cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (04/23/87)
Forgive me for carrying this rather 'blue-sky' conversation going but thought it might be fun. In article <3450001@hplsdla.HP.COM>, kary@hplsdla.HP.COM (Dan Kary) writes: >> / keithe@tekgvs.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) / 10:41 am Apr 13, 1987 / >> Lessee - a Cray costs (how the heck do _I_know what a Cray costs?) say 2 >> megabucks. So I could buy (2e6/2e3)=1e3=1000 Amigas (does $2000 for an Amiga >> sound reasonable - especially if I'm buying a thousand of 'em?) So then the >> 14400 hours becomes 14.4 hours. Not bad, maybe? >> >> keith (keep it in perspective) ericson > > I'm sure it's fun to say things like this, but as long as we're keeping > things in perspective, where are you going to put those 1000 Amiga's? > How are you going to operate them? Communicate between them? > > Dan (Reality, what a concept) Kary Hmmm, What If ... We stacked Amiga's 10 high and put one multiplexed monitor/keyboard on each stack. The composite video is one shielded line and the keyboard is just an rj11 jack, so 10:1 switch muxes shouldn't be to hard to come up with. At 6" per Amiga body that still fits in a 6' rack, even with a extra floppy to the right of the system unit. So now 10 of these racks will be one hundred Amigas. And each are about two feet wide so that's twenty feet of wall space. If we use 'thin' racks they are about 2 feet deep too, but we need about two feet between them so that we can walk up and down feeding them floppies. So ten rows of racks will need about 40 feet of space. Ok thats a pretty normal machine room size (ok it's a big machine room). Now on to how to operate them... Obviously they would all have to have kickstart in rom since you would want to leave a workbench disk in the internal drive. Maybe an Ameristar ethernet board on each one so that they can share a given database area on a machine with big disks (a Sun 3 with a super eagle perhaps :-)). Then each workbench disk's startup-sequence includes commands to mount an NFS file system and as for the frame to generate from a list based on host numbers. Each machine would read that info and then write it's frame back to the super eagle (or two, we're talking lots of data here). There would be a program on the Sun to dump all of the frames to a sequence of tapes for transfer to 35MM film. So what have we got here ... 1000 Amigas 1000 external drives 1000 Ameristar boards 1000 Memory expansions (for full resolution images) 1000 square feet of machine room (with power) 100 6' 19" racks 100 Monitors, and mux boxes for keyboard/monitor 1 Sun 3 with lots of disk space 100 ethernet mux boxes 255 meters of yellow ethernet cable And all of this for pretty pictures ? Well you could amortize your costs somewhat. First of all you will have 900 extra keyboards and 1000 extra mice that you might be able to sell into the spares market. Secondly, with the extra drive you would have the most phenomenal Amiga disk duplication service around! --Chuck (still stuck in reality) McManis -- --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
spencer@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Randy Spencer) (04/24/87)
In article <17246@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis) writes: > >And all of this for pretty pictures ? Well you could amortize your >costs somewhat. First of all you will have 900 extra keyboards and >1000 extra mice that you might be able to sell into the spares >market. Secondly, with the extra drive you would have the most >phenomenal Amiga disk duplication service around! > >--Chuck (still stuck in reality) McManis Actually, if anybody does this, I broke the plastic piece that holds down the roller that reads the mouse ball, so my mouse only rolls one direction, if you have 1000 extra mice, I will buy one off of ya. --Randy (My Tab key is bust also) Spencer -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Randy Spencer P.O. Box 4542 Berkeley CA 94704 (415)284-4740 I N F I N I T Y BBS: (415)283-5469 Now working for |||||||||||::::... . . BUD-LINX But in no way |||||||||||||||::::.. .. . Officially representing ||||||||||||:::::... .. ....ucbvax!mica!spencer s o f t w a r e spencer@mica.berkeley.edu -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
yuan@uhccux.UUCP (Yuan Chang) (04/26/87)
In article <17246@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis) writes: >1000 Amigas >1000 external drives >1000 Ameristar boards >1000 Memory expansions (for full resolution images) >1000 square feet of machine room (with power) > 100 6' 19" racks > 100 Monitors, and mux boxes for keyboard/monitor > 1 Sun 3 with lots of disk space > 100 ethernet mux boxes > 255 meters of yellow ethernet cable > >--Chuck (still stuck in reality) McManis Heh heh,that's a pretty good idea. Sure would sell a lot of Amigas. C-A surely should take notes. And call it "Cray Killer" too. Seymour Cray must be having some sleepless nights knowing that 1,000 Amigas are more versatile than a Cray (you can arrange them into any furniture you want, instead of the drab sofa that a Cray is ;-).. Also, why not pull the Amigas out of their plastic box, put them into some large steel box (oh, about 200 Amigas per box), and paint them blue. That way we can make Big Blue sweat too... Reality?!? That word's not in my dictionary... ----- Yuan Chang Phone: (808) 395-1732 [_V_o_i_c_e] UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhmanoa!uranus!ych \!uhccux!yuan SMail: 774 Kumukahi Pl. Honolulu, HI 96825
gary@mit-eddie.UUCP (04/29/87)
In article <447@uhccux.UUCP> yuan@uhccux.UUCP (Yuan Chang) writes: >In article <17246@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis) writes: >>1000 Amigas >> 100 Monitors, and mux boxes for keyboard/monitor >>--Chuck (still stuck in reality) McManis > Heh heh,that's a pretty good idea. Sure would sell a lot of Amigas. >C-A surely should take notes. And call it "Cray Killer" too. Seymour Cray >must be having some sleepless nights knowing that 1,000 Amigas are more >versatile than a Cray (you can arrange them into any furniture you want, >instead of the drab sofa that a Cray is ;-).. > Now if you REALLY want to blow away the Cray, keep the 1000 monitors and arrange them as, say, 32 x 32 giving a resolution of, lessee, 20,480 x 12,800! Poo Poo to 2K x 2K! ;-) Gary ...