20 Oct
2000
20 Oct
'00
11:10 a.m.
There was a project board that was featured in the
Micro Cornucopia around 1984, or so. It was an
ISA co-processor board, that ran UNIX; it used the PC
as an IO server. It was pretty slick. I really
wanted one, but sure couldn't afford it.
One of these actually showed up on e-bay a couple of
years back; naturally I was outbid.
There was another project, the PC32 which was a
32000 based SBC. Also pretty slick; they run NetBSD.
These are pretty rare as well.
All of the 32000's had an 'orthogonal' instruction
set; it was also the same IS for 8,16,and 32 bit
parts.
I have the users manual around here someplace . . .
Jeff
On Fri, 20 Oct 2000 15:21:31 -0400 Douglas Quebbeman
<dhquebbeman(a)theestopinalgroup.com> writes:
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I vote to
drop-kick this weeks discussion/useless rant
on Windows and other OS's and other pokes to list members.
Get back to you classic computers, VAXen, boxen,
whatever-you-have-en, which this list is meant for!
Anyone with me on this?
I've heard little discussion (since I joined earlier this year)
about the National Semiconductor 32000 processor line. IIRC,
some (but not all) of the chips in this family were true
3-address machines.
Anyone familiar with them? Do any significant assembly
language programming on one?
-dq 
20 Oct
20 Oct
12:41 p.m.
New subject: NatSemi 32000
Tektronix (the Oscilloscope people) built a line of early Unix workstations
based on the National 16032 (which was the 16-bit bus version of the 32032).
These machines were the Tektronx 6130 and the later Tektronix 4132. I have
running examples of each. These machines ran a Tek-hacked version of 4.2bsd
called UTek. The machines were essentially a single-board
computer that had the CPU, some on-board RAM (1MB), a ST-506 hard disk
interface (on the 6130) or SCSI-I Interface (on the 4132) a floppy
controller (on the 6130), two serial ports, a GPIB port, an
AUI connector for 10Mb Ethernet, and a bus interface that allowed various
option boards (RAM, Async, Parallel, SCSI, GPIB) to be plugged in.
These machines were actually pretty cool for their time...and if Tek
would have marketed them properly, the could have competed with
Sun's machines. But, Tek was an instrumentation company, and they
really didn't know very well how to market a Unix workstation. Tek
made another attempt at the market with the 43xx workstations, but
these used Motorola 68K and 88K CPU's, and never really did very will
with them.
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Web Museum
http://www.geocities.com/oldcalculators
3:48 p.m.
New subject: NatSemi 32000
I have a bunch of 6205 workstation boards, It was the bigger brother of the
61XX series. Strangely enough, The guy I'm working with at radisys designed
part of the IOP ( i/o processor ) on the 62xx series.
Jim Davis.
Rick Bensene wrote:
Tektronix (the Oscilloscope people) built a line of
early Unix workstations
based on the National 16032 (which was the 16-bit bus version of the 32032).
These machines were the Tektronx 6130 and the later Tektronix 4132. I have
running examples of each. These machines ran a Tek-hacked version of 4.2bsd
called UTek. The machines were essentially a single-board
computer that had the CPU, some on-board RAM (1MB), a ST-506 hard disk
interface (on the 6130) or SCSI-I Interface (on the 4132) a floppy
controller (on the 6130), two serial ports, a GPIB port, an
AUI connector for 10Mb Ethernet, and a bus interface that allowed various
option boards (RAM, Async, Parallel, SCSI, GPIB) to be plugged in.
These machines were actually pretty cool for their time...and if Tek
would have marketed them properly, the could have competed with
Sun's machines. But, Tek was an instrumentation company, and they
really didn't know very well how to market a Unix workstation. Tek
made another attempt at the market with the 43xx workstations, but
these used Motorola 68K and 88K CPU's, and never really did very will
with them.
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Web Museum
http://www.geocities.com/oldcalculators
23 Oct
23 Oct
4:07 a.m.
New subject: NatSemi 32000
Rick Bensene wrote:
> Tektronix (the Oscilloscope people) built a line of early Unix workstations
> based on the National 16032 (which was the 16-bit bus version of the 32032).
I may be coorected, but AFAIR are the 16032 and 32032 the very
same CPUs - NS just changed at one point the family name 16xxx
to 32xxx to reflect the 32 Bit hype. Bussize was always noted
by the last two digits, while the middle digit served as family.
16008/32008 8-Bit external Data
16016/32016 16-Bit external Data
16032/32032 32-Bit external Data
External FPUs 32081 and 32181
BTW, the NS32 family is still alive as embeded/single chip
CPUs - just the naming scheme changed to 32llbbv where
ll are two letters descibing the type (CG=CPU Core, FX=),
bb is the bussize (always 16 at the moment) anv v is a
version/subtype. Well, at least that'S what they had in
mind until they came up with names like NS32FX100 and 200.
So forget about naming schemes anymore.
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 2.0 am 28./29. April 2001 in Muenchen
http://www.vintage.org/vcfe
http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe
8674
days inactive
8677
days old
3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Hans.Franke＠mch20.sbs.de -
jeff.kaneko＠juno.com -
jimdavis＠gorge.net -
rickb＠bensene.com