3B5/15 3B2/400

[Bill.Stewart.<ho95c>]

In article <407 at paisley.ac.uk> swi at uk.ac.paisley.cs (Scott Wilson) writes:
:I read in a magazine the other week that the 3b5/15 and the 2/400's were
:being discontinued. Is there any truth in this claim and if so, what
:support will be available for the machines i have ????

	Disclaimer:  This is personal comment, not official announcement!
It is NOT true.  One of the product managers has said "I wish I knew who
started that rumor so I could kill them retroactively."  (Please reread
disclaimer, above.)

What is true is that they had enough in stock that they stopped making new
3B2/400 boxes until the inventory went down, but they have started making
more of them again.  The *product* was *not* discontinued.

The 3B2/300 and 3B5 both use the WE 32000 chip set, which is now two
generations old, and the 3B5 MMU really can't hack SVR3, so they won't get
any OS upgrades.  They were comparable to a 68000  in speed, i.e.
not very fast.  The 3B2/300 is in a small  flat desk-top box; the
3B5 is a larger card-cage  type machine, which has reasonable I/O
capacity. I'm not sure if  they're discontinued or not. They will
continue to be supported for several years, and they use the same
peripherals as the newer models.

The 3B2/310, 3B2/400, and 3B15 use the 32100 chip set  at 10MHz and 14MHz,
which is roughly comparable to a 68020 at those speeds; 1-1.5 "MIPS".
The 3B2/400 has a larger box than the /310, with more slots and room for
more disk drives inside the box.  They're definitely in production.

The 321SB is a VME-bus single board computer with the 32100 chip set at 18
MHZ (14 MHz also available.)  It currently runs SVR3.1.something, with
drivers for many popular I/O boards.  (We sell it as a board, rather than
a pre-packaged system, but we'll put you in touch with vendors if you want.)
I don't remember the speed, but it's about 2-2.5 MIPS, and has 1MB of
zero-wait-state RAM on board.

The 3B2/600 use an 18 MHz 32100, with a redesigned memory and I/O system.
Disk and tape peripherals are SCSI-based, and memory uses a 2-way-associative
virtual cache, which gives it about 2.6 MIPS.  The 3B2/500 is a cost-reduced
model (3B2/400 box, vcache is optional), giving about 2.1 MIPS.

Things to expect: our 32200 chip set is 2-3 times as fast as the 32100.
One board vendor (Microproject) claims their 32200-based VME board will do
6 MIPS, and will be available real soon.  In addition to the 32200 set,
we've licensed SPARC from SUN.
-- 
#				Thanks;
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs
# So we got out our parsers and debuggers and lexical analyzers and various 
# implements of destruction and went off to clean up the tty driver...