GSC is a bus used in many of the HP 9000 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 a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

I/O bus, similar to NuBus or Sun's SBus, 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 microproc ...

and PA-7300LC processors. Several variations were produced over time, the later ones running at 40 MHz: ;GSC-1X: The original GSC bus implemented on PA-7100LC and used in the Gecko (712), Mirage (715) and Electra computers. Peak Bandwidth 142 MB/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 introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such as a compu ...

serial port, a serial/

10BaseT Ethernet over twisted-pair technologies use twisted-pair cables for the physical layer of an Ethernet computer network. They are a subset of all Ethernet physical layers. Early Ethernet used various grades of coaxial cable, but in 1984, StarLA ...

combo, a second graphics card and a

Token Ring Token Ring is a Physical layer, physical and data link layer computer networking technology used to build local area networks. It was introduced by IBM in 1984, and standardized in 1989 as IEEE Standards Association, IEEE 802.5. It uses a sp ...

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 in ...

, single and dual 100 Mbit Ethernet, Ultra-2

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...

, 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 Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...

and

cards both exist.

References

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

See also

References