[SunRescue] good news

[Stou Sandalski]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
> Behalf Of Dave McGuire
> Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 02:48
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Cc: jsharp at psychoses.org; gadams at avernus.com
> Subject: RE: [SunRescue] good news
>
>
> On October 2, Stou Sandalski wrote:
> > Oh wow... how do you get them? are they expensive?
>
>   Well, like I said, the first one was via eBay.  Then you sorta get
> to know the "community", same as with classic machines.
>
>   My smaller one is a YMP/EL, which is an older machine (about 1991) and
> much slower than something more recent like my J90.  If you can find
> one, an YMP/EL can usually be had for less than $10k, sometimes even as
> cheap as $5k.  Watch out for shipping costs, though; these machines
> tend to be heavy.  They're built like tanks.

If I had a real job, (as opposed to my fake 10/hr job now), I would actualy
consider purchasing one, but I don't have the space to store a beast like
that.  A few years ago I had the oportunity to get a *FREE* Sun Sparcserver
(forgot the number) that the electronics teacher at my highschool had
acquired when a local insurance company closed down and donated the machine
to the school... but the machine was/is the size of a refrigerator... and so
my parents said "No!", besides the thing had no HDs, monitor, and memory...
I remember that it had a few power supplies, and a lot of cards and such in
the back... it was I think around 5' tall, and about half the space inside
was empty... last I heard its sitting in the electronics room of the other
high school in town... I can probably convince them to sell it to me...
since I doubt they are using it, but I don't know how much that would be
worth it...

<snip>
>   90% of the "advances" in today's mainstream (read: PeeCee) computer
> technology aren't due to people building better processors...the Intel
> x86 processor design has remained substantially unchanged for
> years...performance gains have resulted from pushing clock speeds
> through the roof due to improvements in semiconductor fabrication
> technologies.  It's still the same dumb old processor design slogging
> along tripping over its own feet due to design tradeoffs and questionable
> architecture...only it's doing it at a thousand miles per hour today
> instead of ten miles per hour a few years ago.  No real *design*
> points have changed...it still isn't doing anything any BETTER, just
> relying on brute force clock speed hikes to keep it in business.

	Yea I am totaly feeling you here, I've been reading about the x86
architecuture lately, and quite frankly I am kind of disapointed in the
whole design of it. I can't really compare it to any other processor
architecture, but it just doesn't seem all there... my old enemy strikes
again... backwards compatiblity... as far as I read, when intel slapped
together the first x86 based proc they thought it would only live for a few
years... but the success of the PC forced them to upgrade it and make it a
bit better... yea I mean the new procs have some nifty features all the
pre-fetch queing, pipelining, superscalar operations, and whatever else
they've put on the newer pentiums... and they are nice, but it seems like
all the other architectures are going a lot slower megahertz wise, and I
haven't heard of Sun going out of business because their procs are not
chasing Ghz...

>   As mainstream processor designers rely on semiconductor fabrication
> improvements to make their tired designs faster, their processor
> design skills fade from lack of use.  Case in point?

	Intels' got that new Merced (same name as the town I currently reside in),
or itanium whatever its called... isn't that supposed to be crazy and
different from everything else?

<snip>
>
>   Nope, just Unicos these days.  They're really not general-purpose
> machines, and really would not benefit from general-purpose operating
> systems.  The processors and I/O sytems are godlike, but they'd be
> useless without the right support from the operating system.  Much of
> the real magic lies in the compilers, which have to be smart enough to
> generate the *right* code for such an exotic (yet amazingly sensible,
> when you look at it) processor design.
>
>
>               -Dave McGuire

When I thougth about it a bit I actualy see my question was dumb... so I am
sorry I asked that... but how is Cray's support? If you had an old system
can you still get and OS for it and replacement parts?


Thanks for the fine inpho!

Stou

P.S.
I apologize for the Off Topciness here