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Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat

Zopotantor posted:

The BeBox had two rows of lights showing the CPU load (it had two processors - in 1996).

I sold mine :(
While we're on computer should-have-beens, my eternal favorite:



The Amiga essentially created the "modern" personal computer all on its own in 1985. Mouse-driven interface, multitasking, sampled sound, (relatively) photo-quality graphics, capability in both business and entertainment - it was the first to bring them all together. Unfortunately, while Commodore's overseas branches in England and continental Europe had a good amount of success with it, it was promoted horribly in the States and lost out over here to IBM and Apple. Then, while the competition caught up technologically, upper management refused to upgrade the hardware, even though the engineering division proposed several updates over the years. By the time that the too-little-too-late 1200 model was finally introduced in 1992, the Amiga was horribly outclassed by its competitors and had lost its relevance, and Commodore went bankrupt two years later. :smith:

(Then you get the embarrassing mid-'90s PowerPC "Amiga" that the crazy, furry diehards soldiered on with, but I'm not about to touch that. Or the CD32. Ugh.)

Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 03:59 on Oct 26, 2013

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Lord Booga
Sep 23, 2007
Huh?
Grimey Drawer

Sham bam bamina! posted:

While we're on computer should-have-beens, my eternal favorite:



The Amiga essentially created the "modern" personal computer all on its own in 1985. Mouse-driven interface, multitasking, sampled sound, (relatively) photo-quality graphics, capability in both business and entertainment - it was the first to bring them all together. Unfortunately, while Commodore's overseas branches in England and continental Europe had a good amount of success with it, they promoted it horribly in the States and lost out to IBM and Apple. Then, while the competition caught up technologically, upper management refused to upgrade the hardware, even though the engineering division proposed several updates over the years. By the time that the too-little-too-late 1200 model was finally introduced in 1992, the Amiga was horribly outclassed by its competitors and had lost its relevance, and Commodore went bankrupt two years later. :smith:

(Then you get the embarrassing mid-'90s PowerPC "Amiga" that the crazy, furry diehards soldiered on with, but I'm not about to touch that. Or the CD32. Ugh.)

There's a reason that there is a famous old joke - "If Commodore bought KFC, they would rename it Warm Dead Bird" - I loved my Amigas (they were reasonably popular here in NZ) (and have emulators for when I get that nostalgic urge), but Commodore was terrible at marketing.

Totally Reasonable
Jan 8, 2008

aaag mirrors



The Atari Mega STE, which died about a minute before the Amiga. The ST series were temporarily popular with the music crowd, while Amigas managed to massively overstay their welcome due to Lightwave.

doug fuckey
Jun 7, 2007

hella greenbacks

Lord Booga posted:

There's a reason that there is a famous old joke - "If Commodore bought KFC, they would rename it Warm Dead Bird" - I loved my Amigas (they were reasonably popular here in NZ) (and have emulators for when I get that nostalgic urge), but Commodore was terrible at marketing.

I got rid of my dad's amigas earlier this year, but in the meantime I've been trying to find ways to emulate the dozens and dozens of floppy games I had for that thing. I've almost got one to work--almost.

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

Sagebrush posted:

when Connection Machines were a thing, it was really common to add extra spurious instructions to make them blink in interesting patterns.
The supercomputing centre at the local university has a huge HP cluster with an infiniband interconnect. Each machine in the cluster has a blue unit ID LED on the front and rear, which can be turned on/off by software. One of the first programs the cluster ran was a small application that made a waterfall effect across all the nodes using the ID LEDs.

The centre incidentally also owns a twin cube (16k processors) CM-2 machine, although it hasn't been in use for ages. The RAID array (the curved thing to the right) was used as a reception desk for a while.

Collateral Damage has a new favorite as of 00:41 on Oct 26, 2013

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Lord Booga posted:

There's a reason that there is a famous old joke - "If Commodore bought KFC, they would rename it Warm Dead Bird" - I loved my Amigas (they were reasonably popular here in NZ) (and have emulators for when I get that nostalgic urge), but Commodore was terrible at marketing.


Get this poo poo. At one point, Sun Microsystems went to Commodore and said "We really like that there Amiga 3000UX machine you have, the one with System V ported to it. We'd like to buy a license to be an OEM manufacturer for those and sell them as a low-end alternative to our high-end workstations."

Commodore quoted them a gently caress-right-off license price so Sun hosed right off. Instead, Commodore decided to produce this:



Effectively slitting its own wrists.

Lowen SoDium
Jun 5, 2003

Highen Fiber
Clapping Larry
You can't post that thing with out posting it's controller

Last Chance
Dec 31, 2004

Lowen SoDium posted:

You can't post that thing with out posting it's controller



My god.

Three-Phase
Aug 5, 2006

by zen death robot

Collateral Damage posted:

The supercomputing centre at the local university has a huge HP cluster with an infiniband interconnect. Each machine in the cluster has a blue unit ID LED on the front and rear, which can be turned on/off by software. One of the first programs the cluster ran was a small application that made a waterfall effect across all the nodes using the ID LEDs.

The centre incidentally also owns a twin cube (16k processors) CM-2 machine, although it hasn't been in use for ages. The RAID array (the curved thing to the right) was used as a reception desk for a while.



One oddity I found: a three-phase, 60 to 400hz motor-generator set.

Apparently the old Crays (Cray 1, 2, XMP, YMP, stuff like that) had power supplies that utilized 400hz provided by a motor-generator set. This provided perfect isolation from the electrical system, and also allowed some degree of ride-through if there was a sag or a transient on the power line.

Three-Phase has a new favorite as of 05:07 on Oct 26, 2013

Farmdizzle
May 26, 2009

Hagel satan
Grimey Drawer
What kind of power would a Cray like that dissipate during routine use? Like, ballpark figure?

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.

Farmdizzle posted:

What kind of power would a Cray like that dissipate during routine use? Like, ballpark figure?

100–200 kW.

WITCHCRAFT
Aug 28, 2007

Berries That Burn

Plinkey posted:

That reminds me of this thing that a lot of our CAD guys swear by:



I have no idea how it works, but it looks purrdy.

It's like a Razer mouse and a Fleshlight had a baby.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Lowen SoDium posted:

You can't post that thing with out posting it's controller



Saves plastic on the unnecessary bit.

Zeether
Aug 26, 2011

Amiga also had Video Toaster, which got used for video effects on Red Dwarf and a few other TV shows. I kind of want to find an old rig with it installed just to mess around with it.

That and it had Turrican II, which is goddamn amazing. The fact that Giana Sisters got a new game makes me hope someone will take a stab at a brand new Turrican at some point.

Three-Phase
Aug 5, 2006

by zen death robot

Platystemon posted:

100–200 kW.

This is the sort of stuff you'd want to have to accommodate a supercomputer installation:

  • Computer power distribution, preferably fed from a motor-generator UPS, flywheel UPS, or a double-conversion UPS (you need to be very careful if you upgrade a system that has an older UPS, since those were designed to supply power to lagging power factor power supplies, new power supplies are at unity or leading power factor, and it may be possible to overload the UPS)
  • Non-UPS power for things like running power tools, vacuum cleaner, etc. (I heard a story about a bank of servers crashing when the cleaning lady came in and plugged her old vacuum cleaner into a UPS outlet that was only for the computers.)
  • Drop floor for cabling
  • Cable trays hung from the ceiling
  • Cooling air - this can be substantial for big installations
  • Physical security, RFID key, pin number, biometrics, etc

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat

Zeether posted:

That and it had Turrican II, which is goddamn amazing. The fact that Giana Sisters got a new game makes me hope someone will take a stab at a brand new Turrican at some point.
Have you checked out Hurrican? Some people have called it a Turrican remake, but it's more like an unofficial sequel. It's also free.

MagnumLode
Apr 10, 2004

Have some Kool-Aid, dipshit.

Jerry Cotton posted:

Saves plastic on the unnecessary bit.

What, the person? Polyester and such?

an AOL chatroom
Oct 3, 2002

Three-Phase posted:

This is the sort of stuff you'd want to have to accommodate a supercomputer installation:

  • Computer power distribution, preferably fed from a motor-generator UPS, flywheel UPS, or a double-conversion UPS (you need to be very careful if you upgrade a system that has an older UPS, since those were designed to supply power to lagging power factor power supplies, new power supplies are at unity or leading power factor, and it may be possible to overload the UPS)
  • Non-UPS power for things like running power tools, vacuum cleaner, etc. (I heard a story about a bank of servers crashing when the cleaning lady came in and plugged her old vacuum cleaner into a UPS outlet that was only for the computers.)
  • Drop floor for cabling
  • Cable trays hung from the ceiling
  • Cooling air - this can be substantial for big installations
  • Physical security, RFID key, pin number, biometrics, etc

I work at IBM, at a plant that turns out mainframes, supercomputers, and just about every refrigerator-sized processing unit in that realm. The logistics for getting a large system into a customer datacenter often involves some non-trivial planning

The current generation of mainframes requires, I believe, a 42" raised floor. This is for airflow, since for every X systems you have, you need a thing called a chiller, a gigantic system that draws in warm air from the top of the room, cools it off, and shoves it under the floor. The mainframe systems themselves draw air up from openings in the floor and blast it out the back. You *can* have systems with a sort of huge radiator attached to the door, which soaks up heat and dumps it elsewhere, but it's usually more cost-effective to cool by forced air.

When you have a bunch of big systems, it's typically suggested to arrange them in rows, with alternating how and cold aisles, so backs facing backs, fronts facing fronts. This helps keep one system from sucking in another machine's hot exhaust. When you walk past an aisle of systems, you can feel the temperature fluctuate wildly, and looking down a long line of systems, you can see heat distortion in the air, like it's coming off the top of a diesel locomotive. They're really quite spectacular machines, pure business. Just CPUs, memory, and I/O. No sound cards, no place to plug in a keyboard, no display... they're the Bagger 288 of computing.

We recently had a new one set up for our department, and along with the system itself, it comes with a box of accessories. This box comes on a palette and weighs a couple hundred pounds.

an AOL chatroom has a new favorite as of 15:32 on Oct 26, 2013

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



bisticles posted:

I work at IBM, at a plant that turns out mainframes, supercomputers, and just about every refrigerator-sized processing unit in that realm. The logistics for getting a large system into a customer datacenter often involves some non-trivial planning

With a proper supercomputer, the planning process can often involve "build a building to put it in".

Oh, and IBM Sequoia draws 7.9 MW.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

MagnumLode posted:

What, the person? Polyester and such?

Yes why not.

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

Three-Phase posted:

This is the sort of stuff you'd want to have to accommodate a supercomputer installation:
This is pretty much the steps for building any professional data center, not just for supercomputers.

ChickenOfTomorrow
Nov 11, 2012

god damn it, you've got to be kind

As well as the best visual fx software named after bread-heating machines, Amigas also had the best magazine.

Obv fact: Amiga Power's Wee Work Experience Boy, C-Monster, had a real name: Kieron Gillen. Yup New Games Journalist, Rock Paper Shotgun person and, now, responsible for comics like Phonogram and X-Men/Thor/Journey Into Mystery. Started out at an outfit known for "natch" and letter titles taken completely out of context.

ChickenOfTomorrow has a new favorite as of 19:34 on Oct 26, 2013

Three-Phase
Aug 5, 2006

by zen death robot

Collateral Damage posted:

This is pretty much the steps for building any professional data center, not just for supercomputers.

You're absolutely right, I should have been more broad.

bisticles posted:

The current generation of mainframes requires, I believe, a 42" raised floor. This is for airflow, since for every X systems you have, you need a thing called a chiller, a gigantic system that draws in warm air from the top of the room, cools it off, and shoves it under the floor. The mainframe systems themselves draw air up from openings in the floor and blast it out the back. You *can* have systems with a sort of huge radiator attached to the door, which soaks up heat and dumps it elsewhere, but it's usually more cost-effective to cool by forced air.

Nice, that's a tiny little chiller. You should see the ones where the compressor motors operate off of 4160V instead of just 480V and require an actual cooling tower to operate. Sort of like that chiller but a whole building instead of a rooftop unit.

Do the much larger data centers have something like this, where they just pump chilled water out to areas that need cooling, and warmed water returns? (I think with a massive, central chiller operation you get higher efficiency, but if you have multiple small units it's easier to manage if just one breaks down.

I also heard that some of the biggest datacenters are built in areas where the facility can be fed from two different electrical grids/providers for ultra-high reliability as far as power goes.

Three-Phase has a new favorite as of 01:12 on Oct 27, 2013

Necrothatcher
Mar 26, 2005




ChickenOfTomorrow posted:

As well as the best visual fx software named after bread-heating machines, Amigas also had the best magazine.

Obv fact: Amiga Power's Wee Work Experience Boy, C-Monster, had a real name: Kieron Gillen. Yup New Games Journalist, Rock Paper Shotgun person and, now, responsible for comics like Phonogram and X-Men/Thor/Journey Into Mystery. Started out at an outfit known for "natch" and letter titles taken completely out of context.

I wish more games journalism was like Amiga Power with bizarre concept reviews and constant surreal digressions.

http://amr.abime.net/review_742

KrautHedge
Dec 5, 2008

Three-Phase posted:

You're absolutely right, I should have been more broad.


Nice, that's a tiny little chiller. You should see the ones where the compressor motors operate off of 4160V instead of just 480V and require an actual cooling tower to operate. Sort of like that chiller but a whole building instead of a rooftop unit.

Do the much larger data centers have something like this, where they just pump chilled water out to areas that need cooling, and warmed water returns? (I think with a massive, central chiller operation you get higher efficiency, but if you have multiple small units it's easier to manage if just one breaks down.

I also heard that some of the biggest datacenters are built in areas where the facility can be fed from two different electrical grids/providers for ultra-high reliability as far as power goes.

Google bought an old finnish paper mill and turned it into a data center a few years ago. Its cooled by the seawater. http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/hamina/index.html

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

Three-Phase posted:

Do the much larger data centers have something like this, where they just pump chilled water out to areas that need cooling, and warmed water returns? (I think with a massive, central chiller operation you get higher efficiency, but if you have multiple small units it's easier to manage if just one breaks down.

I also heard that some of the biggest datacenters are built in areas where the facility can be fed from two different electrical grids/providers for ultra-high reliability as far as power goes.
Inner-city datacenters (like the one I currently manage) often use district cooling, where the city provides cold water in a closed loop. The cold water comes in at about 3-5C (37-40F) and goes through a heat exchanger connected to the chiller. We have a fairly small datacenter (8 racks) and we have two chillers operating on district cooling, plus a backup chiller that uses plain cold tapwater.

Funny story about dual power feed datacenters. Our local Silicon Valley wannabe has several large datacenters with dual power feeds. Between the area and the rest of the city is a small mountain range, and there's only one cable tunnel through the mountain. A couple of years ago there was a fire in the tunnel. Cue every datacenter in the area suffering a power loss because the fire cut both feeds running in the same tunnel. :v:

ChickenOfTomorrow
Nov 11, 2012

god damn it, you've got to be kind

Mr. Flunchy posted:

I wish more games journalism was like Amiga Power with bizarre concept reviews and constant surreal digressions.

http://amr.abime.net/review_742

I am restraining myself to avoid a long, derail-y post about AP bods, at least one of whom qualifies as obsolete technology in himself.

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat
You know what, let's just put the whole Amiga Power archive here. Probably the last worthwhile thing that "gaming journalism" ever produced and one of the best magazines ever regardless of context.

Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 15:24 on Oct 27, 2013

Three-Phase
Aug 5, 2006

by zen death robot

Collateral Damage posted:

Funny story about dual power feed datacenters. Our local Silicon Valley wannabe has several large datacenters with dual power feeds. Between the area and the rest of the city is a small mountain range, and there's only one cable tunnel through the mountain. A couple of years ago there was a fire in the tunnel. Cue every datacenter in the area suffering a power loss because the fire cut both feeds running in the same tunnel. :v:

Yup, common cause failure. Bad design.

ChickenOfTomorrow
Nov 11, 2012

god damn it, you've got to be kind

Sham bam bamina! posted:

You know what, let's just put the whole Amiga Power archive here. Probably the last worthwhile thing "gaming journalism" has ever produced and one of the best magazines ever regardless of context.

The internet! It saves me from having to pull the old issues out of storage when I need to moon over Cam Winstanley.

(ETA: Unfortunately many of the best bits, e.g. Back Pages) aren't always present in that archive.)

ChickenOfTomorrow has a new favorite as of 02:49 on Oct 27, 2013

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat
Just remembered that I posted this in a YOSPOS thread a while back and never got around to putting it here. Better late than never!



The Scanimate. An analog video effects computer from the '60s and '70s that worked by directly manipulating a video signal and re-recording the output from a screen at extremely high fidelity (preventing generation loss). It was heavily used in both television and films of the time, but I think that this groovy, epilepsy-triggering music video is the best demonstration of its capabilities.

Monkey Fracas
Sep 11, 2010

...but then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you!
Grimey Drawer

Sham bam bamina! posted:

The Scanimate. An analog video effects computer from the '60s and '70s that worked by directly manipulating a video signal and re-recording the output from a screen at extremely high fidelity (preventing generation loss). It was heavily used in both television and films of the time, but I think that this groovy, epilepsy-triggering music video is the best demonstration of its capabilities.

Youtube link doesn't work (at least in the US). I looked up a Vevo stored one because I love Earth, Wind & Fire- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrle0x_DHBM.

Funky/Groovy as fuuuuck, man.

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Just remembered that I posted this in a YOSPOS thread a while back and never got around to putting it here. Better late than never!



The Scanimate. An analog video effects computer from the '60s and '70s that worked by directly manipulating a video signal and re-recording the output from a screen at extremely high fidelity (preventing generation loss). It was heavily used in both television and films of the time, but I think that this groovy, epilepsy-triggering music video is the best demonstration of its capabilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ispW6-7b2sA

A demo reel of the Scanimate. Warning: extreme 70s music!

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Mister Kingdom posted:

A demo reel of the Scanimate. Warning: extreme 70s music!

They don't use enough coloured, glowing lines on TV these days tell you what. Or full-orchestra music for that matter.

DicktheCat
Feb 15, 2011

This has absolutely nothing to do with nothing, but I bet those supercomputer buildings were always nice and toasty in the winter! Also, thinking about the data center things, I also bet you could use the warm water they put off in those buildings instead of a hot water heater!

Disregard this post, as it is just dumb rambling.

Monkey Fracas
Sep 11, 2010

...but then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you!
Grimey Drawer

Mister Kingdom posted:

A demo reel of the Scanimate. Warning: extreme 70s music!

So before I was born TV looked like one big neverending episode of Soul Train? I kinda feel like I got screwed here, man.

minato
Jun 7, 2004

cutty cain't hang, say 7-up.
Taco Defender
Oh, so that's what the Justice - DVNO video was paying tribute to.

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Monkey Fracas posted:

So before I was born TV looked like one big neverending episode of Soul Train? I kinda feel like I got screwed here, man.

Hell, just look how movies were introduced:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3q4_8_9hFI

This makes me realize that no networks have movie nights anymore.

Cassius Belli
May 22, 2010

horny is prohibited

DicktheCat posted:

This has absolutely nothing to do with nothing, but I bet those supercomputer buildings were always nice and toasty in the winter! Also, thinking about the data center things, I also bet you could use the warm water they put off in those buildings instead of a hot water heater!

Disregard this post, as it is just dumb rambling.

Not really, it isn't. Cogeneration and district heating are pretty well-established uses of other heat-generators (power plants, mostly - think the entire New York City steam system), and data centers are trying to figure out good ways to get in on that. The thing is, cooling a data center is incredibly expensive (a third to nearly half of the power demand), so every joule of heat you can give away or, even better, sell to someone else, is a joule you don't have to pay for with another joule in cooling, and on a "green"-ish sort of sense it's a joule that someone doesn't have to re-produce with even more power. You'll lose some in the transmission, of course, but overall giving that computer heat away is an incredibly good deal for everyone involved.

I remember Helsinki started building a pretty large underground data center on this exact principle, but I don't remember if it's been completed yet.

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Lazlo Nibble
Jan 9, 2004

It was Weasleby, by God! At last I had the miserable blighter precisely where I wanted him!

Mister Kingdom posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ispW6-7b2sA

A demo reel of the Scanimate. Warning: extreme 70s music!

The second half uses Yellow Magic Orchestra's "Rydeen". YMO's videos from Solid State Survivor were drenched in Scanimate graphics.

There's one working Scanimate system left, owned by Dave Seig, who used to operate it for Video West. It still gets occasional use.

Actually using Scanimate is almost like cheating; Robert Abel & Associates were doing way more impressive stuff years earlier with traditional animation techniques (multiple exposures of backlit mattes shot straight to 35mm film):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2U-lP-SOSQ

I'd kill to see this ad scanned from a 35mm print instead of just a video dub. It's got an organic look that -- as good as the "DVNO" video is -- is really hard to effectively fake in digital.

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