At 10:21 PM 1/26/99 -0800, Sam Ismail wrote:
>To demonstrate that old
>hardware that can be picked up for pennies can be combined to attain
>amazing amounts of computing power.
Amazing? How many orders of magnitude difference in horsepower
between a C-64 and a $600 Best Buy Intel box? Perhaps I'm being
unromantic, and I certainly have too many old computers of the
XT/AT/486 variety, but I just don't "get" many of these distributed
computing projects. (I do leave my spare contemporary computers
working for the RC5 project at distributed.net, but that's another
story.) Take 10 computers at 1 horse each, and they're still not
equal to one contemporary (cheap) computer at 10 horses. Sure,
there's hack value in doing it, but mostly for people with too
much time on their hands, or for people who aren't paying for the
electric bill or the room to put them in. Hack away, sure - but
claim they're doing "useful" work?
- John
On Jan 28, 4:24, Pete Turnbull wrote:
> On Jan 27, 15:11, Lawrence LeMay wrote:
> > Subject: free stuff
> > Documentation sets for the SGI Indigo R3000 computer.
Drat, now I've done it too -- that wasn't meant to spam the list :-(
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
On Jan 27, 22:36, R. Stricklin (kjaeros) wrote:
> Subject: Re: free stuff
> On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, R. Stricklin (kjaeros) wrote:
>
> > I'm heading home just now so when I get there I'll send along the
> > incomplete pinout that SGI let out.
> >
>
> The connector is a super-high density 60 pin one, identical to those
> used as serial interfaces on Cisco 2500 series routers. 4 rows of 15 pins
> each.
>
> Here's the info as found in the Indy Workstation Owner's Guide:
>
>
> Pin Description
> ----------------------------
> 7 serial control data
> 9 serial control clock
> 12 clock ground
> 13 clock
> 22 +12
> 23 +5
> 24 -12
> 27 data (7) ground
> 28 data (7)
> 29 data (6) ground
> 30 data (6)
> 31 data (3)
> 32 data (3) ground
> 33 data (4)
> 34 data (4) ground
> 35 data (5)
> 36 data (5) ground
> 46 data (0)
> 47 data (0) ground
> 48 data (1)
> 49 data (1) ground
> 50 data (2)
> 51 data (2) ground
>
> all other pins are marked "reserved".
>
> Could somebody use this information to interface this camera to another
> machine? Maybe. I certainly wouldn't care to. SGI never even used this
> interface on any of their other machines. I suspect the idea was to use
> the Indycam with the Indy's built-in ISDN interface so you could get
> desktop video conferencing straight out of the box.
It's also used on Indigo^2 machines. Yes, it was meant for
videoconferencing, and many Indys came with an evaluation licence and media
for the software. Part of the problem is that ISDN didn't take off; it's
common in Europe (especially Germany) and in many places you can just plug
an Indy into the wall socket (like the one I'm typing this on) but it's a
very muddled setup in the States, with lots of different switch types,
multiple interface boxes, etc, in some cases.
One of my colleagues took an IndyCam apart, and he tells me the serial bus
is based around a standard I2C chip. BTW, I wouldn't describe the quality
as "abysmal". Given decent lighting, it's not bad at all (though only 640
x 480, or maybe 640 x 512). Under fluorescent lighting, colour balance can
be awkward, but that's because strip lights don't emit a full spectrum, as
any photographer will tell you.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
On Jan 27, 18:13, Doug wrote:
> Subject: Re: free stuff
> On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Computer Room Internet Cafe wrote:
>
> > Ok, I'll bite, WTH is an Indy Camera??
>
> A digital video camera for an SGI Indy. The market seems to be flooded
> with them right now for some reason. A guy had a couple of boxes of them
> at TRW last month.
"IndyCam" -- they're moderately low-res (640 x 480 max, I think) 8-bit
colour with a fairly unique interface. Meant for videoconferencing; they
fit either an Indy or an Indigo^2. I've heard of people adapting them for
other uses, though.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Hi, Lawrence.
On Jan 27, 15:11, Lawrence LeMay wrote:
> Subject: free stuff
> Sigh. I'm losing my secret storage room where i've been tossing all sorts
of
> old manuals and such.. So, does anyone need this:
>
> Documentation sets for the SGI Indigo R3000 computer.
I assume you're in the States, so shipping to the UK would probably be too
expensive. Pity, as I have three Indigos sans docs. I don't need them,
since I could always download the electronic version from the SGI technical
library, but they'd be nice to have.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Someone on the List mentioned a book:
IBM's Early Computers
by Charles Bashe (et al) 1986 Cambridge MIT Press
It was described as out of print/unobtainable. Whipping into a
phone booth, I tore off my glasses, slammed the reciever down into
my Novation JCat acoustic modem, and dialed up www.abebooks.com .
Entering: Bashe, Charles gave 8 instances of the title
available.
The one at Silicon Valley Fine Books has been spoken for. ;}
The 7 others are waiting for you.....
Cheerz
John
And as I speak, Gordon is scanning a whole bunch more old papers to put
on-line... I personally went and got him a pair of scissors so that he would
stop ripping his bound papers by hand... :-)
I think the one he was scanning was something like "have we learned anything
>from the pdp-11"?
- Joe
> From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis(a)freegate.com>
> Sigh. The "PDP-8 in unknown condition" sold for $1526 on Epay. Wonder what
> a cherry 8/E with all the trimmings would fetch? Ugh.
>--Chuck
I sent the seller (dschambe(a)uiuc.edu) three separate emails asking for ANY
details about the system, and I received absolutely nothing in reply. So
I'll never even know what type of PDP-8 it was... probably a VT-78 :-)
Almost certainly not the straight 8 that I naively initially thought it was.
I see that the same seller now has an IMSAI 8080 listed
(http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=59373250), not known
to be working, no pictures, sold as-is. The bid is currently $810 without
having met reserve. Any bets what it will end up going for? ... oh, and the
matching dual floppies (also not known to be working) are also for sale,
currently only $710.
Since I'm blabbing here about ebay posts, be sure to check out the $5000
Rare Xerox Alto II computer system
(http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=58679296) before it
disappears. Oddly, no one has bid on it yet.
- Joe
A very interesting article posted on Slashdot about the storage problems
that are being experienced by the government:
http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1999/0125/fcw-newsstorage-1-25-99.html
If you don't feel like checking, it's about how it takes them so long to
transfer data to new tapes, the tapes begin to decay by the time they're
done.
List:
Last night we found, in of all places the attic,
some missing literature - my given up for lost original
Altair BASIC Referance manual, complete with the little
MITS tty test printout ( ?SIN(3.14159/6) \ .5 \ ok ), an
Atari BASIC quick referance guide, ad for an Atari MPP
modem, and most interesting "Bugbook III", 1975 which
discusses a MARK 80 (8080) Microdesigner of E&L instruments.
This is somewhat interesting as it consists of a backplane
with a breadboard area complete with bus connections for
interfacing experiments. Bus is called SK-10 and cards plug
into dual wide DEC edge connectors.
Anybody have a MARK 80? Is it any relation to the 8008
Mark-8?
Chuck
cswiger(a)widomaker.com
