Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 22:30:41 -0600 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: talk (fwd) Message-ID: <3563ADF1.D265F879@softweyr.com> References: <20996.895689524@time.cdrom.com>
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Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> I'll open the round of nostalgia with some comments on how freaking
> NICE the NS32K architecture was. And yeah, I own a PC532.
The PC532 was an amazing development, you just don't see open hardware
like that anymore. IIRC, the PC523 grew out the 'net station' project,
were a bunch of hardware and software hackers on USENET were soliciting
attempts to make a new workstation architecture developed entired on
the net.
I was involved with a group centered around Weber State University and
the software community at Hill AFB who developed one of the architectures.
The idea was the community would develope several systems and the "best"
would win the hearts and minds of the community. What actually happened
was that the PC532 was the first out with working hardware *and* an OS,
and everyone else stopped.
Ours was based on the AMD 29020, which had a nice set of support chips
available from AMD, including SCSI and ethernet. We actually had a
hacked-up first unit running off an AMD proto board, several ancillary
boards, some ribbon cables, and one wire-wrapped mess. We didn't have
a floppy controller, and CD-ROMs hadn't been invented yet.
We called our little machine the "SPUDstation" because some of the
AMD chips came from the fab plant in Boise, and because we'd rounded
up a bunch of plastic potatoes about 12 x 8 inches to put the board
in when we were done.
We had the serial console, SCSI, and ethernet working and were able to
load code over the network using the AMD boot monitor, and were working
on the 4.3 BSD locore.s and task-switch when the PC532 was announced.
One of the group got a PC532 and everyone just stopped. It was mildly
heart breaking to see all that work come to naught. I've never written
a line of 29K assembler code since then (and probably never will now).
Sigh. Those *were* the glory days, when I was young and single and
it was OK to take a week off work to spend 14 hour days in a lab
with other guys hacking on something that would never make any of
us a dime.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.softweyr.com/~softweyr wes@softweyr.com
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