Richard Erlacher wrote: BLASPHEMY! ;-) There are those of us here who would make some effort to save such computers (I'm not one of them but I kow they're here). Before you say that theyre old and slow, let me remind you that we're on the Classic Computers list (that is the point of this list or am I missing something?). For instance, I purchased a MicroVax 3400 which I'm going to put in working order. I also have a VS3100, I purchased that because it was inexpensive and I could experiment on it first. I just want to be more knowledgable with the MV3400 before I start really playing with it. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)home.net http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only) http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/lightsey/52 (Graphics) http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)

On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Jim Strickland wrote: Putting a few PCs together into a scalable robust cluster is the basis for quite a bit of mission critical stuff these days. I think even IBM is starting to get it: http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?99039.ecsuperlinux.htm Here's some info on the linux high availability project: http://linux-ha.org/ -- Doug

C|N>K. You Bastard. :) g.

On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Chuck McManis wrote: Another obsolete classic: Micro: you can pick it up and carry it Mini: you need a handtruck Mainframe: you need a forklift and a union moving crew -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2000 8:46 AM Subject: Re: The debate on what per say is a mini... Ok, a Vax 6000 is probably best defined as a mini, but the only handcart I ever found that would cope with it was one my grandfather made when he was doing his fitter and turner certification in 1923. Solid steel, including the wheels. Unfortunately the ground did not cooperate and it tended to sink into it up to the axles. That was just the system unit, some of the other bits are heavier. Well, six mates and a ute work as well, (with a carton of Hahn Ice for lubrication of course) Uh, a ute (utility) is Ozspeak for something similar to what our North American friends usually call a 'pickup', though a ute is somewhat smaller. (Think car with a cargo bay where the back seats would be, roughly 1/2 tonner). Have moved this system twice in this manner, and a complete cluster, though I cheated and had the factory (Fauldings) load it onto a one-tonner (more like the true US 'pickup') and trailer for me. But the six guys at the otherend worked nearly as well.... As you said, size/weight as a defining point, is unreliable. Cheers Geoff

Chuck McManis skrev: My, I've suddenly got a whole lot of minis around here! Thre only exception I can think of is my DECstation 5000/200, which for some reason seems to be stuck in 110V country. BTW, how micro is a MicroVAX? -- En ligne avec Thor 2.6. I installed 7.6.1 on my Color Classic too. It has 6mb ram now, and no FPU yet. Things really slowed down when I installed the Appearance extention and control panel. But now the GUI is OS8ish! ;) That little creep is so cute, I'll probably leave instructions to have it made my urn. It'll hold my ashes, and still continue to function as a computer ;) iVan

I hate to jump into a philosophical argument, but here goes.... Mainframes are big/powerful machines that sit in a secured area and are driven by terminals (X,PC,3270,etc) on peoples desks. They cost big bucks. Micro-computers are small/weak machines that sit on peoples desk so they can surf the web and play solitare. They cost next to nothing. Workstations are more powerful, but still small... They cost more than micros. Mini-computers is a nitch that has gone away (or been replaced by workstations). They were less powerful than a mainframe, but orders of magnitude cheaper and could sit next to a persons desk. This was more of a marketing trick to help scientists convince the bean-counters they weren't buying a real computer, just a glorified calculater (PDP == Peripheral Data Processor). A calculator doesn't need to be locked in a room with all the other calculators :) The only super-mini I am aware of is the 11/780. It was DECs attempt to supplant Mainframes with lower cost, but equally powerful machines. They were quite successful at it... clint PS It is unfair to compare mainframes of old to PCs of new. To be fair, compare an 11/780 with what was available at the time: the Apple ][, Commodore, IBM PC(?). These machines couldn't support multiple users, imagine running a university off of a cluster of Amigas! PPS A modern mainframe would have no problem out-performing a PC for REAL work. It's designed to do just that. At 12:58 PM 12/15/00 -0700, Jim wrote:

Jeff Hellige wrote: The AS/400 is a weird beast, it comes in many sizes. In the lab we have an AS/400 that is about the size of a MicroVAX II in a BA123 or 213 cabinet. I've seen AS/400's that could fill a 20x10 room (that's will the peripherals). It's a good replacement for the System 1 and System 36 (5250 terminals). My customers seem to love them. Never let anyone convince you that the Mainframe is dead. Many of my customers were about to retire a lot of big iron for NT machines when they suddenly realized that the Mainframe could play server. They then figured out it could do a lot more. So we have come full circle so to speak. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)home.net http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only) http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/lightsey/52 (Graphics) http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)

Sellam Ismail wrote: It's cool that they're playing with Linux but it's even better that it's a mainframe. That is one powerful box, I wonder how they fixed the TCP/IP problem? That problem was that the ethernet was directly connected to the mainframe which killed the performance (that's was FEPs are for). The most wonderful thing about a mainframe is that it can just about any OS on it while running other OS's. And I think they're still some what compatible with the old 1401, so they can run apps from over 40? years ago. BTW, I once watched a mainframe person do pipes and what not on a mainframe session (3090) as easly as I can under Unix. So I get the impression there is a lot more power there than I have any knowledge of. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)home.net http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only) http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/lightsey/52 (Graphics) http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)

At 11:35 PM 12/15/00 -0700, Clint wrote: Oh they are the best kind, everyone can be right at the same time ;-) In the "modern" world, what about an Intel server that is locked up in a co-location facility at some ISP and is being driven by web browsers ? (some of which (netpliance) are effectively terminals?) My PC sits under my desk, only the monitor/keyboard is on top :-) Cost only? When I worked at Sun we worked in something like video resolution or max memory, but the bottom line has traditionally been cost :-) Actually this isn't a fair description. Mini-computers most definitely have _not_ gone away and you will see a resurgence of mini-computer like features. Specifically, mini-computers are computers that are *configurable* with a wide variety of peripherals. This lets them be used for lab experiments, or process control, etc. PC's have done this in the past but the lack of I/O features on the mainstream "PC" of today are hindering their use in the lab and process control. Also the lack of documentation that many people have complained about. Collectively this is the "cost" model and generally follows order of magnitudes: < 4K Micro < 40K Workstation < 400K Mini < 4M Mainframe < 40M Super I added the last bit because we haven't been including "what's a super-computer" in our lists. I heard a great talk by a guy who works at LLNL and the complaints the scientists had at the purchase of ASCI WHITE (super computer made out of parallel RISC chips) because it simply could not be used to program the kinds of models they used for nuclear simulations. But Clint, this is in fact the point. Can one come up with a definition that transcends what the marketroids called micro, mini, and mainframe of their day? Agreed, check out the spec's for the IBM S/390 (I mean Z900 :-) --Chuck

At 12:13 PM 12/16/00 -0700, you wrote: I once ran an interesting benchmark on a PC and a Sun Ultra II. I plotted the mean, max and min megaflop rates as a function of problem size for two kinds of dense and sparse linear algebra operations. Both machines had a peak performance of about 33MFlops, but the spread of the speeds for a given problem size were much larger on the PC (and no, this was not a timing resolution problem), while the min and max rate lines were almost identical on the Sun. Thus, it could be seen that variance in performance was much higher on the PC, while it was very smooth on the Sun. Another interesting trend appeared with respect to problem size: as the required storage grew significantly larger than the secondary cache, the rate on the PC degraded dramatically to 15MFlops. Then, as swap was required to hold the problem, NT4sp4 complained about not enough memory and froze. On the Sun, the speed degraded very gracefully from 33 to 29 MFlops as the size of the problem grew large, then there was a more significant drop as swap had to be used to hold the entire problem. But Solaris kept running :-) . The cache in the PC was 2MB I think, and 4MB on the Sun. carlos.

On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Sellam Ismail wrote: DOH! My bad.... clint

Am I the only one that considers MicroVaxen and Micro-11s to be microcomputers? Lets get our distinctions straight. If it's smaller than a desk, or doesn't take at least 15 vertical inches in an 19" rack it's a micro, right? Eric

"Eric J. Korpela" wrote: The MicroVaxen is one of those that stradles the fence between mini and micro (IMHO, of course). The same boards could be dropped into a 19" cabinet and cover the floor (I take it that it can handle a lot more). At least I hope that's true as I hope to soon come into possesion of such a model which stands ~6' tall. Also there is a Buroughs' MainFrame based on the first year Moto 68K chip. Moto corrected a bug in the second year and it turnes out the Buroughs had depended on that bug. Now I know it was a mainframe as it ran a VM and CMS OS on it. But it is based on a micro chip. Also aren't the current IBM Main Frames based on a Power chip? I suspect that there is a lot of support chips (and probably multi processor). As others have pointed out, the lines have blured and agreement may not be possible. Heck I seem to recall a desktop super computer that would run on a single 20A 120V circuit with no special enviroment for ~$100K US. I don't know what happen to the box but that ain't no micro. :-) -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)home.net http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only) http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/lightsey/52 (Graphics) http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)