19 Jul
2025
19 Jul
'25
5:02 p.m.
FWIW, "VLSI Systems" was Andy Bechtolsheim's company that licensed the
Stanford Sun designs to many companies. When Sun was started, VLSI Systems
was rolled into Sun.
Sun's first revenue products were 3Mb Ethernet cards which still said VLSI
Systems on them.
BTW, if anyone actually has one of these 3Mb board, Robert Garner would
love to get his hands on one. He's working on a detailed history of
Ethernet. Robert's probably not on this list, but I can connect folks to
him.
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 2:22 AM r.stricklin <bear(a)typewritten.org> wrote:
In terms of unequivocally prized, I’d say the
following:
* HP 9050
* IBM 6152 Academic System
* SGI Engineering Sample #3 - multibus CPU & framebuffer - these are early
SUN boards from VLSI Systems who, as I understand it, were trying to
commercialize the Stanford system separately from Sun. Clear genetic link
with the Sun-1 CPU and bwone, but not identical to them. Nor to the 68000
CPU that ultimately shipped with the IRIS 1000/1200 terminals.
* SGI IRIS 1200
* Sun 100U
* Sun 150U
In terms of wanting to mention because rarely seen, missing critical
parts, and selfishly hoping to maybe shake something loose someday:
* Ardent Titan - missing its console and primary graphics board
* Dupont Pixel Systems MacBlitz - missing all the software, both for the
Macintosh host and the Clipper C300 UNIX system itself
* IBM 9377 Model 90 - actually not missing anything, but I’d quite like to
hear that anything related to IX/370 or AIX/370 survived somewhere
* mips RS4230 - The requisite RISC/os v5.01 media did turn up somewhat
recently, thanks to everyone involved in that effort. Now I’m just hoping
to eventually stumble over a new enough version of RISCwindows that will
support the console framebuffer (v4.11 IIRC)
* Pixar Image Computer - missing host interface board (SGI, Sun, anything)
and pretty much all the software (Chap-C, etc.)
* Sritek VersaCard - missing the MC68000 Xenix and PC interface software.
* Sun FDDI/DX (VME) - missing the SunOS driver tape
* Sun GT - busted, missing much in the way of hope tracking down the
fault, never mind repairing
* Sun TAAC-1 - missing the software
A goodly measure of IBM RT AOS/4.3 software has been recovered and
archived in the last couple years. Some of it from my own efforts. There
are enough of the 6152-specific pieces that exist in situ to make a usable
6152 system, but they're not complete. It’d be nice to turn up some of the
official distribution media for that. There’d have been a QIC tape adding
the 6152-specific kernel pieces, maybe a floppy or two with the DOS and/or
OS/2 host components (if they weren’t also on the tape).
ok
bear.