> On Jan 30, 2024, at 6:48 PM, Chris Hanson via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
> On Jan 30, 2024, at 3:25 PM, Bill Degnan via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> thanks. I suppose that gives me enough idea what time period and use they
>> had
>
> VMEbus was widely used as a successor to MultiBus in the workstation market,
> a lot of vendors that started with MultiBus (Sun/SGI for example) switched to
> VME because they were using 68K anyway and it a supported full 32-bit address
> and data space, where MultiBus was mostly designed for 8080/8085/8086 (and
> even 8086 required some extension to support 16-bit data bus width and 20-bit
> address space).
>
> The biggest uses of VMEbus though were in laboratory automation, process
> control, and robotics, where it was in competition with both MultiBus and
> DIO[1] (the bus on the HP 9000-200 and 9000-300 series, which were originally
> designed as successors to the HP 1000/21MX/2100 series). That's why you'll
> see a lot of analog and digital I/O hardware, computer vision systems, motor
> controllers, and so on in the VMEbus 3U and 6U form factors. This is also
> what got VMEbus used in a lot of American defense applications.
There's also VXIbus, which is VMEbus with some extensions and packaging
standards for instrumentation modules. It seems to be still alive and well
today.
paul
