[ILUG] Re: [OT] old sun arch's, (was RE: unixless chips?)

[John P. Looney]

"Jakma, Paul" wrote:
> 
> >  He meant the 68xx and 65xx's - which certainly were 8bit chips. 68xxx
> > were all 32bit chips, with 16bit databuses on the 68000 and
> > 68010's..the
> > first Sun Unix boxes[0] were based on 68000's, with a
> > Sun-designed MMU,
> > so I suppose it must be possible :)
> >
> > Kate
> >
> > [0] Sun Ireland
> 
> I presume you mean the first boxes sold, or were they designed/made by Sun
> Ireland? :)
> What type of machines did Sun have before the 68k ones? (sun3 architecture
> init?) Was there a sun2 or a sun1?

 No, the 68000's based machines were their first. I used to have an old
Sun 3 (before I gave it to David Murphy), which had a 20Mhz 68020.
Smashing little machines for their time, though very expensive. 12MB of
RAM, all of which could be used by the (black and white) framebuffer!
Those Sun3's had a motorola 68053 "external MMU". The Sun 2's used to be
based on 68010's (though I'd never seen one) I think - the 68020 had
support for an external MMU too - the 68000 had no such support - I
think it's MMU was actually a cut down second 68000! A true hack!

 Seems I sent the mail before I finished the original footnote. You can
call into Sun Ireland in Eastpoint - they have an old 68000 motherboard,
originally given to TCD as a demo board, on display. Call in and say you
just wanted to look at the board - it's in reception, and you can freak
out the receptionist :)

Kate

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