[rescue] Anybody know what this is?

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 04:29:27PM -0400, Nathan Raymond wrote:
> "AT&T/NCR E- STARSERVER MAINFRAME"
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5760407714
> _______________________________________________

Google is your friend.

http://home.xnet.com/~msk/iw/history.html

"Potentially the most important system ever produced by IW, its life
was cut short by the NCR acquisition. The world's second symmetric
multiprocessor (only behind Sequent), and the world's first UNIX SVR4
SMP, it was fully 2 years ahead of the rest of its market (excluding
Sequent) in its market niche. The system bus was designed to extend
for 10 years through all foreseeable technology (like 100+ MHz
Pentiums), and could still outperform the NCR 3000 Voyager bus six
years after it was designed! It featured split-transaction memory
operations, a bus arbitration mechanism which allowed 320 MB/s
sustained transfers, dual interleaved memory structure, distributed
interrupts, and a host of other hardware innovations to make it the
most scalable SMP ever commercially produced by any vendor. It
featured 33 MHz and 66 MHz Intel 486 versions, EISA bus for both
32-bit performance and compatibility with the IBM AT bus, and held the
best price/performance slot in TPC Benchmark B for over a year. The
regular model "Enterprise" could hold up to 4 CPUs and up to 2 GB RAM,
and work on a bigger system codenamed "Bigfoot" would have offered up
to 10 CPUs and up to 22 GB RAM, but it was never finished. Tricord
Systems, headed by Jim Edwards who was once head of AT&T Information
Systems, rejoiced the day NCR management canceled the SSE, because it
opened up the market segment for their systems. The SSE was designed
in to many Network Systems projects, and its cancellation by NCR
management precipitated the shakeout which led to the ouster of the
NCR old guard after the merger."

--Patrick