Reviver Description

The REVIVER^® PDP11Replacement System

The Comware REVIVER® PC System replaces DIGITAL PDP11 minicomputer systems with a Pentium PC. No software changes are required. The existing PDP11 Operating System executes directly on the PC. The REVIVER® uses PC hardware devices to emulate corresponding minicomputer peripherals. The emulation is completely transparent to the user and the PDP11 Operating System.

The heart of The REVIVERÒ system is a high-speed co-processor board installed in the PC. Two versions are available, one with a 18Mhz DCJ-11 processor and one with a Xilinx FPGA hosted microcoded bit-slice design that eliminates the DCJ-11 processor. Of the bit-slice design, the DX version runs at 18 MHz providing double the processing power of the original DCJ-11 processor design running at the same clock speed. The SX version of the bit-slice design runs at 9 MHz and provides the same performance of the original DCJ-11 processor design running at twice the speed of the SX board. All of the versions have 4 Mb of RAM running at zero wait states. I/O instructions are handled by an onboard 80486 processor. This processor provides the low level register, status, and interrupt functions for the J11 CPU. The 80486 processor also provides a high level interface for the routing of I/O requests to the appropriate host device.

A Q-Bus or Unibus adapter resides as a daughter board on the co-processor. Dual ribbon cables run from the adapter module to an interface board which is installed in the original Q-Bus or Unibus backplane. This interfaces the REVIVER® PC to the host system hardware. Existing devices not emulated by the REVIVER® may remain in the system and will function normally.

The PC's Pentium CPU handles the DOS based or Windows/NT emulation software and I/O functions for the PC's peripheral devices. When using the DOS based version, a large part of the PC's main memory may be dedicated to a high speed disk cache. A typical disk cache size of 7 MB, combined with current PC disk drive technology, yields a significant performance gain over disk drive subsystems used in older PDP11 computer systems. The Windows/NT version uses the NT file system and caching to provide nearly the same performance as the DOS version.

The REVIVER^® Emulation Table

Existing Devices	REVIVER Devices
Monitor, Keyboard	PC Monitor and Keyboard
Console Terminal	Co-processor Board
Terminal Ports	PC Comm. Ports (COM1 & COM2)
PDP11 Processor Board(s)	Co-processor Board CPU
Memory Board(s)	Co-processor Board Memory
A-Sync Comm. Multiplexer(s)	Multi-Port Comm. Board (optional)
Disk Drive Subsystem	PC Hard Drive
Floppy Drives	PC Floppy Drive
DEQNA/DELQA Ethernet Board	PC 3Com 3C509 Ethernet Board

Standard SystemConfiguration

Computer

• Intel Pentium CPU / 8MB System RAM
• Rackmount Industrial Enclosure
• Optional PC Enclosure with Integrated Q-BUS or UNIBUS Computer Backplane
• 250W Switchable Voltage Power Supply
• 14" SVGA NI Color Monitor
• 2.1 GB Hard Drive, 1.44 MB Floppy Drive
• 3.2 GB Cartridge Tape Backup
• 3COM 3C509 Ethernet Adapter
• (2) Serial Ports, (1) Parallel Port
• 101-Key Keyboard
• MS-DOS Operating System

Co-processor Board

• CPU - DCJ11, 18MHZ
• RAM - 4MB, Zero Wait State
• Q-Bus or Unibus Interface Board and Cables
• O.S. Support - RSX, RT11, RSTS

Options

• Multi-Port Comm. Board
• NT Version Emulation Software
  Requires: 32MB Memory,CD-ROM, Mouse & NT 4.0
• Steel Mini Tower Enclosure
• 15" or 17" Monitor