Subject: Re: strange sbus cards
To: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
From: Hauke Fath <hauke@Espresso.Rhein-Neckar.DE>
List: port-sparc
Date: 05/18/2002 19:57:12
At 13:02 Uhr -0400 18.5.2002, der Mouse wrote:
>Is HP-IB a variant of IEEE-488, or an ancestor, or what?  I know
>they're related somehow, but don't know how.  In particular, can a 488
>interface drive HP-IB, or vice versa?

As for SCSI, there is the electrical standard and the software interface.
HP-IB is a synonym for GPIB / IEEE-488, but HP uses custom command sets for
its devices.

>> what chipset does the IEEE-488 one use?
>
>In approximate order of decreasing pin count:
>
>- Surface-mount chip of approximately 120 pins, with a boxed LSI as
>  logo, labeled with printing
>	L64853AQC
>	SPARC DMA+
>	WK84162
>	XXG 9550[*]	<- [*] represents a thing that looks like a
>	0A84C8 PE FAA	   capital delta followed by a circle
>	HONG KONG	   containing the letters SG.
>
>- 40-pin DIP from NEC, labeled "D7210C" and "9536XD001"
                                 ******
There you go...

>- Socketed chip that looks like an EPROM, physically compatible with a
>  27512.  Sticker covers most of it; the sticker has printing from a
>  dot-matrix printer saying "SB488" and "Rev.1.2".
                                ***
Magic number.

>> I had some IOtech IEEE-488 <-> SCSI bridges but couldn't get any docs
>> from them.  The good news though is that many IEEE-488 cards used 1
>> of only a few chips.  That would be a way of identifying the card for
>> sure.  NEC 7210 and TMS 9914A are 2 common ones.
>
>Looks like the NEC 7210 is it, then. :-)  Now, to figure out how it's
>glued to the SBus...and find 7210 docs.

FreeBSD has a driver for National Instruments ISA GPIB cards that is
programmed against the 7210 register model (the NI chips can emulate both
the 7210 and the 9914). I have banged on the code some for two NB-GPIB
NuBus cards I have around, but I need to wrap my brain around GPIB first so
that I can understand what the driver is telling me. I can send you the
code if you're interested. Your sbus card will most likely be DMA based,
though; my NuBus cards are PIO.

	hauke


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