Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

The i860 seemed to be everywhere in high end graphics for a brief period of time; it seems like everyone whose graphics had been several ganged Weitek units and their own execution engine to feed them switched to one or more i860 chips at once. (Wasn’t RealityEngine also i860?) Did Intel offer

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

? They left and founded a little company called Nvidia. Sigh. Marc On Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 5:34 AM Michael Thompson via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2018 14:29:18 -0700 > > From: Eric Korpela > > Subject: Re: i860: Re: modern stuff >

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

> On Nov 4, 2018, at 9:37 AM, Todd Goodman via cctalk > wrote: > > Yes, a company I was working for OEMed what because IBM's X25Net software and > it was ported to their RTIC i960 cards from our own homegrown i960 cards. > > The IBM group we worked with was in La Gaude France but we heard

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

Yes, a company I was working for OEMed what because IBM's X25Net software and it was ported to their RTIC i960 cards from our own homegrown i960 cards. The IBM group we worked with was in La Gaude France but we heard the RTIC cards were developed in Boca Raton, FL. We ran VxWorks on them.

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

William Donzelli 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

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

That’s interesting stuff, get it done! :) On Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 3:01 PM William Donzelli wrote: > I have quite few NSFnet backup tapes that need to go to Al at some > point. They likely have good stuff on them. > > -- > Will > On Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 5:03 AM Kevin Bowling > wrote: > > > > Do

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

I have quite few NSFnet backup tapes that need to go to Al at some point. They likely have good stuff on them. -- Will On Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 5:03 AM Kevin Bowling wrote: > > Do you have software or docs for any of this stuff? I run ps-2.kev009.com > > On Thu, Nov 1, 2018 at 3:41 PM William

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

Do you have software or docs for any of this stuff? I run ps-2.kev009.com On Thu, Nov 1, 2018 at 3:41 PM William Donzelli via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > OK, I assumed the 6611s used the NSFnet type cards. Artic960s are > different animals - but probably very similar in idea. > > My

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 2:27 PM Eric Korpela wrote: > > I also seem to recall that the SERENDIP III SETI spectrometer used i860 > and Austek A41102 FFT processors. I'm pretty sure SERENDIP IV used i960 > and Xylinx FPGAs to do the FFTs. I'll look at the boards tomorrow. > I was wrong on both

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

> > > Was the 1983-84 year multibus sky floating point card the first > offering from Sky Computers ? > > Did anyone use those in an embedded and online floating-point realtime > type of setting ? Or was they only used for off-line number-crunching ? > Sky made the math coprocessor in early

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

ons 2018-10-31 klockan 14:27 -0700 skrev Eric Korpela via cctalk: > The i860 did find some use in the radio astronomy world. > > Here's an excerpt from the 1998 annual report for the Arecibo > Observatory... > -- > Telescope pointing and realtime data acquisition are controlled using

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

> > Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2018 14:29:18 -0700 > From: Eric Korpela > Subject: Re: i860: Re: modern stuff > > A Google search on Skybolt i860 produces interesting results. > >Additional realtime signal processing > > capability is provided by four Skybolt i860-based VME

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

OK, I assumed the 6611s used the NSFnet type cards. Artic960s are different animals - but probably very similar in idea. My memory is hazy, but I think the NSFnet cards were referred to as Hawthornes. Somewhere around here I have one of the really early 386 based routing cards - a weird double

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

The machine type was 6611 and there where three model, the smallest was based on a 7011 the mid size one was based on a 7012 and the largest was based on a 7013. The base card is an Artic 960 card which is just a processor card with some memory that gets an application loaded on the fly.  The

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

Yes, they are. There are reference to those machines in the various nsfnet written histories but not cross linkage to those great pictures. On Thu, Nov 1, 2018 at 2:57 PM William Donzelli wrote: > > Right, thanks. 6611 is correct. I do not think the FDDI or HSSI cards > made it into those. > >

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

Right, thanks. 6611 is correct. I do not think the FDDI or HSSI cards made it into those. The RCS/RI twitter feed has some pictures of NSFnet racks and a F960 FDDI card. Those were from the GNJ node in Greensboro Junction, NC. Were those the pictures? https://twitter.com/RetroCompSocRI -- Will

Whither Google Groups - was Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

On 2018-11-01 5:06 p.m., Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: > > > On 11/1/18 12:22 PM, Kevin Bowling via cctalk wrote: > >> 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. > > Community fragmentation

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

On 11/1/18 12:22 PM, Kevin Bowling via cctalk wrote: > 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. Community fragmentation and reliance on unarchived forums is a Bad Thing. I wonder how much

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

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

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

On 11/01/2018 10:15 AM, William Donzelli via cctalk wrote: I have only seen one of these routers in the wild I worked at a company years ago that ran a pair of IBM RS/6000 (the small beige desktop models, maybe a 43). They were running an IBM Firewall software product that I don't remember

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

> 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

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

A Google search on Skybolt i860 produces interesting results. On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 2:27 PM Eric Korpela wrote: > The i860 did find some use in the radio astronomy world. > > Here's an excerpt from the 1998 annual report for the Arecibo > Observatory... > -- > Telescope pointing

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

The i860 did find some use in the radio astronomy world. Here's an excerpt from the 1998 annual report for the Arecibo Observatory... -- Telescope pointing and realtime data acquisition are controlled using a network of VMEbus single-board computers running the VxWorks operating

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

On Oct 30, 2018, at 6:48 AM, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote: > > So, what is this i960-based card for? Could it be related to what you say in > your post? > > https://imgur.com/NIvQPBv > https://imgur.com/hsF0jO2 >

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

On 10/30/18 4:27 PM, Michael Thompson via cctech wrote: > I have a Quad-i860 VME board in one of my Sun systems. Do you have any of the software for it?

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

> > From: Ken Seefried > Subject: i860: Re: modern stuff > >the i860 found at least a little niche on graphics boards, so somehow > >not a complete failure ;-) > > I have a Quad-i860 VME board in one of my Sun systems. Michael Thompson

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

William Donzelli via cctalk wrote: AIX was ported in very cut down manner and used on the f960 and h960 routing cards used on the early T3 based NSFnet. F960 was FDDI and H960 was HSSI. Come think of it, I think the v.25 and ether net cards also used i960, just a smaller version. -- Will So,

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

I'm aware of some airborne (avionics) computers that used i960s. There were Mil-spec versions available. I believe the i960 really only found a niche in embedded applications. If I recall correctly, the i960 became available at about the same time as the 80386 but was less expensive. At the

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

AIX was ported in very cut down manner and used on the f960 and h960 routing cards used on the early T3 based NSFnet. F960 was FDDI and H960 was HSSI. Come think of it, I think the v.25 and ether net cards also used i960, just a smaller version. -- Will On Oct 29, 2018 12:13 PM, "alan--- via

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

> On Oct 29, 2018, at 5:12 PM, Eric Smith via cctalk > wrote: > > The i960 was how Intel repositioned it to try to salvage as much as > possible. Most i960 variants either don't have the tag bit hardware and > object-oriented "microcode" that was used for BiiN; it is only officially >

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 12:13 PM alan--- via cctalk wrote: > I know i960 is a very different beast, but was there ever any high level > OSs that ran on it? It was originally the BiiN processor, and ran the Osiris operating system. However, few if any were sold, and it disappeared without a

Re: i860: Re: modern stuff

I know i960 is a very different beast, but was there ever any high level OSs that ran on it? Or was it pidgin-holed as a high speed embedded processor for storage controllers and NICs? I picked up a cache of i960 CPUs a couple years ago and they speak to me in tongues every time I pass by

i860: Re: modern stuff

>the i860 found at least a little niche on graphics boards, so somehow >not a complete failure ;-) I'd be mildly surprised if Intel ever made enough from selling i860s as GPUs to cover the cost of developing and marketing them. At the time, Intel was pushing them as their RISC processor, and put