On 25 Jun, Allen Briggs wrote:

[AViiON AV5500]
> Cool!
Yes! It is a very nice box. :-)

> Is any of it hardware-related documentation?
Unfortunately no. 

> Is there any way that you can disassemble the ROM (from the monitor,
> perhaps)?
Hmm. I think no. I did not see something in the monitor that could be
used for debugging. But I can pull out the EPROMs, read them with a
Promer and send you the images. :-)

> It might help somewhat (at least in our understanding of the hardware)
> to get an inventory of the controller chips that are found in the 5500.
I saw a bunch of Xilinx FPGAs...

> I.e., what chip(s) does it use for SCSI, 
...NCR 53C710...

> serial, etc., 
Don't know. If I remember right the Ethernet controller was a
AM7990. I will have a closer look at it next week. (The box is not im my
small apartment. This is already filled up with VAXen, SPARCs, RS6k,
pmaxen, ... and a Sun 3/260 that has nearly the size of washing machine.
Yes, I am a collector. :-) ) 

> and what kind of interfaces/bus(ses) does it have.  
It has a proprietary "M-Bus" (?), a two slot VME Bus, and a connector
for a second CPU module.

> I'm hoping to have more NetBSD hacking time soon, so I can actually work
> on this instead of just gabbing about it.
If it helps I can swap the Sun 3/260 for the AViiON 5500, give you a
login on my server (constant 2MBit/s connection to the net) and connect
the console of the AViiON to a serial port of the server. 
-- 



tschüß,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/