Thanks to the following for their replies to my querry about an Alpha
with a Unibus interface:
lamhof_at_thijssen.nl (Lambert Hofstra)
dave_at_persimmon.com (Dave Sinnott)
tpb_at_zk3.dec.com (Dr. Thomas Blinn)
alan_at_nabeth.cxo.dec.com (Dr. Alan Rollow)
CFSTERN_at_WEIZMANN.weizmann.ac.il (Peter Stern)
system_at_pslaxp.nmsu.edu (Mike Vihel)
The overall consensus is that an Alpha with Unibus does not exist,
though one could be put together using a third party bus converter. A
company in Oregon called The Logical Company is currently making a TC to
Unibus adapter. I realize this is only half of the problem, and that a
device driver may actually be a harder task.
So the solution seems to be to go to a newr, faster MicroVAX. Maybe I
should take this to a MicroVAX discussion list, but since there are so
many people here that are knowledgeable about this, I'll discuss here.
I have in the past built my own MicroVAX III systems in a BA-23 box by
taking a 3500/3800 board and stripping off the bracket from the back.
Most of the respondents suggested that I look at the 4000 series, most
of which now have built-in Ethernet and SCSI interfaces. This sounds
very attractive, as it will help with the I/O requirements; separate
other I/O activities from the Q/U bus. This system will serve filming
requests from a network of UNIX systems through TCP/IP sockets, exactly
as one of the respondents suggested. The only problem with the existing
system is really too slow to meet the new throughput requirements.
So, which of the current generation of VAX 4000 series computers have
the built in SCSI and ethernet? Will this be able to plug into a BA23
and simply replace the KA630 board?
Again, thanks for all the information.
eyc
PS: a little detail about the film recorder.
The MDA ColorFIRE 240 is an extremely high precision film recorder. It
can lay an RGB color image of up to 14400 by 13200 pixels on a piece of
film of 240 by 250 millimeter. It automatically feeds the 240 mm wide
film from a roll for each frame that you make, which is important in a
production environment when you don't have the time to change film one
frame at a time. I haven't yet found another film recorder with similar
capabilities. It was originally built for VAX 11/780s using VMS, and
they later built a VME interface and driver for Sun 4/470 systems.
At this time, the part of MDA that works with this has split off as a new
company called Cymbolic Sciences. I just found out that they now have a
SCSI based interface for the ColorFIRE 240, but there is a catch. The
Unibus interface/controller contained a lot of the control hardware for
the film recorder, and this has been moved to the new SCSI interface.
It would cost about $70,000 to retrofit this new interface onto my
recorder. The original cost of the recorder was about $250,000, as are
other machines in this class. These lofty numbers are out of my budget
right now, so I'm looking more seriously at a board swap to replace the
MicroVAX II CPU.
Received on Thu Mar 16 1995 - 00:46:28 NZDT