[TUHS] Release of 8th, 9th and 10th Editions Unix

[Brad Spencer]

Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> writes:

>> My understanding is that the 3/50 is indeed some sort of VME system, as
>> is the 4/110, with some address related oddities.  But it has been a
>> very long time since I booted a 3/50 up...  The 3/50 I have are in their
>> cases, I just opened them up for the pictures.
>
> Hmm, so the 4/110 being VME is for sure correct, I had one of those when
> I was at Sun.  The 3/50, I just don't think it was VME.  I believe they
> made a version that was a single VME board but so far as I know that was
> a different beast.  I could be wrong, I googled a bit and couldn't figure
> it out.
>
> What I know for sure is, unlike a 4/110, you couldn't open up the case 
> and shove more VME stuff in there.  If the 3/50 was a VME board I'm not
> sure what the point was other than, perhaps, to reuse the same part in
> a small case.  I can't see Andy doing that, he was super cost sensitive.


I think that the 3/50 was a "single board" VME system... and as you say
you really couldn't add anything to it.  I will pull one out and get
some close up shots of the connectors and perhaps the answer can be
determined by physical inspection.  I also looked at the config file for
NetBSD for the sun3 and it very much mentions vme all over the place,
but that may not have applied to the 3/50.  Is it possible that just VME
connector was used for power and the like... but nothing else??



-- 
Brad Spencer - brad at anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS
http://anduin.eldar.org  - & -  http://anduin.ipv6.eldar.org [IPv6 only]