIN 41612/IEC 60603-2 connectors
into a single 99. I haven't studied the mechanical drawings of the
connectors to figure out how much the connectors would need to be hacked.
Eric