Hi everyone!
I've been doing a little bit more research on this strange Evans and
Sutherland computer that turned up at the University of Michigan
property disposition warehouse, and I thought I'd mention some of it
here in case anyone were interested.
I was doing a little more determined Web-surfing, and, as far as I
can tell, this machine was not an ES-3, but an ESV-3. With that
information in hand, I turned up some of the following information.
* These machines were based upon the MIPS R3000 microprocessor. They
seem to have been as powerful (at least processor wise) as an SGI
Personal IRIS 4D/35 or a lowball (R3000) SGI Indigo. I'm still quite
curious as to their graphics capabilities, though. How would these
have compared to the Elan graphics system that SGI would have been
selling around this time? How about GTX/GTXB/RealityEngine graphics
on the larger Power Series and Crimson machines? Any ideas?
* They seemed to commonly have between 32 and 64 megabytes of RAM,
and between 500 to 1000 megabytes of hard disk storage installed
(probably) as standard.
* They ran an operating system called ES/OS, which as far as I can
tell was some sort of UNIX derivative that also ran the X Window
System. It doesn't look like it got much farther than version 2.x.
* They seem to have been quite popular in the chemical modeling
field, and were also used in X-Ray Crystallography (sp?).
So, I'll see what I can do about going back there and picking it
up perhaps sometime next week. Unfortunately, the University wants
$100 for it, and as I said earlier, the system is lacking the
keyboard, mouse, and monitor (and I imagine that these do not show up
very often), so I'll still probably be deliberating this purchase a
little bit.
Interestingly enough, I found a mailing list message in Google's
cache (circa 1999) soliciting a source for replacement E&S ESV
systems from the University here as one had broken... I wonder if
this was it! :) If it is, it sure gives one a feel for the speed
of the property disposition pipeline!
Ah, yeah, I'll take a look at how much they want for that DG dual
floppy drive as well. I wouldn't imagine it's going anywhere
quickly. :)
Kind regards,
Sean
--
Sean Caron http://www.diablonet.net
scaron_at_engin.umich.edu root_at_diablonet.net
Received on Fri Jan 25 2002 - 19:03:53 GMT