On Jan 29, 2024, at 8:07 PM, Bill Degnan via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > Anyone have a VMEbus system they use at least occasionally? If so, what > make/model/config?
I have a variety of VME hardware that I use some of the time, and on the ClassicCmp Discord we even have a #vme channel. I've mostly been using a Motorola MVME167 (with some additional VMEbus memory cards) netbooted to NetBSD off and on, though I also have 147 and 177 cards (68030 and 68060) that I'll use. I also have a couple of MVME197 88000-based cards that I've used to port OpenBSD-mvme88k forward by one point release from when they dropped support. (I wish NetBSD had mvme88k…) And I have a couple other 68K VMEbus cards like a Xycom XVME-600 and XVME-630; the 600 is cute and runs Mach2 FORTH from ROM, while the 630 is a more or less generic 68EC030. I have a variety of peripheral cards that I've been trying to do various things with, including a slick RasterGraf RG-750 graphics & human interface card (it's 34010-based and has AT keyboard and serial mouse ports), a couple NI GPIB cards, and a bunch of earlier cards like Motorola HD/floppy, Ethernet, SCSI, and intelligent serial cards, and so on. I also have a few older Motorola 68010 and 68020 boards; I want to bring up MINIX 1.5.10.7 at some point on my MVME050+MVME121 and see if I can't get it to leverage the MMU. And I have a VME/10 workstation that needs to be put back together that I'd like to run Motorola SVR2 on. Finally, I have a bit of more exotic gear. I have a couple of the INMOS Transputer VME cards (as well as the non-VME equivalents for my ITEMs) and I have a few Mercury Computer Systems i860 cards for which I really, really, *really* want to find documentation someday. It'd be a lot fun to have a bunch of i860s rendering a scene or something that I can then output via the RG-750, controlled by an 88K... Oh yeah, and I have a few Suns and a Symbolics that use 9U VME, as well as a couple ISI systems that use 6U VME[1]. -- Chris [1] ISI used their own QBus-style ejectors on the card top instead of the standard Motorola style plates, so they're *not quite* the same form factor. Darned annoying.
