The CERN Host Interface

The authors discuss the CERN Host Interface Project, which aims to provide modular interfaces between Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX series computers and two popular high-energy physics buses, the VMEbus and FASTBUS. These user-programmable interfaces contain a powerful central processing unit, large data memories, and ports that allow the user to configure the interface for the required host computer and target bus. The software support and the optical data connection are described.<
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