i was trying to cluster together some old pentiums that i rescued from the garbage. this was 2002 or so. then, unexplicably, the garage that i worked from got raided, but i got away with all of the disks out a window, hitchhikers guide style. i later collected the machines in the middle of the night, stashed them in a storage unit, and went travelling. which led me to the Internet Engineering Task Force conference in Atlanta, where I knew I could find friends that would help. Shortly thereafter I was again clustering machines, but this time at Linux Labs in atlanta, where I was eventually kicked out of for, among other things, not keeping office hours (i mostly only went at night, and had a tendancy to wander around the 27 story peachtree plaza office building in cut off shorts, a ragged shirt and no shoes), dating the CEO's sister, and smoking in the building.
finding myself back home in daytona, I finally built the cluster that i wanted, only from better hardware than the pentium 100's, which I guess would be my true entry into the realm of high performance computing. several alphaservers later, i scored the 9672 and two sharks for a very small amount of someone elses money courtesy one military surplus auction. the shark didn't do what i wanted, so i put linux on it. when i get the 9672 powered, it will be my first supercomputer that i didn't build myself. enjoy, scott On Wed, 16 Mar 2005, John Campbell wrote: > The OS for the Xerox Sigma-7 (and Sigma-9s) was called "CP-V" (Control > Program five) and the JCL was, IIRC, called "PCL" (a "pickle deck"). > > Honeywell took over the 'puter business but didn't do much with it. > > The CEs had a diagnostic tape that included System EXercisers (which could > be launched by the command "SEX" or "NEW") and the first program on the > tape was called "hardcore" to ensure that all of the instructions in the > system still worked. > > Instead of Z EOD the operator typed "ZAP", the KSR-35 would do a little > dance and type out "THAT'S ALL FOLKS" and the CPU speaker would play the > Star Spangled Banner. > > (shakes head) It was a fun system. though there were some oddities. For > instance, CP-V could be crashed by running 256 B *+1s in a row (because the > CPU stalled in re-filling the pipeline and locked out the HS-RAD). > > "cat file" was spelled "copy file to me"... and it had the first > meta-assembler I've ever seen. I used to hand-assemble some programs and > toggle 'em in. I learned about channel programming on that beast. > > I went from those to TI-960s in late 1977 and then to UNIVAC 1100s in 1979. > > -------------------- > John R. Campbell, Speaker to Machines (GNUrd) (813) 356-5322 (t/l 697) > Adsumo ergo raptus sum > MacOS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging > Windows. > Red Hat Certified Engineer (#803004680310286) > IBM Certified: IBM AIX 4.3 System Administration, System Support > ----- Forwarded by John Campbell/Tampa/IBM on 03/16/2005 11:45 AM ----- > > "Fargusson.Alan" > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: > LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU > tb.ca.gov> cc: > Sent by: Linux on Subject: Re: [LINUX-390] 9672 > power requirements > 390 Port > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > IST.EDU> > > > 03/16/2005 11:35 > AM > Please respond to > Linux on 390 Port > > > > > > I was going to ignore the "could heat your house" comment, but since David > didn't. > > I heard this second hand, so I don't know how true it is. I heard that > someone bought an old Sigma 7 and put it in his basement. Since it put out > a lot of heat he connected it up to his heating ducts and used the Sigma 7 > to heat his house. > > The Sigma computer systems were made by Sigma Data Systems, which was > bought by Xerox. Xerox eventually left the computer business leaving Sigma > customers without support. The university I graduated from had three Sigma > 9s that they were still using when I graduated. Actually one was for parts > for the other two. One of the professors there actually ported the Unix > PCC C compiler to the Sigma operating system (I can't remember what the OS > was called). > > -----Original Message----- > From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of > David Boyes > Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 5:47 AM > To: LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU > Subject: Re: 9672 power requirements > > > > At about 20 kbTU/hr, you could heat your house with it, too. > > Funny story: > > I can confirm this fact. This winter (which has been particularly cold > in the Washington DC area) our office furnace completely failed -- > totally casters-up, no function at all. The MP3000 and the other > processors here generate so much heat that no one noticed that the > heater was offline until someone said "has anyone heard the heater fan > run in the last two weeks?" > > The machines and disk units kept the entire office at a comfortable 70 > degrees F for at least a month before anyone noticed. > > Strange, but true...8-) > > -- db > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or > visit > http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or > visit > http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit > http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > sleekfreak pirate broadcast http://sleekfreak.ath.cx:81/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
