i860: Re: modern stuff

[Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez]

William Donzelli wrote:
>> So, what is this i960-based card for?
> They were the routers. At the core nodes of the network, there would
> be a big RS/6000s (very early POWER1 types) that would each do about
> 4-5 high speed interfaces (FDDI, HSSI, and 10base2). Each interface
> was one of these cards, so each of the big RS/6000s would have about
> 4-5 of these cards.
>
> IBM tried to commercialize the design, but it was doomed - the routing
> engines were very fast, but the internet quickly outgrew the
> architecture of the engines, and they apparently needed a complete
> redesign to compete. IBM did release very few of these RS/6000s to the
> public (I think RS/6000-320Hs with a fancy tag - machine type 6767?).
> I have only seen one of these routers in the wild, but most of the
> real NSFnet ones (I was decommissioning them, one time with a Sawzall
> because of some live tangled cables).
>
>> Could it be related to what you
>> say in your post?
>>
>> https://imgur.com/NIvQPBv
> Possibly related, but that card is not one of the NSFnet ones.
>
> --
> Will
After searching the web for a while, I finally discovered what this is:  
the key is that it is a "2-O" mca adapter, and it is a V.35 
communications adapter.  But I also learned that IBM produced a series 
of adapters hosting an i960 consisting of a processor card and a 
daughter card; the daughter card would have the specifics for the kind 
of interface that was implemented (rs232, rs422, X.25, etc).  These 
adapters were called "ARTIC960 coprocessors".  They were first produced 
for microchannel, later for PCI.  You could develop code for it in an 
rs/6000 system, and then load on the adapter and run it:

http://ohlandl.ipv7.net/communications/aa6proggde.pdf

carlos.