On Thu, 28 May 2015, emanuel stiebler wrote: Excellent! Does anybody have enough 1401s to run them in parallel to speed up the process? I wonder whether the 1401 emulator for the 1620 could do it?

On 28 May 2015 at 14:12, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: Well, I think there are a few IBM System/360 and System/370 machines out there, I think. Why not just use them in 1401 emulation mode (if they have that option)? Should help as well. ...What do you mean just use them natively? But that's not nearly as funny! Probably would still be a bit slow though. Maybe we could convince all the people doing mining to just not mine one block and let the 1401s, and hardware emulations of said architecture mine it? You know, for the shits and giggles. -- Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove STCKON08DS0 Contact information available upon request.

On 05/28/2015 05:08 PM, js at cimmeri.com wrote: From imb1401.info: Thus, the average time to add two 10-digit numbers is 40 cycles, or about a 2.2 kHz add rate. Adding two 20-digit numbers is 70 cycles, or an add rate of 1.2 kHz. Compare that to a modern superscalar microprocessor with a peak add rate of two 64-bit add instructions per cycle at 3-GigaHertz, or an add rate of 6 Ghz; the modern microprocessor is 6,000,000,000 / 1,000 = 6,000,000 times faster! So, no, not for the common ones of today. The surplus stores during the 1960s used to sell 1401-style SMS cards by the crateful. I used to disassemble them for the transistors. --Chuck

That explains ... I've got a handful of miscellaneous SMS cards, actually, that I got from my dad; he probably picked them up from some electronics scrap back when he was in high school or when doing his undergrad probably for the same reason as you may have done; to salvage parts from... Professionally he has always done embedded design so he was never in a scenario where he would have been servicing EDP equipment. I noted the paragraph on ibm1401.info there discussing the gold contents of the edge connectors with some amusement... that must explain why they've all been lopped off of mine! This whole thread turned out to be a bit of kismet for me; my dad told me the cards had come from "some old IBM mainframe" but it was never clear to me the exact type or age range on the equipment ... now I know they are SMS cards! I also noted they've got a database of SMS modules there on ibm1401.info ... I'm excited to look mine up when I've got a bit of free time this weekend. Besides having the edge connectors lopped off of them by the original scrapper, the cards I've got, my dad never got around to harvesting parts from so they are fairly intact for identification purposes. Best, Sean On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 9:42 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: