----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Finnegan" <pat_at_computer-refuge.org>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 7:23 PM
Subject: Re: why ?
> On Saturday 17 January 2004 18:44, Teo Zenios wrote:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Patrick Finnegan" <pat_at_computer-refuge.org>
> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
> > <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
> > Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 6:36 PM
> > Subject: Re: why ?
>
> It's (parts of and upgrades to) the original IBM RS/6000 SP that Purdue
> purchased (on a grant I'm pretty sure) back in 1995 or so. (It's not
> even "classic" yet!) There's a picture of what a frame of it looks
> like on his web site. Try http://www.ozonelair.com/sp/
>
> The machine is mostly 66MHz POWER-2 thin and wide nodes, with 512MB ram
> on the thins and 1GB on the wides.
>
> And you don't *need* a forklift to move it, assuming you're willing to
> take the nodes out of the frame. We didn't use a forklift to move it
> or the NCR Worldmark 5100 cabinet we've got (look on his web site for
> details on that machine). I think we paid a similar amount for one of
> the cabinets from that monster. It cost $7M when new, and after moving
> around parts to max out one cabinet (two nodes). They were 8 processor
> nodes with 1GB RAM each. Now they're 32 processor nodes with 4GB ram
> each. And, we bought 1.6TB of storage with it (before raid overhead)
> for about $40.
>
> Damn, to think how little we paid for that, I feel like I'm starting to
> get some value back from these tuition dollars. : ) And, considering
> they were both basically donated machines, I don't feel too bad about
> it.
>
> Pat
> --
> Purdue University ITAP/RCS
> Information Technology at Purdue
> Research Computing and Storage
> http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/
>
The direct link doesn't work but I got to the picture from the main site.
The IBM machines has an impressive case but I don't see what your friend is
going to do with it. The NCR machine on the other hand is impressive to me
(always like the ppro architecture and having 32 of them is even better).
Any idea what kind of power requirements there is for a machine that large?
Would make one hell of a webserver (assuming you can find an OS to run off
of it). Computers like those 2 are cool but the power requirements and
custom software required to boot them make it difficult to do anything with
them let alone fire them up.
I find it amusing that on the same page as those multimillion dollar
computers the guy has a link to his dreamcast ($300 machine on launch) and
how he got it to play NES games through an emulator. I also have a dreamcast
with emulation cd's for all kinds of systems like nes, atari 2600/5200/7800
coleccovision and others. Maybe you can get the NCR machine to run a MAME
cabinet at full speed!
Received on Sat Jan 17 2004 - 18:47:18 GMT