Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 14:47:19 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: Dan Janowski <danj@3skel.com>, Bret Ford <bford@uop.cs.uop.edu>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SCO offers Ancient Unix Source Code License Message-ID: <19980518144719.N427@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <355FC3BE.5F9C8BAB@softweyr.com>; from Wes Peters on Sun, May 17, 1998 at 11:14:39PM -0600 References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980518001757.5879B-100000@fnur.3skel.com> <355FB8AD.E2779CDB@softweyr.com> <19980518144056.A5363@freebie.lemis.com> <355FC3BE.5F9C8BAB@softweyr.com>
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On Sun, 17 May 1998 at 23:14:39 -0600, Wes Peters wrote:
> Greg Lehey wrote:
>>
>> 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 :-(
>
> Yeah, but does your P5/133 have multi-player dogfight? I thought not.
> You should've taken the 4D/70. The 4D/20 (also known as the Personal
> Iris) had quite bit more CPU power -- the 4D/70 was a 12.5 Mhz R2000,
> but the 4D/70 had the full Geometry Pipeline engine, as opposed to
> the stripped-down video in the /20. Of course, you probably couldn't
> afford the power for the 4D/70, it required 220VAC and drew more power
> than an electric clothes dryer. ;^)
I thought about it, but I had two basic problems:
1. It was more money than I wanted to spend.
2. I didn't know how to get it in my car, especially as (for some
strange reason) I already had a borzoi in there.
Greg
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