Massbus

The Massbus is a high-performance computer input/output bus designed in the 1970s by the Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts.

The bus was used by Digital to interconnect its highest-performance computers with magnetic disk and magnetic tape storage equipment. The use of a common bus allowed the PDP-10, PDP-11, and VAX computer families to share a common set of peripherals. An additional business objective was to provide a subsystem entry price well below that of IBM storage subsystems which used large and expensive controllers unique to each storage technology and optimized for connecting large numbers of storage devices.

Logical implementation

The bus is logically implemented as two separate sections:

• An asynchronous control bus used to access memory-mapped I/O registers in the individual storage devices, and
• A high-speed, synchronous data bus that is used to carry the actual data transfers between the storage devices and the host bus adapter. The data bus is 18 bits wide plus parity. 16 bits was used for PDP-11 and VAX systems, 18 bits for DEC-10s.
• Multiple devices of different types can transmit data over the shared data path. However, this was never supported by DEC operating systems.
• Static dual port is also provided to permit failover or manual switching of storage devices to another CPU.

Massbus storage devices each contain their own autonomous controller units, allowing fully overlapped operation of multiple storage units connected to a single Massbus. The interface between the computer and the Massbus is basically a pass-through device that allows connection of the common Massbus to the individual computer's internal buses (whether PDP-10 memory bus, Unibus, PDP-11/70 cache bus, or VAX Synchronous Backplane Interconnect). Whenever a storage controller has a data transfer ready, it arbitrates for the use of the Massbus's synchronous data channel.

Physical implementation

The bus is physically implemented in two forms:

• Shielded, controlled-impedance, flat, grey BC06R cables with Berg-styled IDC connectors at each end. Three cables operating in parallel carry all of the Massbus signals.
• Single large, round, heavily shielded cables with ZIF connectors at each end.
• All signals are full differential, and the data bus cycle is 1 microsecond.

The less-expensive flat grey cables are used within shielded equipment enclosures while the round cables are used to connect the enclosures. Transition headers allowed switching freely between the two types of cables and a single Massbus can be daisy-chained between the controller and up to eight mass storage devices. A very heavy ground conductor (wire) also usually joins the equipment.

Massbus peripherals

Disk: (capacities noted are raw, not formatted)

• RM02 80MB, CDC 9762 pack-loaded disk drives, CDC unique disks spin at 2400 RPM
• RM03 80MB, CDC 9762 pack-loaded disk drives, CDC unique disks spin at 3600 RPM

Note the RM02 uses a different drive pulley to slow the disk transfers to a level compatible with a Unibus-based PDP11. The RM03 spun at full speed, and is supported on the pdp11/70 and larger systems. Curiously enough the DECSYSTEM 2020 can support an RM03 with its Unibus-based interface due to a highly buffered Unibus-to-memory interface.

• RM05 300MB CDC 9766 pack-loaded disk drives, CDC unique
• RP04 100 MB ISS/Sperry Univac pack-loaded disk drive, IBM 3330 type
• RP05/RP06 100/200 MB Memorex 677-51/677-01 pack-loaded disk drive IBM 3330 type
• RP07 500MB ISS/Sperry Univac non-removable disks IBM 3350 type
• RS03 1MB (formatted) very fast fixed-head disk drives, DEC proprietary plated disk
• RS04 2MB (formatted) very fast fixed-head disk drives, DEC proprietary plated disk

Tape:

• TU16 1600bpi
• TU45 1600bpi
• TU77 1600bpi
• TU78 6250 GCR

Analog I/O

• DR01 Unibus size analog I/O board that connected to the RH20 Massbus controller on a PDP-10

Massbus CPU interfaces

• RH10—To the PDP-10's memory bus
• RH11—To the PDP-11's Unibus
• RH11C—to the KS10's (DECSYSTEM 2020) Unibus
• RH20—To the PDP-10 KL10 CPU (DECsystem 109x, DECSYSTEM-2040/2050/206x) channel bus
• RH70—To the PDP-11/70's Cache Bus
• RH750—To the VAX-11/75x bus
• RH780—To the VAX-11/78x, VAX 86xx SBI (Synchronous Backplane Interconnect) bus

Technical and de facto standards for wired computer buses
General	System bus Front-side bus Back-side bus Daisy chain Control bus Address bus Bus contention Network on a chip Plug and play List of bus bandwidths
Standards	SS-50 bus S-100 bus Unibus VAXBI MBus STD Bus SMBus Q-Bus Europe Card Bus ISA STEbus Zorro II Zorro III CAMAC FASTBUS LPC HP Precision Bus EISA VME VXI VXS NuBus TURBOchannel MCA SBus VLB PCI PXI HP GSC bus InfiniBand UPA PCI Extended (PCI-X) AGP PCI Express (PCIe) Direct Media Interface (DMI) RapidIO Intel QuickPath Interconnect HyperTransport
Storage	ST-506 ESDI SMD Parallel ATA (PATA) SSA DSSI HIPPI Serial ATA (SATA) eSATA eSATAp mSATA SCSI Parallel SCSI SAS Fibre Channel SATA Express M.2
Peripheral	Apple Desktop Bus HIL MIDI Multibus RS-232 RS-422 RS-423 RS-485 DMX512-A IEEE-488 (GPIB) IEEE-1284 (parallel port) UNI/O ACCESS.bus 1-Wire D²B I²C SPI Parallel SCSI Profibus USB IEEE 1394 (FireWire) Camera Link External PCIe Thunderbolt
Audio	ADAT Lightpipe AES3 Intel HD Audio I²S MADI McASP S/PDIF TOSLINK
Portable	PC Card ExpressCard
Embedded	Multidrop bus CoreConnect AMBA Wishbone
Interfaces are listed by their speed in the (roughly) ascending order, so the interface at the end of each section should be the fastest. Category