What won't a Sun 4/110 VME do?

[Bill Nesheim]

|   Date:    Wed, 5 Jul 89 17:52:24 BST
|   From:    Chris Brown <chris at aivru.sheffield.ac.uk>

|   Some while ago my Sun salesperson told me that there was some way in which
|   the VME bus on a Sun 4/110 was not a complete implementation  -- something
|   to do with not having a bus arbiter, I believe.  I didn't take much notice
|   at the time because it didn't matter, but now it does!  Can anyone tell me
|   *exactly* what it is that the VME bus on a 4/110 won't do?
|   Also if anyone has experience of connecting a 4/110 to an external VME
|   rack using a VME/VME adaptor, I'd be interested to hear from you.

|   Chris Brown, A.I. Vision Research Unit, Sheffield University 
|   (chris at aivru.sheffield.ac.uk)

The 4/110 cpu does not have VME slave capability.  This means that VME
devices cannot do DMA to the 4/110.  The 4/110 can do program access of
VME bus devices just fine.

Thus you can't use things like VMEbus disk controllers in the 4/110, while
framebuffers and framegrabbers are in general OK.

   Bill Nesheim
   Thinking Machines Corporation
   245 First St, Cambridge, MA  02142
   617-876-1111, FAX 617-876-1823
   nesheim at think.com, {ames,bloom-beacon,mit-eddie}!think!nesheim