High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

[Josh Dersch]

On 4/20/16 6:57 AM, Toby Thain wrote:
> On 2016-04-20 5:12 AM, Jonathan Katz wrote:
>> On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 11:04 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Intel's effort at RISC. Didn't go so well for them, but did inspire
>>> the name of Windows NT and was the original host platform for the
>>> then-new OS.
>>>
>>
>> The i860 was a neat little bugger. There was an iPSC/860 done by Intel
>> which would be a fun box to save/rescue/run with its own variation of 
>> Unix.
>>
>
> There were some coprocessor cards that used it as well - I see them on 
> ebay periodically. I think the YARC used AMD 29K... was there an 
> i860/i960 version as well?
>
> I'm changing the subject because the subject of RISC coprocessor 
> boards has already been interesting to me; I owned the NuBus Levco 
> Translink II (for Mac II family) with four TRAM slots for transputers.
>
> Also going to mention the BBC Tube coprocessor here. Which had an ARM 
> version, iirc.
>
> --Toby
>

Ok, this one's from the 70s, and it's a large, external unit rather than 
a single board, but I have a Floating Point Systems AP-120B, essentially 
an array processor for fast floating point operations. There's a bit of 
information here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPS_AP-120B

I'd love to get it running one of these days, just need +5V at 100A and 
a set of interface boards for a PDP-11...

- Josh