Re: Other loose ends (was: RE: [s-x86] Itanium launch) (OT)

[Phillip Bruce <pbbruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Larry Beaulieu wrote:
> 
> >       RoadRunner?  Hmm, being only a young pup in the early 80s, I don't remember
> > this one personally.  I do remember a line of i386 machines that Sun was
> > producing and selling at that time.  Are they the same thing, perchance?
> >
> > > If memory serves me right, That was running on
> > > a 386 in the
> > > early and mid 80's. That was before Sun starting developing
> > > their own processors.
> > > most vendors in those hey days were using Motorola's 68000
> > > series chip to run
> > > their unix version on.
> 
>         They were circa 1989 machines, models with a 20 or a 25 MHz 80386
>         were offered. The last supported OS release was SunOS 4.0.2.
>         I had one for a little while as an eval unit, it wasn't a bad
>         box but IMO there wasn't anything about it that would compel one
>         to switch over from Sun3's, especially since anyone who had signed
>         an NDA should have figured out the upcoming Sun4's were going to be
>         the wood behind Sun's arrow.
> 
>         You have to remember as well that Sun really wasn't in the business of
>         developing their own processors per se, their involvement was closer to
>         developing design specifications for the SPARC architecture and encouraging
>         others to develop and manufacture processors that met that specification.
> 
> >       Or SGI was using an early MIPS chip, which was the "rule the world" sort of
> > chip for that era...
> 
>         In that timeframe that was probably the R2000 then the R3000, which are the
>         same processors DEC used for their first generation DECstations. (DEC
>         basically licensed MIPS' C compiler and used it to port Ultrix over in a
>         matter of weeks)

Yup have to agree there and I used to work on those as well I
did the PDP-11 series.
> 
> > > I don't think anybody is running that
> > > series processor
> > > anymore other than Cisco.
> >
> >       I'd like to know what Cisco model uses that chip.  Most of the ones that I
> > have had a chance to work on were 486 based.
> 
>         The MIPS chips? From memory at least some of the 3600 series and the 4500/4700
>         series routers used R4000 variants.  I don't remember anything from Cisco using
>         a 486, the closest I can think of are the PPro based PIX firewalls. They were
>         more into the 68000 camp, like with the AGS, 2500, and 7000/7010 series routers.
> 
> > > For those network engineers who
> > > don't know it. The
> > > underlying OS on CISCO is a unix variant.
> >
> >       IOS is, from what I can tell, a stripped down and specialized Unix
> > formulation, which is why it works!  Try doing that with a Microsoft OS and
> 
>         Friends at Cisco have basically confirmed this, although if they
>         know where it was derived from they aren't saying.
> 
>         JunOS traces its lineage back to Free/OpenBSD as well.
> 
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*** Phillip B. Bruce					 ***
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