Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer From: David Arnold Subject: Re: Info on Transputer ISA Board Organization: CRC for Distributed Systems Technology Date: 16 Feb 1998 08:49:49 +1000 Message-ID: Edu writes: > I have been given what appears a PC-Based Transputer Development > Board. It is a IMS B008 Rev E. It's a long board with a 9 sockets. the sockets are for TRAMs (TRAnspuTer Modules). the board was made by Inmos. it was quite popular. > sockets 8 and 9 are populated directly on the board with two other > chips. i'm trying to remember (i don't have one at hand), but it think there was a T2xx (16bit transputer) on the board, used to configure the C004 (OS link crossbar-style switch) which was also on board. you'll see also that slot 0 has 3 extra pins inside one of the end sockets -- these are for the Reset, Error and Analyse pins from the root TRAM. they were connected using a double-ended three pin header. > 1) Is there a way to know if this board is still working without > purchasing programs? I currently have machines with DOS, Windows 3.1, > Windows 95, Linux and FreeBSD. most transputer host software will understand the B008-style boards. i forget the interrupt/IO port options, but the software doc should have them. try the iserver software from the HENSA archive. if you're desperate, i can probably dig up doco on the board and mail you a hard copy ... > 4) I am thinking to do with this effort to present it as a practice for > a paralell programming course, but I don't know if this approach is > still considered in the industry. I know that there is much paralell > programming done with PVM and MPI. But I think the Transputer can be > very useful for developing comunication protocols. very nice, but very out of date, IMHO. there's little support for using transputers in any form these days. maybe occam on Unix would be a better option? -- David Arnold ,================================================= =================' +617 33654310 (voice) CRC for Distributed Systems Technology +617 33654311 (fax) University of Queensland davida@pobox.com (email) Australia (web) In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, however, there is no similarity - Dave Butenhof.