[rescue] VME bus Suns?

[Per Sandstrom]

Thanks Janet! This was historical hard-core information for us Sun and 
SPARC enthusiasts.

Janet Campbell wrote:
> Ok, this is from memory (and distant memory at that) so I welcome any 
> corrections.
> 
> The V7 architecture was published in 1986.  The Sunrise project had 
> working V6 silicon around that time but it stayed in the labs - the mask 
> was updated with V7 changes (and many bugfixes!) and used to fab the 
> SF9010/MB86900 (same chip, different names).  A hardware FPU was not 
> mandated by the V7 spec, in fact, early revs of the SparcStation 1 did not 
> include one, but had a piggybacked daughterboard engineered (501-1454). 
> At one point in time James L. and I had 20% of the production run of these 
> boards sitting in our garage (long story).
> 
> The 4/300 and 4/400 used the 7C601, as did the SS2.  Both of these were 
> V7, it was the bus architecture that differentiated the Campus machines 
> from the VME crates.
> 
> I believe that the SWAP instructions and maybe almost possibly SETHI (23 
> vs 22 bits?) were the main instruction-level differences between V6 and 
> V7.  Patterson, Wu, the members of Robert Garner's group (or Bill Joy, for 
> that matter) might remember - most is probably lost in the mists of time. 
> My 1987 SPARC assembly guide doesn't even dip into V6 distinctions.

Is anyone at Sun collecting historical bits and pieces, including oral 
recollections, before they get lost in the mists of time? The company 
will be 25 years old next spring. Time for a resident historian?

Per