29 Jun
2006
29 Jun
'06
5:14 a.m.
Ken Seefried wrote:
The premier box was the 3600, which was probably the
box that the
original poster described as "2 refrigerators", or some such...it was
about that big or bigger. As I recall, it had up to 32 i486 processors
(I vaugly recall a Pentium upgrade, and maybe a PPro one) and used some
Teradata interconnect IP. They were touted as "data warehouse" boxes,
and were usually used for some big DB app. Million dollar boxes. Ran
pretty bog standard SVR4.
Interesting - is that the direction that NCR headed after the Tower line
(68k-based systems)? My Tower 700 dates from about 1988, and the 800 would
have been later (there was possibly a 900, but not sure). 486 CPUs turned up
around what, 1992 or so? I suppose NCR could have squeezed another model of
server inbetween the two.
I never saw a place to plug a keyboard and mouse into
one of these...
The Towers at least were serial console only (15 pin D-type female connectors
too, just so it was possible to get mixed up with AUI Ethernet!)
Someone even thought about porting Linux to the thing:
http://www.anime.net/~goemon/linux-3550/. I shall not hold my breath.
Yeah, hairy stuff. Stranger things have happened, though. Depends what sort of
docs they have and what sort of Linux driver code exists for the various
peripheral controllers, I guess.
cheers
Jules