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

[Paul Berger]

On 2016-04-21 6:35 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Ali <cctalk at ibm51xx.net> wrote:
>
>>> Actually, the first one was called XT/370 because it plugged into an
>>> XT!
>>> Then came AT/370.  Those were obviously ISA boards.  Then came some
>>> variants that were microchannel.  The final iterations were PCI based.
>>>
>> Guy,
>>
>> I am not sure about the other systems but my understanding of the XT/370
>> and AT/370 was that they were glorified terminals i.e. instead of having a
>> terminal and a PC on your desk you could have it all in one. Is this wrong?
>>
> I think you're thinking of the 3270 PC  and 3270 AT, which was pretty much
> what you described here...
>
> - Josh
>
No the 3270 PC and 3270 AT where a special configuration for 3270 
terminal emulation it conatined a special keyboard with more keys that 
the normal keyboard and connected to a special adapter card in the 
system.  These machines also had a different display and of course came 
with a 3270 emulation adapter.

There was definitely a XT/370 and likely an AT/370 as well the processor 
on the the 370 card in these machines was rumoured to be a modified 
Motorola 68K with special microcode to execute 370 instructions.  These 
machines ran a modified version of VM.

The 9371 system used PS/2 mod 80 system boards for I/O processors and 
had a microchannel card sandwich in them that was the 370 processor, I 
do not believe they could run MVS but they could run VM and VSE.

Paul.