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Oldest still-in-use bus?

Chuck(G)

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What system bus has lasted the longest and is in current use?

It turns out to be VME as nearly as I can determine. Circa 1981. Only now, a replacement, VPX, is being trotted out.

Does anyone here own/use any VME bus gear?
 
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Does anyone here own/use any VME bus gear?

I have access to a Sun4/360, and that's VME.

Although in the industrial realm you still see Multibus (IEEE-796), circa 1974, and at least one company is still making boards for that. I wouldn't exactly call it current, though.

While you qualified you statement with as 'system bus' I would posit that the oldest bus still in common use is RS-232, circa 1969, as that is a true bus in multidrop implementations. It's just not exactly a 'system bus.'
 
I cant pinpoint a date "late 60's" HPIB which is now IEEE 488(x) GPIB still in use today, mostly on electrical test equipment though its getting more scarce
 
Who's still currently manufacturing equipment for IEEE-488? But again, I don't consider that to be a "system bus"--just a peripheral bus.

True, I've mentioned that Multibus predates S100 and is still in use, but again, I don't know if any new equipment is designed to use it.
Sun 1 and 2 gear was designed to use it.

If you loosen up the definition of "bus", I suppose that you could include railroad signaling and fire alarms.
 
Agilent/Keysight (duh they produce HP designs) National Instruments, Tektronics, Sorenson / Xantech, again all electronic test equipment

that's all the 488 stuff I have bought within the last year, I am sure there is more, but its being replaced with USB and Ethernet, USB sucks though cause every thing needs a port which is all chained off a port and collisions happen constantly when your banging it at even a fairly slow speed, its like holding a toddlers hand when trying to sequence a rack of data loggers and power supplies
 
I'd think that one thing that militates against HPIB nowadays is the expense and bother of a 24 conductor connection to transfer 8 bits at a time.

I think a lot of industrial stuff is still RS-422 and certainly RS-485 is still around as a multipoint bus, but neither is a system bus.
 
I don't personally have any VME systems running, but I do provide support to a company that relies on a few of them for their production line. They're in daily use.
 
I cant pinpoint a date "late 60's" HPIB which is now IEEE 488(x) GPIB still in use today, mostly on electrical test equipment though its getting more scarce

'488 is still actively sold and the standard was updated as recently as 2004. I know that we purchased a high-end spectrum analyzer (runs an embedded Windows XP!) with a '488 interface in 2010, and '488 is still an option on many items of test gear.

As Chuck points out it is not a 'system bus' but both it and RS-232 have held on a long time.
 
What about the IBM Channel? Whilst its probably not made still lots in use....

Is bus and tag a 'system bus' though? When I think of 'system bus' I think internal to the main 'computer' itself. VME certainly qualifies, as does S-100, ISA, VLB, and Multibus, among many others. While I know that many things can be attached on bus and tag (and the later ESCON interface), and DMA transfers are possible there (as they are on Firewire, one of the little known security risks exploitable over a peripheral bus). What is the dividing line between 'system bus' and 'peripheral bus' (and PCI being a mezzanine bus blurs the line for sure)?
 
At Lick Observatory, they are still using VME for a couple instruments in a legacy systems role.
Of course, they also are still using lots of single-sided (straight-8 style) custom-built Flip Chip cards too.
 
What system bus has lasted the longest and is in current use?

It turns out to be VME as nearly as I can determine. Circa 1981. Only now, a replacement, VPX, is being trotted out.

Does anyone here own/use any VME bus gear?

Prolog STD 56-pin?
Don't know if cards are still made, though.
 
Kodak Document Archive Writer- Takes tiff images and writes them to microfilm. VME based system running a WindRiver OS. Way past it's 'best used by' date, interfaces to the network using a 15-pin ethernet MAU. Was new in '99. Still in use as of 2022.
 
Speaking of VME, where do we find VME systems on the forum usually?
 
Much industrial equipment still use HART to communicate over 4-20mA signal lines. Although not a computer system bus, its used as a multi-drop communication bus, usually with MODBUS. HART is not very old (1980?), but the 4-20mA lines that its patched onto, are.
 
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