7 Jan
2002
7 Jan
'02
11:50 a.m.
Hi William,
What kind of window are we dealing with? A week? A
month?
I think I need a commitment this week or next at the latest. Our HQ is in a hurry to get
this stuff taken care of. I found out this morning that they are sending maintenance
people here tomorrow (tuesday) to pick some stuff up. I am in the process of stripping
three "spare" ZS machines so they can take the chassis and power supplies. I
know these three would never be viable as complete systems, so I want to get all the
usable stuff out of them.
Quite interested, by the way. I think I know people
that worked at
Astronautics.
There were a bunch of them. When I started here in 1989, there were over 150 people in
this facility. Two weeks after I started they shut down the computer group and most
everyone left for new challenges. :(
Are you in the Madison area? Do you want to come take a look at what we are dealing with?
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
Later,
Jon
Jon Auringer
auringer(a)tds.net
7 Jan
7 Jan
3:58 p.m.
I think I need a commitment this week or next at the
latest.
Wow, not much time.
There were a bunch of them. When I started here in
1989, there were over
150 people in this facility.
The engineering school I went to sent people to Astronautics. It was
right around 1989.
Are you in the Madison area? Do you want to come take
a look at what we
are dealing with?
I am in New York, actually, but frequently travel to Chicago, mostly to
haul big things from my father's house.
Can you take a picture of one of these machines? Also, do the three racks
(?) come apart to make a more manageable load?
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
8 Jan
8 Jan
12:42 a.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
> I think I need a commitment this week or next at
the latest.
Wow, not much time.
No, it isn't. But I just need a real commitment to wanting the hardware
so I can negotiate with the company. If I have a commitment, the actual
removal could wait until the end of January or early February at the
latest. Since my position at the company is not guaranteed, the sooner
it gets done the better.
I would have offered the equipment sooner, but I have been having
trouble getting the company to commit to giving the ZS machines away.
Communication between the involved parties has been typically poor. The
whole process of shutting down our facility has been very frustrating.
I am in New York, actually, but frequently travel to
Chicago, mostly to
haul big things from my father's house.
Can you take a picture of one of these machines? Also,
do the three racks
(?) come apart to make a more manageable load?
It will take a couple of days for pictures. The two main racks are
connected by _extensive_ cabling. I am doubtful that taking the two main
racks apart is feasible. One of the main racks seems to be a standard
19" wide, the other main one looks to be about 30" wide. The third rack
is a separate 19" wide unit.
I was involved in removing a pair of the machines from the UW Madison a
couple of years ago. We had four or five people to move the machines
using a rented truck with a lift gate. We rolled those machines down the
ramp into the basement of our building. Those would be the easiest to
move. The other two machines are on a main floor of the building and do
not fit in our elevator. These machines would need to be ramped down a
wide flight of stairs and out the front doors of our building. More
challenging. :)
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
2:14 a.m.
I asked a friend at Astronautics about the ZS-1, and he said:
I talked to a guy who has used the one we used to have
here. He says for
scalar operations, it's as good as a 386. For purely vector operations, it
might be equivalent to a 1 GHz Pentium.
If you are looking for scrap value, it has 60 amp 5 volt power supplies and
old SCSI hard drives.
He also said you might have trouble with your electric bill.
- John
4:41 a.m.
John Foust wrote:
I asked a friend at Astronautics about the ZS-1, and
he said:
> I talked to a guy who has used the one we used to have here. He says for
> scalar operations, it's as good as a 386. For purely vector operations, it
> might be equivalent to a 1 GHz Pentium.
> If you are looking for scrap value, it has 60 amp 5 volt power supplies and
> old SCSI hard drives.
He neglected why this is a historically significant machine. Among other things,
it's an early example of dynamic instruction scheduling, decoupled access-
execute and distinct float and integer pipes. It's also a pseudo vector machine.
All in all, it's an impressive hunk of technology for its vintage (~1988, I
believe). The DAE and dynamic scheduling aspects are particularly interesting;
dynamic scheduling generally produces better performance that the more typical
static scheduling, and the hardware queues used to support both the DAE and
DS aspects of the architecture illustrate an alternative to the more
typical register renaming seen in superscalar architectures.
> He also said you might have trouble with your
electric bill.
He's probably not wrong. I believe the thing is implemented in ECL.
If I could figure out how to get one of these systems from there to
here I'd jump at the chance. These things belong in a museum, not
a scrap heap.
--
Chris Kennedy
chris(a)mainecoon.com
http://www.mainecoon.com
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
8:13 a.m.
At 07:41 AM 1/8/2002 -0800, Chris Kennedy wrote:
Darn, there goes my idea about ripping out the boards to
sell them as wall ornaments on eBay.
It sounds like they'd be a bear to move, though, regardless
of whether it was 30 miles or the 1,764 miles from Madison
to Palo Alto.
- John
He neglected why this is a historically significant
machine. Among other things,
it's an early example of dynamic instruction scheduling, decoupled access-
execute and distinct float and integer pipes. It's also a pseudo vector machine.
I'm not well-versed in architectural history, but the quick
Google search I did yesterday did certainly reveal a number
of people who'd written papers about it back then.
> He also
said you might have trouble with your electric bill.
He's probably not wrong. I believe the thing is implemented in ECL.
If I could figure out how to get one of these systems from there to
here I'd jump at the chance. These things belong in a museum, not
a scrap heap.
11 a.m.
No, it isn't. But I just need a real commitment to
wanting the hardware
so I can negotiate with the company.
I am on the verge of giving you a commitment.
It will take a couple of days for pictures. The two
main racks are
connected by _extensive_ cabling. I am doubtful that taking the two main
racks apart is feasible. One of the main racks seems to be a standard
19" wide, the other main one looks to be about 30" wide. The third rack
is a separate 19" wide unit.
OK, sounds like truck material.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
2:56 p.m.
Bill, maybe we can do a joint on this one.
On Tue, 8 Jan 2002, William Donzelli wrote:
M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
Shady Lea, Rhode Island
"Casta est quam nemo rogavit."
- Ovid
No, it
isn't. But I just need a real commitment to wanting the hardware
so I can negotiate with the company.
I am on the verge of giving you a commitment.
It will take a couple of days for pictures. The
two main racks are
connected by _extensive_ cabling. I am doubtful that taking the two main
racks apart is feasible. One of the main racks seems to be a standard
19" wide, the other main one looks to be about 30" wide. The third rack
is a separate 19" wide unit.
OK, sounds like truck material.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
8227
days inactive
8228
days old
8 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
at258＠osfn.org -
auringer＠tds.net -
aw288＠osfn.org -
chris＠mainecoon.com -
jfoust＠threedee.com