VME? related to College search. - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

22 Apr 1999

I'm quite certain that VME predates the 1983 date you've specified.  I
made/sold a wirewrap card for VME back in the early portion of 1982 at which
time I was a latecomer to the VME Bus Manufacturers' Group.  Mostek and
Motorola both had complete systems available for 68K development and such.
Not much effort had been put into making it useful for anything else, but
FORCE Computers, apparently a German company with outlets here in the US,
had a complete set of boards for nearly any common purpose and some kind of
OS available. at that time.

BICC-Vero made cardcages, backplanes, and wire-wrap boards for the VME of
the time, and several inependent card makers were making the little
"single-connector" cpu and interface boards for embedded applications in
1982.  This happened to be at the same time as my last divorce, so I have
realatively good recall due to association with other events of the time.

Dick

-----Original Message-----
From: Christian Fandt &lt;cfandt(a)netsync.net&gt;
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
&lt;classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu&gt;
Date: Thursday, April 22, 1999 7:18 AM
Subject: Re: VME? related to College search.

...
 Upon the date 12:07 AM 4/22/99 -0400,
jpero(a)cgocable.net said something like:
...
  What's
about this VME and programming on that 68000 type? 
If I understand your question, the VMEbus is a 32-bit microcomputer bus
which is used primarily in industrial computers. Certain Sun products also
used it but I defere to those experts for further Sun comment.

VMEbus was invented by John Black and others at Motorola in 1983. Came from
the now-obsolete VersaModule bus structure Moto had since I think the
mid-70's. Basic form factor was the Eurocard with DIN 46xxx connector
(can't recall DIN number at moment). Hence, VMEbus = VersaModule Eurocard
bus. Quickly became a standardized bus protocol worldwide.

Moto, Mostek and Philips were earliest suppliers of hardware. Others
followed. Still somewhat popular and well supported today. The 68k
processor family was the most used uP.  However, Intel uP's, Moto's 88000
RISC uP, some Transputer devices and other uP's were also used in VMEbus
module designs.

A fairly recent extension of the VMEbus protocol, VME64, extends the bus to
64 bits. The physics community is a major user of VME64 nowadays.

Don't anyone have graphics of VME stuff like cages, cards, VME 
Start by looking at this URL from eg3 which has a good list of VMEbus
resources:  http://www.eg3.com/indc/indcxvme.htm.

VITA - The VMEBus International Trade Association, has a URL:
http://www.vita.com/ . You could find more info and links there.

 equipments?  And how common is this out in that
canadian field? 
Should be as common as it was in the States as it was found usually in
embedded industrial control and data collection systems in factories, etc.
Of course, the PeeCee stuff replaced some installations if the user wanted
to move to or start his/her design using the Intel processor or go for a
design 'on the cheap and dirty' as VMEbus products and s/w could be a bit
pricey. Multibus I and II and, to a smaller extent, STDbus and G64 were
competition to VMEbus.

I see that in my college electronic engineering technology course
info by Algonquin College in canada within Ottawa, Ontario.

Other college St. Lawerence College offers same type of course
but uses x86 and pc type circuits in their courses which in my
opinion bit shortsighted and lacks "commerical" areas compared to
Algonquin's. 
I agree. Algonquin is fine with including VMEbus and other industrial
busses in their course structure. PeeCee could be included but for critical
real time apps it should be stated that VMEbus and its board products and
OS's are one the several non-PeeCee systems which really shine.

Keep your thoughts freely flowing! 
Yeah, well the on topic ones are fine from us, but . . . ;)

Regards,  Chris
-- --
Christian Fandt,         Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY  USA      cfandt(a)netsync.net
Member of Antique Wireless Association
        URL: http://www.ggw.org/awa 