Date   : Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:31:54 +0100
From   : Fragula <fragula@...>
Subject: Re: Warning: Sad case on list!

Hi Mike!

Bumping up a now-ancient thread. :-)

Mike wrote:

>>Think we've been through the SCSI side of things on this list a few times

I'll bet.. its a holy war thing now though. I've been a SCSI Devotee for
literally decades, most of the machines (at least those that have hard
disks) are based on some form of SCSI/SASI, even my "state of the art"
PC has a nice u320 based system on it.

But more recently, and with no consideration for cost, I'm coming around
to the notion that IDE has in most respects "caught up", and due to the
consistency and Q.C. that has to come with truly massive scale
production, may in some ways (reliability) be slightly better than SCSI.

Two years ago I'd probably have flamed myself for saying that. :-/

There are, at risk of upsetting people, other factors. A lot of SCSI
systems are running mature, well written operating systems, yet its
quite likely that most IDE drives are fitted to systems that, lets say,
are "less perfect". So the fact that a lot of people have problems "with
their (IDE) hard disks", could be kinda skewing the stats.

Another beauty of IDE is that the "host adaptor" is on the drive, making
physical interfacing a doddle, if somewhat less flexible.

> The transputer was by Flight, (now flite http://www.flite.co.uk   )
> electronics.
Flite that I've finally got around to emailing, requesting info, dregs
from the storeroom, etc. Spotted a few TM-xxx chips on ebay, but have
resisted the urge so far. Can't seem to get hold of decent sized bits of
 veroboard these days. ;->

> The transputer board was, I think, serial port driven. 
You could be right. I recall seeing a photo of one next to a BBC Micro,
and stuff on the BBC screen.. I may have /assumed/ (now there's a word!)
 it was tubed or 1MHz bussed. A serial link would not be so exiting. One
Ermm.. though given the performance of the fractal and other 2P
benchmark test i've been doing, It probably wouldn't be that much of a
bottleneck. ;->

One with a Tube ULA and a monitor/assembler would be fairly orgasmic
though. Well, a nice toy for me at least.

> folding Occam editor on a BBC...... Think I'll stick to the Cray 1 idea.
> Fragula has got me wondering about a tube to 64 bit array. Having seen the
> startup for the later Cray VME IO rack, (which had several VME 'crates'
> within it),
Several? Later than a YMP then.

> As well as the tales of actually getting hold of UniCOS, 
Ahh. forget that, we'll just have to kidnap PJB, lock him in a basement
until he's finished doing a suitable backend for gcc, and run Linux. ;-)

> wondering if some notes on CAL might fall off he back of some notable
> instsitution in the near future. One of my mates from down Reading way has
> offered to chip in some actual programs, their data, and the 'official'
> results. Some RAM has just come my way courtesy of a scrapped broadcast
> framestore/standards converter. It seems to be configured as interleaved
> 10nS pairs, but I hadn't actally realised just how exponential the FPGA
> price curve gets.
Yeh.. its (a) intense, but (b) still following Moore's law. And the
earlier Cray "core" doesn't actually need that many gates.

>>There are a few unofficial copros about too - I think JGH had a PDP TUBE
>>(*pokes JGH*),
<pokes JGH again, and awaits some info>

> disc, though Linux on 32Meg RAM might be interesting.
Tsk! I've run a fairly Fat linux on a SPARC (which means big binaries)
with only 8Meg of RAM.. I did have to build the system on a machine with
16M of RAM tho. That was mostly down to Debian's "dselect" which is
horribly greedy for RAM.

When i've installed "the hard way" (i.e. not using an installer) I've
managed with as little as 2M of RAM, not that it was quick or easy mind
you.. At a push, could probably get somethng minimalistic running in 1M.

>>I'm something of national collector of Torch stuff it seems having ended
> up with the contents of their workshop from when they went under... (I can
> hear the creaking from the loft)
Lucky loft. Most of them are empty, cold, and unloved.

Hmm.. I'm still putting off my next venture into mine. Though there's
lots of luvverly and interesting stuff up there. Perhaps i'll put the
two Master 128s up and drag down the "mint" one to install Econet, and
the Viglen cased one, that could probably use a going over and a
repolarising of its electrolytics.. Yeh.. good excuse.

<fx: dons attic delving clothes>

Cheers!

M.