Jerome Fine replies: While I don't believe that a "STAR 100" from Control Data Corporation (CDC) will even be available for hobby users - it weighed many tonnes and needed external cooling (if I remember correctly - likely only water), it was a system which was likely the fastest and largest at the time - back in 1972. I think it also used core memory. And the cost was about $ US 10 Million. All of that is very hazy after 25 years. The key aspect which I am responding to is that the instruction set was based on a 64 bit word (8 bytes) many of which used only a half word and maybe a few might have used only a quarter word (2 bytes). The registers - there were 256 of 64 bits each were normally split into a count (16 bits) and an address (48 bits) when used to reference memory. Of course, the registers could also be integers or floating point values. Now the aspect of interest to this post. The addresses were specified down to the bit level - all 256 Trillion Bits of address or 32 Trillion Bytes. There were a number of instructions which were able to manipulate single bits - OR, AND, XOR, etc. I can't remember the exact details after 25 years, but I do remember (rarely) making use of the bit instructions when certain aspects of the paging algorithms were required. The point is well taken about what the full word (64 bits) instructions did if the data was not aligned on a 64 bit address - I can't remember. The instructions did have to be aligned on at least a byte boundary and if the minimum size was 2 bytes and the others were 4 bytes and 8 bytes (no odd number of bytes), then the alignment required for instructions was probably at the 16 bit level. Also, the instructions were always executed out of a READ-ONLY area of memory. One other interesting aspect is that by convention, the OS assumed that all of the top half of virtual memory belonged to the OS. Another is that the hardware was the child of Seymore Cray. Sadly, I probably no longer even have a manual for the instruction set. Incidentally, a quick quiz. Assuming all the virtual address space was physical memory and you wanted to make a copy onto a disk drive (32 Trillion Bytes - we didn't even have GigaBytes back in 1972, let alone TeraBytes), how long would a sustained WRITE at 1 MByte/second take? Hint: Answer should be in ONE digit of precision along with a time interval. Eager beavers who want to give us 8 significant figures of precision are disqualified. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

Jerome Fine replies: After more than 25 years, I am not certain of anything. But if Cray had a hand in the CDC 6000s, and he was still around CDC at the time the STAR 100 was designed and built, I would certainly think that he was also involved in the STAR 100 as well. I thought I saw an article about the STAR 100 recently which described the circular nature of the physical rack which was required in order to reduce to length of the wires which interconnected the different parts of the system. Evidently, it was rather cold in the centre of the whole thing. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

Jerome Fine wrote: One year (less almost two weeks vacation for the sysadmin who will surely need one by then) assuming no down time (in which case the sysadmin will _really_ need that vacation). -- Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/> WARNING: The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.

Marvin wrote: For the _original_ Bastard Operator from Hell material, it's also important to check out Simon Travaglia's stuff at his New Zealand homepage, <http://prime-mover.cc.waikato.ac.nz/Bastard.html>. I know he writes some of the material Network Week (UK) publishes, and all of it is based on his concepts of course. Now if only the NW page would be updated oftener than since last Christmas... (their response via email several months ago was "real soon"). Network Week offers an official BOFH t-shirt, but it's only available by mail order and only in the UK. Good thing my wife has a friend who goes back home for a few weeks every few months, it's a nice shirt. Only two sizes, Big Bastard and Really Big Bastard, corresponding to the US large and extra. A word of warning -- don't email Simon with questions (or for that matter ask them on comp.unix.aix) unless you've got a thick skin. Or it's a really tricky question that God himself couldn't find in the manuals or a month of web searches. He's a great guy and I'd love to get drunk with him sometime, but he's the first to admit that he _is_ a real bastard. (We occasionally correspond due to both spending lots of time babysitting RS/6000 AIX systems and of course their users). (Now if you want something _twisted_, check out the Satanic Sysadmins at <http://www.satanic.org>. Don't forget to fill out the System Administrator Purity Test.) -- Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/> WARNING: The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.