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Date:      Mon, 18 May 1998 14:40:56 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>, Dan Janowski <danj@3skel.com>
Cc:        Bret Ford <bford@uop.cs.uop.edu>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: SCO offers Ancient Unix Source Code License
Message-ID:  <19980518144056.A5363@freebie.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <355FB8AD.E2779CDB@softweyr.com>; from Wes Peters on Sun, May 17, 1998 at 10:27:25PM -0600
References:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.980518001757.5879B-100000@fnur.3skel.com> <355FB8AD.E2779CDB@softweyr.com>

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On Sun, 17 May 1998 at 22:27:25 -0600, Wes Peters wrote:
> Dan Janowski wrote:
>>
>> I used to work on old SGI 3130's and when those
>> geometry engines were really working, you could hear
>> some very high pitched harmonic sounds eminating
>> from the box, seemingly right from the chips,
>> although this was difficult to confirm.
>
> I cut my 3D teeth on a 4D/60GT, later upgraded to a 4D/70.  The
> funny high pitched noise actually came from the capacitors in the
> power supply; the current draw of the Geometry Pipeline would pull
> enough current through them to start the squeal.  I helped install
> these machines in South Dakota; on cold (COLD COLD COLD!) winter
> days we would come into work, take our shoes off, and fire up the
> 'drip' demo to warm our toes and ankles.  The 4D's had an 18-inch
> long squirrel-cage fan that would blow 180F air when the drip demo
> was running.  ;^)

I was offered one of those a couple of years ago.  Quite an impressive
machine.  I took a 4D/20 instead (I think.  It's a Control Data OEM
version, and the name written on it is "Cyber 910".  R3000, about 20
MHz, 16 MB of memory, IRIX 5.3.  I've compared building software on it
and on a P5/133.  You can build bash on the P5 in about 90 seconds, on
the 4D/20 it takes 40 minutes :-(

Greg
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