Convergent Technologies used the Motorola 68010 in their MiniFrame,
and Motorola 68020 and 68040 in their MightyFrame systems (S/80,
S/120, S/221, S/222, S/320, S/640)
Click on the image for the full manual
Convergent systems used the VME Bus or
Versa Module Eurocard bus), which was developed for the Motorola
68000 line of CPUs, and uses Eurocard sizes, mechanicals and
connectors (DIN 41612) with its own signalling system
Click on the image for the full manual
Convergent Technologies systems used a variant of Unix System V
called CTIX, which also included Berkeley extentions for networking
with TCP/IP over Ethernet and utlilities such as telnet, ftp, rlogin
and rcp
Click on the image for the full manual
Click on the image for the full manual
The Fortune 32:16 was a true multiuser, multitasking Unix based
system, supportong up to 4 four-port serial terminal controllers and
several other peripheral controllers: storage modules, Parallel
interfaces, high resolution graphic board and Ethernet network board
Mips manufactured a number of platforms, ranging from the smaller
M120 and RC3240, to the very large RC6280 system, which was as tall
as a full rack mount cabinet and required a 3 phase power supply
The RC6280, was MIPS most advanced RISComputer, using third
generation RISC technology to provide a high level of system
performance with the R6000
CPU chip: 55 mips, 10.3 Mflops (DP Unpack), large memory and
disk capacity and advanced networking capabilities
The Mips operating system, RISC/os, used the
interface utilities of the converged System V and BSD versions of
Unix to support a wide range of applications, including MIPS C
language with optimising compiler. communications protocols for
Ethernet networking, the Berkeley Fast File System,
and the Network File System (NFS)
Click on the image for the full manual
A large range of language products was availablevon the MIPS RC6280
RISComputer, including C language, FORTRAN, Pascal, COBOL, Ada. and
PL/I.
I wrote version 2.0 of the UPSmon UPS monitoring
and autoshudown system
in C language, with supporting shell scripts on the Mips RC6280
UUCP - Unix to Unix Copy Program
Setting up inter-system communications for file transfer and (e)mail
between 2 machines before the days of the Internet and LANs (Local
|Area Networks) was a 2 day job...
I did this quite a few times on various systems, spending 1 day on
HW with an Interfaker break-out box to figure out the RS232 cable
connection and 1 day on SW setting up UUCP
and then testing Unix mail and
transfering files
Here's a guy on Youtube recreating a very similar feat between a
Convergent machine and a modern Linux PC
It was such a painful excercise, I can still feel the joy at seeing
the LEDs "ackle" on the RS232 (Below the left screen) and the file
data being received (on the right screen) at about 2:55
Then came TCP/IP and I was asked to go and install this on a
Convergent Technologies machine at the London Stock Exchange and get
it "talking" to another manufacturer's system over Thick Ethernet
802.3 cabling and transceivers....
I was equipped with a CTIX TCP/IP QIC cassette, as covered by the
manual on the left and a length of yellow Thicknet 10Base5 csbling,
fitted with terminators and "bee sting" tap connected
transceivers,as shown below, and drop cables to connect to the two
systems
I loaded the software, configured the IP addresses in the /etc/hosts
files and checked the status LEDs on the transceivers and then I
tried to run rlogin to the other machine
To my utter amazement, the response was immediate and remote
Unix commands worked perfectly, as if I was still on the
local machine - this was so simple to achieve and so incredibly
easier than the 2 day situation I was so used to with RS232 and
UUCP, that I could hardly believe it was actually working and I
was truly on the remote machine
It was immediately clear to me that networking
was "the future" and from this point on, I specialised in all
things Ethernet, TCP/IP, LAN, WAN etc. and went on to run in house courses on these subjects
with material newly issued then, such as the IEEE 802.3
standard
UUCP - Unix to Unix Copy Program
