Multibus forum?

[NobodyIsHere]

VCF should have a Multibus forum.

 

[glitch]

Do you think there's really enough Multibus hobby work going on for it to have its own subforum? I'd imagine Ohio Scientific sees more hobbyist hacking and *that* doesn't have a subforum.

I know of maybe two or three people personally who are doing anything with Multibus.

 

[NobodyIsHere]

Yes. Multibus comes up regularly here in various forums if you do a search on the term. As for people actually making Multibus boards that seems fairly rare but dealing with older existing Multibus systems/boards is fairly common.

Making your own S-100 boards was fairly rare at one time too but now it is common place. I think if there were a VCF forum there would be some activity. Probably not as much as Mac or early PCs but enough to warrant its own forum. Multibus is a fairly common industrial standard although not used much in the personal computer/microcomputer world. Also I don't think there is a forum or mailing list elsewhere so a VCF forum would be its only home AFAIK. If anyone knows otherwise please let me know.

Sometimes it goes as Intel Intellec bus and MDS-80/MDS-86/etc.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Early Sun boxes also used Multibus. Not at all common on home machines, but very common in industrial stuff.

 

[eeguru]

Maybe multibus, stdbus, and others. I know a few people that are into stdbus pretty heavily. I've even made a few cards for stdbus recently.

 

[glitch]

Perhaps an Industrial Control type section, then? PC/104 would fit in there too.

 

[Al Kossow]

Yes. Multibus comes up regularly here in various forums if you do a search on the term.
Sometimes it goes as Intel Intellec bus and MDS-80/MDS-86/etc.

There were a group of folks actively working on MDS related things over the past year.
I have a moderately large collection of boards and just picked up a Matrox frame buffer that I've been trying to find a manual for.

 

[lowen]

Multibus was also used in early internet routers from cisco and Proteon. (Note that the spelling 'cisco' without the capital 'c' is the original.....). I have a couple of the Proteon P4200 routers here with the P5600 IP packet forwarder; 68020 on multibus with multibus 10Mb/s ethernet cards (AUI-only connections) and some of the 80Mb/s ProNET turbo token-ring (March 1985 original introduction date). Special battery-backed CMOS RAM boards, too.

I also have a couple of Z8002 multibus industrial control boards that were used for large-equipment controls.

Both of those are very much niche products, and probably have nearly zero interest.

 

[glitch]

Both of those are very much niche products, and probably have nearly zero interest.

*Nearly* zero -- the vintage computer segment of my shop network hangs off the Ethernet port of a Cisco 2501, connected by sync serial to the main network. If older CIsco stuff were common enough for me to have acquired any, I'd be using that instead!

 

[lowen]

*Nearly* zero -- the vintage computer segment of my shop network hangs off the Ethernet port of a Cisco 2501, connected by sync serial to the main network. If older CIsco stuff were common enough for me to have acquired any, I'd be using that instead!

The cisco AGS was Multibus, as I recall.