On Fri, 13 Aug 1999, Warner Losh wrote:
>No.  I don't think that it did.  i do know that the MicroVAX II I
>managed back in the late 1980s had several doublewide cards, but the
>terminal card was single wide.  Nothing worked until DEC Field Circus
>came out with a bus grant card (I believe that was the name) to fill
>in the other half of the double wide slot.  Then everything started
>working again.  I guess it was good the school had two DECsystem 20's
>so it rated its own Field Service person who came out on site often
>enough he just dropped the card by one day and kept it off the books
>(since we were part of the school, but a different part, the
>accounting for these things got funny).

  Grant cards are required to maintain continuity of the bus grant lines...they
are wired to each slot and must go *through* each board to reach all boards on
the bus.  If a given board doesn't use those lines, it simply jumpers them
together.  A bus grant card does just that.

  Unibus does things in a similar way, but the grant cards are very
small...about 2"x2"...and sit way down into the backplane in such a way that
virtually guarantees bloody knuckles if you work on them enough.

                -Dave McGuire