On 1/7/07, Paul Thompson <pt at new.rr.com> wrote: Given what it takes to make the BIIC (the DEC chip in the corner of *all* VAXBI boards) work, unlike older CSR-based boards, I don't think it's feasible (or perhaps possible) to have a dumb VAXBI board. At the very least, you'd need some form of state engine to handle ticking the board-side of the BIIC so that the board tells the host VAX that it passed self test. In the era that folks were building VAXBI boards (like our COMBOARD-BI), for communication interfaces, at least, a 68000-family processor was a reasonable way to implement the board smarts - check the DMB32 for one example. -ethan