brb@entropy.UUCP (Ben Blakely) (03/11/85)
Anyone out there using a Masscomp (any configuration)? The Music Dept. here at the University of Washington is considering the purchase of one configured as follows: RTU - Real-Time Unix Operating System, Fortran, and C (multi-user) Data Acquisition/Control Software (sp-50) 32-bit Virtual Address CPU, 4k byte Cache 3 Serial-lines .5M byte ECC Memory (what does ECC mean anyway) 1M byte 5.25" Floppy 27M byte Winchester Disk (somehow we are going to end up with 450M) Graphics Processor array processor 2 MC680??s etc... We would be using the system to generate music with something on the order of music-4bf of C-music or sumsuch. It has fallen on my shoulders to evaluate this machine. You guys have any ideas? What would be good benchmarks? I would be very interested in any problems you might have had with hardware/software (single or multi-user operating system stability), portability problems (how close is it really to 4.2bsd), different performance characteristics with different number of MC68...s in the box. How does Masscomp (tm) rate r.s.t. maintence. What are the turnaround times for repairs. How well do they operate in different environments: hot cold Hi RF environments (how dirty are they and how do they react to dirty pfs?) etc. We will be doing A LOT OF NUMBER CRUNCHING!!!! So will this machine work for us? I want success stories AND horror stories (how good and how bad are they). Send responsed to me here at uw-beaver!entropy!brb and I will post a summary. Thanks in advance... w