13 Jun
2005
13 Jun
'05
10:33 p.m.
Silly question, but what does a Stardent workstation
consist of?
We had one at work a while ago. It was a 4 foot rack with the computer
made up of large cards with lots of custom IC's with heatsinks. Also
had standard disk drives and the 1/4? inch cartridge tapedrives.
From what I understood it had good graphics capability
for its time and
was reasonably fast. I never used it.
14 Jun
14 Jun
4:58 a.m.
On Mon, 2005-06-13 at 22:52 -0400, William Donzelli wrote:
Understatement.
William Donzelli
Hmm, anyone have any images so I know what to look for? It's *very*
doubtful we have any kind of CPU box - let alone two, given that we have
two displays. If it's some faceless metal crate it's just possible
something's lurking in storage though.
I suspect it's more likely that somewhere along the line someone's
sourced a couple of the screens from a Stardent setup that was being
broken up, then used them on something else that we *do* have, and
they've eventually passed the whole lot onto us. Possibly they were used
with some of our DEC or Sun stuff...
cheers
Jules
From what I understood it had good graphics capability
for its time and
was reasonably fast. I never used it. 
10 a.m.
Do you ever recall seeing a poster that shows the whole surface of
the earth under cloudless skies?
This famous composite photo was produced on a Stellar / Stardent machine.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 4:58 AM
Subject: Re: Stardent 19" workstation monitor
On Mon, 2005-06-13 at 22:52 -0400, William Donzelli
wrote:
Understatement.
William Donzelli
Hmm, anyone have any images so I know what to look for? It's *very*
doubtful we have any kind of CPU box - let alone two, given that we have
two displays. If it's some faceless metal crate it's just possible
something's lurking in storage though.
I suspect it's more likely that somewhere along the line someone's
sourced a couple of the screens from a Stardent setup that was being
broken up, then used them on something else that we *do* have, and
they've eventually passed the whole lot onto us. Possibly they were used
with some of our DEC or Sun stuff...
cheers
Jules
From what I understood it had good graphics capability
for its time
and
was reasonably fast. I never used it. 
10:15 a.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Hmm, anyone have any images so I know what to look
for? It's *very*
doubtful we have any kind of CPU box - let alone two, given that we have
two displays. If it's some faceless metal crate it's just possible
something's lurking in storage though.
You could look for a book, _The Architecture of Supercomputers: Titan,
a case study_, Siewiorek and Koopman, Academic Press, 1991, ISBN
0-12-643060-8. It's got pictures of a Stardent Titan. And yes, when
it's closed up it looks a lot like a big painted metal box, albeit a
bit taller than your typical deskside box.
Sellam could perhaps ask Gordon Bell.
-Frank McConnell
7:51 a.m.
> From what I understood it had good graphics
capability
> for its time and was reasonably fast. I never used it.
Understatement.
Some Factoids: Formed from the two companies Stellar and
Ardent, then sold to the company Kubota. Essentially the
reimagining of the original Apollo computer for Supercomputer
visualization. Perhaps 1986-1991. I'd agree that the display
without the computer (display processor) is pretty limited.
John A.
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