> >I seem to recall HP Integrators also being used with
> >Fairchild (later Schlumberger) ATE systems. Later
> >replaced by VAXen and Fastnet (has anyone else used
> >Fastnet?).
>
> No, what is it?
Going from memory, so there could be minor errors:
Fastnet was a replacement for serial-based transfers.
The VAX used a DR11-W to communicate with an Ungermann-
Bass controller. The UB was a big box with several Z80-
based boards. The UB ran CP/M loaded from 8" floppies
over HPIB. The Z80 boards were all the same. Each
board had a daughter board with different types of
interfaces. The master board had a serial port,
parallel port, and HPIB interface.
The board that communicated with the DR11-W had four
parallel ports. There were also boards with six serial
ports and a board with an Ethernet port. Each Z80 board
was booted from the master board with a customized CP/M
system.
The remote UB boxes had the same board types as in the
master UB box. The remote UB boxes downloaded their
software over Ethernet. The ATE systems connected
to the remote UB box through one of the Z80 boards
with a parallel daughterboard. Each remote box could
connect up to three testers (requiring three separate
Z80 boards with parallel daughterboards). The remote
boxes could also have one of the Z80 boards with a
serial daughterboard to connect to the serial terminal
stations on the testers, and software allowed access
from terminals on the VAX. The board in the tester
that connected to the remote UB box looked like a
serial board to the tester (and was really just a
serial board without the UART, so the data lines
went direct to the remote UB; that's where the speed
increase came from).
The UB network used an old version of the XNS protocol.
We had Sentry 20 and 21 testers. The processor in
the testers had a ~900KHz clock. The operating system
was M3 and the test programs were written in FACTOR.
--
Eric Dittman
dittman_at_dittman.net
Received on Thu Apr 05 2001 - 18:29:45 BST