GSC is a bus used in many of the

HP 9000 HP 9000 is a line of workstation and server computer systems produced by the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Company. The native operating system for almost all HP 9000 systems is HP-UX, which is based on UNIX System V. The HP 9000 brand was introduced in ...

workstations and servers. The acronym has various explanations, including ''Gecko System Connect'' (Gecko being the codename of the 712 workstation), ''Gonzo System Connect'' and ''General System Connect''. GSC was a general

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculati ...

I/O bus, similar to

NuBus NuBus (pron. 'New Bus') is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT and standardized in 1987 as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus was done by Western Digital fo ...

or Sun's

SBus SBus is a computer bus system that was used in most SPARC-based computers (including all SPARCstations) from Sun Microsystems and others during the 1990s. It was introduced by Sun in 1989 to be a high-speed bus counterpart to their high-speed ...

, although it was also used as a processor bus with the

PA-7100LC The PA-7100LC is a microprocessor that implements the PA-RISC 1.1 instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hewlett-Packard (HP). It is also known as the ''PCX-L'', and by its code-name, ''Hummingbird''. It was designed as a low-cost microp ...

and

PA-7300LC The PA-7100LC is a microprocessor that implements the PA-RISC 1.1 instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hewlett-Packard (HP). It is also known as the ''PCX-L'', and by its code-name, ''Hummingbird''. It was designed as a low-cost microp ...

processors. Several variations were produced over time, the later ones running at 40 MHz: ;GSC-1X: The original GSC bus implemented on PCX-L and used in the Gecko (712), Mirage (715) and Electra computers. Peak Bandwidth 142MB/s w/DMA, 106 MB/s with PIO writes. ;GSC+, a.k.a. "Extended GSC" or "EGSC": Enhancements added for KittyHawk/SkyHawk (U2 chip) that allow for pending transactions. GSC+ enhancements are orthogonal to the GSC-1.5X and GSC-2X enhancements. ;GSC-1.5X: GSC-1X with an additional variable length write transaction. ;GSC-2X: GSC-1.5X with a protocol enhancement to allow data to be sent at double the GCLK rate, with a peak bandwidth of 256 MB/s. ;HSC: High Speed Connect. Four types of GSC cards were produced: the GIO cards fit into the larger of the two IO card sockets in the 712 workstation. Several were produced, including a second

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' ('' data terminal equipment'') suc ...

serial port, a serial/ 10BaseT combo, a second graphics card and a

Token Ring Token Ring network IBM hermaphroditic connector with locking clip. Screen contacts are prominently visible, gold-plated signal contacts less so. Token Ring is a computer networking technology used to build local area networks. It was introduc ...

card. The 715/Mirage, 725, 735, 755, B-, C-, and J-class workstations, and the D- and R-class servers, used the so-called "EISA form factor". Many different types of card were produced, including

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use ...

, single and dual 100Mbit Ethernet, Ultra-2 SCSI, ATM and graphics. The K- and T-class servers both used the "3x5" form factor, although the different brackets prevent the cards being interchangeable.

Fibre channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers in storage area networks (SAN) in commercial data cent ...

and

cards both exist.

References

PA-RISC LINUX - Glossary
{{Computer-bus Computer buses Hewlett-Packard products

See also

References