General Computer Thread

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by Amaris, May 26, 2016.

  1. Noname Given

    Noname Given Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It depends. The hotel may be using a Centrex style phone system which would probably effectively block your modem.
     
  2. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    In the lap of squalor I assure you.
    The absolute worst thing that could happen is if the modem works it might well be mistaken for an international call and 8 dollars minute is charged to the room for 2 weeks, which is just over 161 thousand dollars, which I would not find pleasing to pay.

    I'm just going to nut up and call the hotel.
     
    Last edited: Jun 13, 2017
  3. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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  4. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I like old tech, if I had the space, a location near a main node of the powergrid and a few million Euro I'd be typing this reply on an IBM System/360 mainframe... :biggrin:
     
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  5. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    I take it the money would be for the power bill not buying the hardware :)

    Years ago knew of a guy who ran a pile of old Vax hardware (biggest I think was an 11/70) as part of a public access internet system.

    Closest I've come was about 17 years ago had a couple of Sun Sparc stations and a 20inch Sun monitor. I just can't remember the exact models :) One was either a 10 or 20 (could be upgraded with a second processor module) and the was a Sparc Station 2 but those were the days when pizza boxes were "sexy" :)

    Didn't have SunOS/Solaris to run on them so used Debian Linux.

    I also had a Sun386i which I tried to boot diskless from the my FreeBSD box but never quite managed to get it to work. That one had a 20in monochrome monitor.
     
  6. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I almost obtained a DEC Alpha machine but by the time I decided to buy it the darn thing was gone already, at one if my jobs they had a whole bunch of VAX's and Sun Sparc client machines, I think most of VAX's ran Unix but I at least one of them did run VMS.
    I wonder how large or actually how small they could make a System/360 based machine nowadays with the chip technology instead of the solid state tech back then, I am almost inclined that the actual CPU and some storage could be PC sized or even smaller..
     
  7. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    Thought VMS was the sole OS for Vax systems but no there's the Ultrix aka DEC Unix. When I was at uni in the early 90s they had a number of vax systems including and 8600 series and an 11/780, Just have a squizz a the Wiki entry didn't realise that at the time I using a computer system date back to 1977 for the 11/780. They were all running VMS but can't remember anything about it other than cob/lis which was the command when we were compiling COBOL code.

    They also has a Sun Sparc20 server and at one point purchased a new CPU module - the figure of $AU20,000 was mentioned but that was circa 1992.

    I remember reading about the Alphas when they first came out and being struck by the huge freaking heat sink

    One of the videos I link above was the dismantlnig/scrapping of an mid-2000s IBM mainframe and going by what was shown, the answer to your preponderance is yes. The CPUs sit in modules that IBM for some reason calls "Books" - almost akin to blades but there didn't seem to be any local storage. Come to think of it in the video I don't think any storage was mention - possibly it was a separate rack - or the use NAS or SAN as opposed to DAS.
     
  8. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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    Thanks for posting those that was interesting.
     
  9. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I've seen VAX's running Berkeley Unix from the days that it wasn't called BSD yet, and AT&T Unix and along the line run BSD and System V, VAX 11/780 was used to develop the port of Unix for VAX machines, I won't say that the old days were better per se but much more interesting in any case..

    IBM mainframes have everything clustered and connected through an exotic and maniacally fast backbone. :biggrin:
    Their chips can run FOUR threads per core btw while Intel and AMD are up to two per core SMT/Hyperthreading, seriously fast stuff..
     
  10. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    If any one cares...

    I called the Hotel, their phone jacks are atypical for the region, and will not allow my modem to plug in, so the question of my signal intruding into their system didn't even become a issue.

    I'm pretty sure an adaptor or an extension cord, that is also a very simple adaptor, would circumnavigate that alieness they're trying to force on me to up the room rates, would cost no more than $2, but my mind is spent on this because my main issue is that I am still not completely sure if I can download the new episodes of Game of Thrones without being narked out to the pigs.

    Thank you for the help. :)

    #First World Problems.
     
  11. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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    I just fixed a dropped Xbox 360 controller for a PC.

    It had been dropped and the two lower buttons had gotten stuck. So 7 screws come out the base and it comes apart pulled out the board, the moment that happened the stuck button was no longer stuck. It's actually fixed onto the board and switch via a spring mechanism put the case back together after finding all the buttons had fallen out the top (lots of fun) and it works now as intended.

    I feel kind of happy I had saved it as I thought it had been broken for good.
     
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  12. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    is that on the Power series of chips?

    BTW read anything on AMD's new server chips?

    The final proof will be in the 3rd party reviews and benchtests but Intel could be in for a bit of a shock - Pay $1200 for a 12core/24thread Intel Xeon E5 for or about 25% less for an AMD Epyc with 16c/32t and and boatload more PCIe lanes among other features. Clock speed is the same so it's going to come down to design and effeciency, but if AMD can get within few percent of the Intels things could get fun.
     
  13. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, the current line of IBM CPU's ah just found out that the newest bits can do up to 8 way SMT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER9 and run 4Gz, that's not bad for a chip like that..

    Seems that AMD has the smarter design, they scale a lot better,with that Infinity Fabric, they can connect a lot of dies together in a smart way and the amount of PCIE lanes is indeed awesome so moving data around will not be a problem.

    Next machine I build will be again, an AMD.
     
  14. publiusr

    publiusr Admiral Admiral

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    The stuff from the 1980s had neither the style of the 1950-1970s tech nor the power of todays.

    Maybe just convert them into something like this: http://rafaelmizrahi.blogspot.com/2016/09/worlds-biggest-useless-machine.html
     
  15. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Still, some of those 1980's machines were magnificent, do remember that your PC's father, the IBM PC is a1980's machine.. :mallory:
     
  16. publiusr

    publiusr Admiral Admiral

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    Did everything have to be beige, though?
     
  17. Santaman

    Santaman Vice Admiral Admiral

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    My IBM XT is not beige, its front is black with a white border, the exterior is grey and black, the insides of the machine is black. ;) Blame the clone makers, they invented the "beige box" of course nowadays its black box..
     
  18. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    I dunno - didn't IBM go beige (other than the power switch) when they brought out the PS2 range?
     
  19. Gingerbread Demon

    Gingerbread Demon I love Star Trek Discovery Premium Member

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    Yeah what was it with PC makers doing biege in the 80s? Why was that so?
    Even my TRS80 model 200 was biege. It was a wonderful little laptop that ran on 4 AA cells.

    BTW someone gave me a CPU an AMD FX 6300 6 core 3.5ghz CPU. I currently run an AMD FX 4300 quad core 3.8ghz CPU and am wondering if there is any point in trying the other CPU.
     
  20. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    Just around the bend.
    Nah, just keep the obviously inferior chip.