[TUHS] Re: WE321 3B/VME boar (Re: Whither Workstations? (Was Re: Demise of AT&T))

At Sat, 24 May 2025 09:32:26 +0000, segaloco via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote: Subject: [TUHS] Re: Whither Workstations? (Was Re: Demise of AT&T) I'm no expert but I don't think anyone would use the VME WE321 series for prototyping anything targeted at AT&T 3B systems (other than maybe applications software, but 3B2s were much cheaper and easier to manage than a VME machine unless you already had a ton of spare VME boxes). The smaller 3B2s (/300, /400, /500, /600, /700, /1000) were all very PC-like motherboards with an I/O expansion bus that accommodated "feature" cards, but that was not a VME bus. There was a design manual that would have allowed third parties to develop I/O boards for the 3B2s, but I'm not sure any third-party boards were ever produced. (The bigger systems also included expansion slots for more memory, cache, and other things, but those were, I believe, entirely proprietary slots.) VME was more suited, then and perhaps still, for industrial and communications control systems where VME was already in use, but perhaps with a different CPU. There was a companion manual for the WE321 cards to help users develop UNIX System V drivers for other VME devices. I think it was basically AT&T's attempt to sell UNIX into the VME market directly (instead of relying on third parties to do it independently), and because it was ABI-compatible with the 3B line it gave ISVs access to a rather vast amount of commercial software that was already ported to 3Bs. -- Greg A. Woods <gwoods(a)acm.org> Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods(a)robohack.ca> Planix, Inc. <woods(a)planix.com> Avoncote Farms <woods(a)avoncote.ca>