Busses vs no busses

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Tue May 9 13:46:41 2000

"Will Jennings" <xds_sigma7_at_hotmail.com> wrote:
> Of course, you can always point out that with the DEC stuff, the unibus,
> omnibus, posibus, negibus, and qbus all use the same connectors... realllly
> different electrical signals but still the same connectors... quite handy..

Handy? Except for the rare cards that plug into either Unibus or Qbus
(e.g., FPF11), I've never noticed it to be particularly handy. Although
I haven't managed to do it myself (yet), I imagine that anyone who has
damaged DEC boards by plugging them into the wrong bus might dispute that
this is handy.

Using the same connectors is OK, but they should have keyed them. For
instance, PCI has keying for 5V and 3.3V cards. If you make a card that
can support either, you put both slots in it. The same thing could have
easily (and cheaply) been done for Omnibus, Unibus, MUD, SPC, and Qbus.
Oh well.
Received on Tue May 09 2000 - 13:46:41 BST

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