Hi Andrew,
thanks for your email and great to hear, that you
managed to get hands on a BBK-S4!
On Sun, 1 Oct 2017, Andrew Back wrote:
Have you got PARIX up and running with the Power Xplorer?
Yes, 1.3.something. I even ported the povray to this hardware
using an older pvmpov version. Most of the time I use some
single Trapu boards from a MegaFrame...
Does it support the PPCs?
Yes, for Transputer-only I am using Helios on the
PowerXplorer (PPCs idle in this case) and with PARIX,
the Transputers are doing the networking part whereas
the PPCs execute the user code.
What do you have got running on your Transputer machines?
I still haven't got round to restoring them. They were stored in a damp
cellar and would benefit from dismantling and a thorough overhaul.
OK, so I am crossinf my fingers, that you will
find some time in the future and the S4 within
your IPX is a good point to start at!
Well, I managed to get an SBus card, although there are no stickers on
the EPROMs and so I hope it will work.
In an emergency I can supply images of the EPROMS I guess.
The first test is restoring the IPX and if your BBK-S4
can be accessed you are a good step further. My first
test here alway is to issue a...
/usr/etc/transp/s4diag
...to get a dump and see in which slot the BBK-S4 acutally
is. In my case:
slot 0 - NO VALID SBUS DEVICESBus
slot 1 - NO VALID SBUS DEVICESBus
slot 2 - NO VALID SBUS DEVICESBus
slot 3 - 'CWA: BBKS4' No link available for checking
versio
in a Sparcstation IPX to use with it. I need to spend about ??450 on Lemo
connectors to make cables for it!
Well, one cable will be enough to start with. I am
normally using ony one entry into my PowerXplorer-setup.
My biggest test run was with a mesh of 8 Trapus/PPCs.
I also picked up a small Parsys system, but it sadly only has a single
T9000 HTRAM. Can't seem to find any documentation on it either.
Well, I guess, these are very rare and although I have
got a preview chip (i.e. really only the chip without
housing, pins etc.), I also have never seen any
documentation or even software for the T9000...
Best regards and good luck,
Erik.
