Now, what to do with this thing now? I wasn't able to find any software or development files for it by the manufacturer of this board, Force Computers GmbH. There is some stuff on bitsavers, namely the reference manual, and some PDOS images, probably for older hardware. No OS9, no Linux port, no *BSD port.
The hardware /is/ quite capable, having Ethernet, SCSI and 32Mb of RAM. So this would make for an interesting system. There are ports of Linux and NetBSD to other VME 68k boards of course, and there are drivers for all the off the shelf chips used on this in the Linux kernel, albeit for other platforms. There is even documentation for those. So, it might be possible to port Linux to it with a reasonable amount of effort.
However, one crucial piece is missing. I wasn't able to find the reference manual for the "FGA-002" VME bridge developed in house by this company, implemented in FPGA. The manual is called "UM SYS68K/FGA-002". Nobody seems to have archived it :(
The hardware /is/ quite capable, having Ethernet, SCSI and 32Mb of RAM. So this would make for an interesting system. There are ports of Linux and NetBSD to other VME 68k boards of course, and there are drivers for all the off the shelf chips used on this in the Linux kernel, albeit for other platforms. There is even documentation for those. So, it might be possible to port Linux to it with a reasonable amount of effort.
However, one crucial piece is missing. I wasn't able to find the reference manual for the "FGA-002" VME bridge developed in house by this company, implemented in FPGA. The manual is called "UM SYS68K/FGA-002". Nobody seems to have archived it :(
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Bun's Lab
Now, what to do with this thing now? I wasn't able to find any software or development files for it by the manufacturer of this board, Force Computers GmbH. There is some stuff on bitsavers, namely the reference manual, and some PDOS images, probably for older…
Found it! Was there on bitsavers all along. Don't know how I missed that
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