High performance coprocessor boards of the 80s and 90s - was Re: SGI ONYX

Guy Sotomayor ggs at shiresoft.com
Thu Apr 21 16:55:23 CDT 2016


> On Apr 21, 2016, at 2:44 PM, Paul Berger <phb.hfx at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> There was definitely a XT/370 and likely an AT/370 as well the processor on the the 370 card in these machines was rumoured to be a modified Motorola 68K with special microcode to execute 370 instructions.  These machines ran a modified version of VM.

It was more than a rumor.  If I recall, there was an article about it in the IBM Systems Journal.

> 
> The 9371 system used PS/2 mod 80 system boards for I/O processors and had a microchannel card sandwich in them that was the 370 processor, I do not believe they could run MVS but they could run VM and VSE.

I recall seeing a few of the prototypes in one of our labs in Boca.  We had them because the I/O was SCSI and we were doing the cached microchannel SCSI cards (they weren’t specific to the 9371).  I did the AIX PS/2 drivers for those cards.

TTFN - Guy



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