From: Noel Chiappa Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2016 11:51 AM >> From: Rich Alderson
>> Data was transferred via FTP over a 100baseT crossover cable connected >> to a Slackware server; the Rabbit was able to keep up with 4 drives at >> this speed > Were the bits actually stored on the Slackware server, or was it just used > to put bits on the 'drive' to start with? If the latter, what were the > actual bits stored on? (I know, not that relevant, since this is the prior > rev, but I'm curious.) Stored on a big honking JBOD array (set up as RAID 5 in Linux), since an RP06 stored as described is nigh on 900MB, and served up on that FTP link from Slackware. >> a Mesa 5i22 Anything I/O card (includes a Xilinx Spartan-III FPGA) that >> plugs directly into the PCI bus in a server-class X86-64 box, and used >> a revision of a separate driver/receiver card designed for MDE 1.0 to >> connect to the Massbus > Let me make sure I understand this; was there some sort of cable or > somehow a connection from the Mesa 5i22 directly to the driver/receiver > card, which was purely 'level conversion', with the Mesa doing the > 'protocol' on the MASSBUS? (I.e. they didn't communicate over the PCI > bus?) Yes, the d/r card is strictly level conversion, and the microcode in the Xilinx does all the Massbus protocol. >> a control program for the PC side which runs under Windows 2008/2012 >> Server. > So the actual bits are stored on something (disk?) controlled by the PC? Again using RAID 5 arrays on the PC servers, but PCI makes it a lot faster than Ethernet. Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:ri...@livingcomputermuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/