25 Jan
1999
25 Jan
'99
10:48 a.m.
On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Sam Ismail wrote:
Yes but we're using those for a VCF project.
Using 80 C-64s in a single project? Heck, I'm curious...
26 Jan
26 Jan
11:43 a.m.
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11:42 a.m.
New subject: Big C64 Secret Project (was Re: Classic Computer Auctions List
::> Yes but we're using those for a VCF
project.
::
::Using 80 C-64s in a single project? Heck, I'm curious...
So am I :-)))
OK, I'll tell you. Oh, wait. It's a secret. I think you have to come to
VCF 3.0 to find out.
-- Doug
11:09 p.m.
New subject: Big C64 Secret Project (was Re: Classic Computer Auctions List
> ::> Yes but we're using those for a VCF
project.
> ::Using 80 C-64s in a single project? Heck, I'm curious...
> So am I :-)))
OK, I'll tell you. Oh, wait. It's a secret.
I think you have to come to
VCF 3.0 to find out.
Hey, Doug, don't tease them - Just say NO - like in 'No Comment',
or 'there is NOthing to tell', or 'NOthing to be curious' ...
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
2:32 p.m.
On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Max Eskin wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Sam Ismail wrote:
This sounds like a job for Beopuppy.
--
Ward Griffiths
"the timid die just like the daring; and if you don't take the plunge then
you'll just take the fall" Michael Longcor
Yes but we're using those for a VCF project.
Using 80 C-64s in a single project? Heck, I'm curious... 
2:54 p.m.
Max Eskin wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Sam Ismail wrote:
Yes, and 80 C-64's would indicate 80 powersupplies. Heck, I'm impressed... :^)
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
Yes but we're using those for a VCF project.
Using 80 C-64s in a single project? Heck, I'm curious... 
4:21 p.m.
On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Max Eskin wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Sam Ismail wrote:
Were basically in the preliminary feasibility study stages of building a
massively parallel vintage computer. The point? To demonstrate that old
hardware that can be picked up for pennies can be combined to attain
amazing amounts of computing power.
Hans Franke is the project leader. Currently we are talking about the
architecture of such a thing. The current wisdom from Hans is to use 1541
drives instead since they would be easier to network and are self-booting,
not to mention plentiful and cheap.
As we get closer to actually deciding to implement this I'll keep you
posted.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always being hassled by the man.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 01/15/99]
Yes but we're using those for a VCF project.
Using 80 C-64s in a single project? Heck, I'm curious... 
5:54 p.m.
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11:09 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Sam Ismail once
stated:
> On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Max Eskin wrote:
> > On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Sam Ismail wrote:
> > > Yes but we're using those for a VCF project.
> > Using 80 C-64s in a single project? Heck, I'm curious...
> Were basically in the preliminary feasibility
study stages of building a
> massively parallel vintage computer. The point? To demonstrate that old
> hardware that can be picked up for pennies can be combined to attain
> amazing amounts of computing power.
The biggest problem will be communication speed
between nodes.
Depending deeply on the structure of the task.
> Hans Franke is the project leader. Currently we
are talking about the
> architecture of such a thing. The current wisdom from Hans is to use 1541
> drives instead since they would be easier to network and are self-booting,
> not to mention plentiful and cheap.
And you'll end up with a ring architecture,
since if I remember correctly,
each drive only had two IO ports on it. That is, if you don't hack some
hardware to get a parallel connection to each computer (like 10BaseT hubs
today). And you'll need to select your problem domain to complement the
speed issues you'll have in communication, or you may end up with something
that's slower than a single C-64.
Redarding th information Salam gave, your idea might be right, but
as you said, its also depending on the problem to solve. Also you
just imply that the conectionstructure will be a simple brute force
bus ... Just wait (or join the team).
-spc (Let's see ... 80 machines in a ring
configuration, average
distance between two nodes is 40 hops, and at 9600bps
(assuming the hardware can do that) you have one bit taking
104 uSec between nodes (with an additional .001 uSec per
foot, propagation delay you know 8-), so you have 1.04 mSec
per character per hop. So to send a one byte message to
an arbitrary node will take, on average, 40 mSec. Round trip
will therefore take nearly 1/10 second (and that's assuming
no delay between switching nodes---YMMV in actual use ... ))
a) what if there is no peer type network, but rather a structured
hirarchy of domains ?
b) what if there is a bus rather than a ring (with switching time)
c) What if the speed in the serial part of the network is higher ?
d) what if the amount of date transfered includes low overhead ?
Come in and join the definition team.
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
11:25 p.m.
> And you'll end up with a ring architecture,
since if I remember correctly,
> each drive only had two IO ports on it. That is, if you don't hack some
> hardware to get a parallel connection to each computer (like 10BaseT hubs
> today). And you'll need to select your problem domain to complement the
> speed issues you'll have in communication, or you may end up with something
> that's slower than a single C-64.
Other topologies are possible including serial bus and star with trivial
to none in the way of hardware to do it.
The easiest using a few disods and resistor is a serial bus that runs
CSMA/CD. If that sounds familiar lookup IEEE802.5...
Anyhow I"ve done this before and the trick is to make the transmitter look
like an open collector (takes one diode) so that RXand TX for every node
can be on the bus (coax or twisted pair with pull up or down resistor).
Collision detection and carrier sense are via spare port bit (or CTS RTS
lines). I've run such a bus at speeds up to 115kb/S and even 9600baud
it's very useful.
Allison
27 Jan
27 Jan
2:13 a.m.
> > And you'll end up with a ring
architecture, since if I remember correctly,
> > each drive only had two IO ports on it. That is, if you don't hack some
> > hardware to get a parallel connection to each computer (like 10BaseT hubs
> > today). And you'll need to select your problem domain to complement the
> > speed issues you'll have in communication, or you may end up with
something
> > that's slower than a single C-64.
Other topologies are possible including serial bus and
star with trivial
to none in the way of hardware to do it.
Jep, and wait and see .)
The easiest using a few disods and resistor is a
serial bus that runs
CSMA/CD. If that sounds familiar lookup IEEE802.5...
:))
Anyhow I"ve done this before and the trick is to
make the transmitter look
like an open collector (takes one diode) so that RXand TX for every node
can be on the bus (coax or twisted pair with pull up or down resistor).
Collision detection and carrier sense are via spare port bit (or CTS RTS
lines). I've run such a bus at speeds up to 115kb/S and even 9600baud
it's very useful.
Shure, as I said, a shared media eliminates the switching.
But 115 kb/s is still high for a C64 .... lets see.
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
29 Jan
29 Jan
8:57 a.m.
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2:35 p.m.
On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
Mail-to: majordomo(a)nut.net
subscribe vcf-c64
Come in and
join the definition team.
How does one join then? -spc (And I never did really learn 6502 Assembly
code)
We'll try not to look down on you.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always being hassled by the man.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 01/15/99]
1 Feb
1 Feb
1:19 a.m.
New subject: Massive paralell junk (was: Classic Computer Auctions List)
> a) what if there is no peer type network, but
rather a structured
> hirarchy of domains ?
You then have a tree structure, which at first
improves speed, but you end
up with bottle necks the higher you go in the tree (again, depending upon
problem type and communications, you get the bottle neck of you allow
arbitrary communication between nodes).
Of course, since we have only realy slow machines (less than
300 kop(6502)/s*unit) and slow communication (between ~10 kBit
for the working slaves and 100 kByte for the Main controler),
the problem has to be ideal - so low (or beter none) communication
between the slaves, and low dependancies between work pieces.
For the bottleneck we plan to use different networks with different
speeds in ech hirarchy - and for the problem, things like cracking
or rendering comes to mind .... (cracking especialy is _very_ good
scalable). Also the overhead might decrease in the higer levels _if_
we can manage to concate transfers (lower arbitation).
Come in and
join the definition team.
How does one join then? -spc (And I never did really learn 6502 Assembly
code)
We'll give you _ONE_ last chance :)
Now come!
Gruss
H.
--
Traue keinem Menschen der 5 Tage blutet und immer noch nicht tod ist.
27 Jan
27 Jan
12:30 a.m.
Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
Steve Ciarcia designed, implemented and documented a
parallel computer
Do you mean the thing that calculated the Mandelbrot set? That was in a
book called 'The Best of Byte'. It was a cardcage of microcontrollers
designed to output a single bit depending on which direction the pixel
they are processing tends to go. I think it's a very different problem
from anything that would likely be done with a network
of real
computers.
29 Jan
29 Jan
9:02 a.m.
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2:36 p.m.
On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
It depends. There are a class of problems that lend
themselves to such a
partitioning scheme. One of the more well known are code breaking systems,
where the code is the same between each nodes, but the data is different.
At college a few of us wanted to port Crack (breaks Unix passwords) to the
MasPar that was very underutilized, but we never did get around to doing it.
-spc (Or even rendering---that parallelizes very nicely ... )
Hey, you're a natural for this project. Those are the two very things
we've so far been discussing as possible problems for this super vintage
computer.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always being hassled by the man.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 01/15/99]
27 Jan
27 Jan
6:14 a.m.
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26 Jan
26 Jan
11:09 p.m.
On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Max Eskin wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Sam Ismail wrote:
> > Yes but we're using those for a VCF project.
> Using 80 C-64s in a single project? Heck, I'm curious...
[... not secret but also not public parts
zensored^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdeleted
for better readability ...]
As we get closer to actually deciding to implement
this I'll keep you
posted.
--
Always being hassled by the man.
Salaam, you are talkin too much!
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
9456
days inactive
9463
days old
18 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
allisonp＠world.std.com -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
ckaiser＠oa.ptloma.edu -
dastar＠ncal.verio.com -
doug＠blinkenlights.com -
gram＠cnct.com -
Hans.Franke＠mch20.sbs.de -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
kurtkilg＠geocities.com -
kurtkilgor＠bigfoot.com -
spc＠armigeron.com