Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 23:14:39 -0600 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.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: <355FC3BE.5F9C8BAB@softweyr.com> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980518001757.5879B-100000@fnur.3skel.com> <355FB8AD.E2779CDB@softweyr.com> <19980518144056.A5363@freebie.lemis.com>
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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. ;^)
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.softweyr.com/~softweyr wes@softweyr.com
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