6611 was the commercialized version. One early model was a standard 7012 desktop with the special cards. A later cost optimized version had a custom PowerPC backplane.
There were some good pics of the nsfnet T3 racks I linked onto nekochan forums but that site is gone. Wish people would migrate back to Usenet. On Thu, Nov 1, 2018 at 9:15 AM William Donzelli via cctalk < [email protected]> wrote: > > So, what is this i960-based card for? > > They were the routers. At the core nodes of the network, there would > be a big RS/6000s (very early POWER1 types) that would each do about > 4-5 high speed interfaces (FDDI, HSSI, and 10base2). Each interface > was one of these cards, so each of the big RS/6000s would have about > 4-5 of these cards. > > IBM tried to commercialize the design, but it was doomed - the routing > engines were very fast, but the internet quickly outgrew the > architecture of the engines, and they apparently needed a complete > redesign to compete. IBM did release very few of these RS/6000s to the > public (I think RS/6000-320Hs with a fancy tag - machine type 6767?). > I have only seen one of these routers in the wild, but most of the > real NSFnet ones (I was decommissioning them, one time with a Sawzall > because of some live tangled cables). > > > Could it be related to what you > > say in your post? > > > > https://imgur.com/NIvQPBv > > Possibly related, but that card is not one of the NSFnet ones. > > -- > Will >
