[SunRescue] Recommend starter Sun?

[User Bobkeys BSD Bob the old greybeard BSD freak]

> >Speaking of sun4 sparcs..... I went rummaging through my dumpster
> >dive closet, and drug out a sun 4 sparc 4/150, with TAAC-16 card.
> >Is there anything current that can do anything with that card, or
> >is it mosty useless?  The 4/150 cpu card had some kind of piggyback
> >processor board on it, in the sparc chip socket, on long wire standoffs.
> >I forgot to write the number down, of the thing, but anyone know what
> >that chip assembly might be?  It is about 3x the surface area of the
> >cpu chip, and and not something I had seen before on previous VME boards.
> 
> The TAAC card is on the very top of my sun hunt&aquire list, so if you
> decide not to keep it, I'd love to buy it off you.

I just found out some interesting info on the taac thingy....

  http://www.obsolyte.com/sun3/taac1.html

A good boatanchor ham radio buddy of mine cross town at UNC Chapel Hill
(Nick England) was the fellow who built it (Trancept Systems, later
bought out by Sun).  He gave me my first sun 3/160 about 5 years back,
and I had heard he used to build high-end graphics systems for Suns,
but I never made the connection to taac.  It seems to be a neat board,
taking I/O from the color board into and out of the taac to the monitor.
I probably won't use the board, but might toss it to him as a funzy
thing.  If he does not want it, I will check and see if he has any
remaining info on it in his archives.  But, he made the comment that
it was slower than most modern pc graphics, and not really worth
doing anything serious with.  If he does not want it, it is yours
for whatever swapum/wampum bits that are appropriate for sunzyfun,
and won't break the shipping piggy's beer-bellie budget.

Do you have any idea what that funny 4/150 piggyback processor
cpu board is?

Bob