Subject: Re: VAX magtape TU81
To: Carl Lowenstein <cdl@mpl.ucsd.edu>
From: Michael Kukat <michael@unixiron.org>
List: port-vax
Date: 05/16/2001 07:07:10
Hello all,

On Tue, 15 May 2001, Carl Lowenstein wrote:
> > What's proprietary about the Qbus?  It's certainly well enough
> > documented; I once was one of a pair of people who built a Qbus board
> > out of discrete logic.  (And in the process learned something about
> > proper power supply bypassing. :-/)
>
> Proprietary in this context means "only DEC computers used the Qbus".
> Just line the Sbus is proprietary to Sun.

Not only DEC used the QBus. A German workstation manufacturer, PCS, made some
workstations called "Cadmus", which use a modified QBus as their system bus
to give the possibility to re-use the PDP hardware found in lots of companies
that time. But i think these machines were not sold much outside Germany.
And i don't think there exists any driver for DEC equipment, nobody relly
wanted to re-use DEC gear i think. But however, these machines are hard to get,
just for the records, that there are non-DEC-QBus machines.

> It doesn't mean that it is undocumented.  And yes, I know that there
> were a few imitation DEC computers that also used the Qbus.

Yes. And just to say... the Cadmus series is absolutely VAX or DECstation
incompatible. They exist in M68030 and MIPS R3000 variants, i never had the
very rare i960 variant in my hands.

...Michael

-- 
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