SGI: Hardware

Going from this thread , I bought that strange card that was listed on ebay for the purpose of using the black adapter board but I'm still very curious about the board that came with it.
When it arrived I found out that the two 50-pin connectors were on a second board and there was a red and green LED as well as an 18-pin connector on the main PCB.
I have tried googling up the numbers on the EPROM and the Performance Tech. chip but they got nothing and there is no part number on the board itself. what I do however know is that this DID indeed come from an SGI deskside of some sorts as the part number on the adapter matches up with an adapter board listed on B&B.

Here's some photographs. hopefully it shakes up someones memory on what exactly this is.

Its got a Motorola 68020 processor on it, what are the board part numbers?

That looks like a serial or FDDI concentrator board.

kshuff wrote: Its got a Motorola 68020 processor on it, what are the board part numbers?

That is the problem. there is none, or at least there are none that google is finding.

"PCC" = 'Programmable Communications Controller' maybe?

Look up the datasheets on those AMD chips at the bottom, that should give you a good idea.

HIPPI board maybe? First spec for that was a 50 wire TP cable according to wikipedia....

R-ten-K wrote: That looks like a serial or FDDI concentrator board.

I've never looked inside an FDDI concentrator, but the VME FDDI board for Iris 4D's (a rebadged Interphase V/FDDI 4211) looks like this:

wolflord wrote: HIPPI board maybe? First spec for that was a 50 wire TP cable according to wikipedia....

I think so too. And Performance Technologies used to make them. That was when HIPPI was still called something else (turbo net?). I had spotted this board on eBay months ago, but the lack of drivers, bulkheads, or a system to connect it to stopped me from buying one of them.

At least you've got yourself a VME 6U-9U adapter

I thought HPPI was just another version of FDDI?
I'm totally confused now on it. I'm getting a million acronyms for HPPI (one being "High-Performance Peripheral Interface") and no pictures even remotely close to HPPI-looking (whatever that may be) appear on google images.
Someone please fill me in.

pentium wrote: I thought HPPI was just another version of FDDI?

Certainly not.

FDDI is a network technology, like ethernet (or ATM). If you want to know about FDDI, read this: http://www.siliconsamsara.org/OLD/PracFDDI/index.html
I don't know much about HIPPI, but I do know it's not FDDI. I think HIPPI is (was ?) mostly used as a point-to-point interconnect, like infiniband.

HIPPI is a parallel interface using copper wiring, FDDI is a serial interface with a fiber optic transport.

So I could loosely say it was kinda like Craylink where you were link systems together to make something more powerful?
I'm still a little confused, mostly because I have never heard of it or seen pictures of it being used, ever.

There's a decent defination here: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition ... 02,00.html

Thanks. That really helped make me get an understanding of what HPPI is.
speaking of which, I think there is an HPPI board for the Onyx and challenge systems, correct? would anyone have photos of it and/or the bulkheads?

Had enough yet? Looks like there might be another candidate for your 6U VME board collection: http://cgi.ebay.com/Silicon-Graphics-SG ... 679wt_1016

Though this one isn't quite as mysterious: http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi ... /ch01.html

It's intended to link a VME expansion chassis to an Origin 200(0) / Onyx2 <or with the right brick, even an O3k>: http://www.sgi.com/products/software/react/vme.html

No good without the XIO board and cabling though

kshuff wrote: No good without the XIO board and cabling though

Exactly. Also, I don't really see what adding a VME backplane to my O2K would do as there were so few VME boards that even did anything under irix.
I'll let that pass as that dev board killed me. x_X

EDIT: I wonder how expensive and rare Irix-compatible GPIB boards are? At least I can think of a use for that: linking up my friends signal generator and scope!