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Humphreys posted:
My definition is probably different from the actual industry here but to me its passenger, grain trains, everything else. After the the qr gutting we ended up with a pile of queenslanders turn up. The private group from up there got thw contract to run the freight trains out of the grainfields in northwest victoria. They qhere bitching last year that they where losing money and didnt want to run them. They then proceeded to get bollocksed for not adhering to contract and loving with food security for the state. It was pretty great. The unofficial line was "sack management levels until youre solvent then" Fuckface the Hedgehog has a new favorite as of 05:23 on Jul 5, 2017 |
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Jul 5, 2017 05:18
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Fuckface the Hedgehog posted:The unofficial line was "sack management levels until youre solvent then" But if you don't have 5 levels of management how's the sole field employee going to know what to do?
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Jul 5, 2017 09:12
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Three-Phase posted:Obsolete, but still absolutely amazing: I recall I posted about the CMs way back in the thread, and the architecture of the machines was at least as funky as the exterior. quote:Connection Machines were built around extreme multiprocessing. The CM-2 consisted of up to 65,536 single-bit processors, each with 4kbit of dedicated RAM. Additionally there was a floating point coprocessor per 32 processors.
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Jul 5, 2017 09:29
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Collateral Damage posted:I love those old promotion videos. So... look forward to Skyrim on the CM, next E3 
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Jul 5, 2017 15:22
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GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:The connection machine though. Sexiest computer ever. Also awesome because they got Richard Feynman to help them with the design. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CKW4A6jnJA
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Jul 5, 2017 16:20
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How about some 3D graphics from a product called Wavefront? https://youtu.be/dolXi-3BcuA
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Jul 5, 2017 21:17
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HotCanadianChick posted:There was one consumer PC with a blinkenlights chassis, the BeBox, a computer sold by Be Inc. for use with their OS, BeOS: Anyway, if we're talking about our favourite desktop cases from the early '90s, mine has to be the SGI Indigo:  It's difficult to see there, but there are two buttons (or tabs or whatever the gently caress you want to call them) right at the top of the front fascia:  Depress both of them with your thumbs and the front fascia swings down and away, revealing the case's component cage:  The big round thing is the speaker, and below it (next to the caution sign) is the power switch (you can toggle it without opening the case by opening the door on the front fascia). The (SCSI) drive bays have a tape drive and two hard drives, all on tool-free drive sleds. On the lefthand side of the cage is that big panel. At the top of the panel is a dzus fastener---one of those things that locks with a quarter turn. Unlock it and:  The panel swings down, giving you access to the processor and graphics cards. Without getting into all of the technical horseshit it's not technically a backplane setup, but it's basically a backplane setup. At the back of the chasis is a boring bus card that is screwed into the case, but all of the other working parts can be pulled out and socketed back in without any tools---drives, memory, motherboard (not technically a motherboard in this case), graphics card.  For environments where you don't want your users to be able to strip your workstations down to the chassis in no time flat, there's a bar lock you can use that runs through the cage and can be locked, preventing what I've just illustrated. You can see the back end of the slot for the bar on the back---it's the horizontal slot under the power connectors. Note that the power supply has a plug and a receptacle---so you can plug your monitor into the workstation's power supply, allowing you to turn both of them on and off together.  It's still a pretty good design even after 25 intervening years of case design. Three-Phase posted:How about some 3D graphics from a product called Wavefront?
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Jul 5, 2017 22:58
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That plug in plug out thing is it pass though or does it contain the largest power supply known to man?
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Jul 6, 2017 00:18
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Pass through was how all the models I've ever seen with that feature did it.
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Jul 6, 2017 00:35
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Kwyndig posted:Pass through was how all the models I've ever seen with that feature did it. I think Macs of the same time did the same thing. That is a hell of a sexy computer interior, though.
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Jul 6, 2017 00:38
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Yeah, both plugs are wired to the PSU switch but the plug for the monitor gets power from the wall, not the power supply. I just pulled the power supply and opened it up to get some photos but you can't really see the wiring of the plugs without more disassembly that I want to do right now. But I will comment that it's nice that you only need to unscrew a single philips screw to pull the power supply (you can see it to the upper right of the PSU fan in the image of the back). The power supply, like the other major components, slides in and out and sockets into the pseudo-backplane without any cabling or additional fasteners. Anyway, in addition to the theoretical convenience of being able to control two devices at one switch there's the big win of being able to put a workstation in a cube/office/whatever without having to use more than one outlet. Nowdays everything goes into a power strip or (more likely for something as expensive as an Indigo was back in the day) a UPS, but in 1991 we hadn't quite reached the point where every person in every job would be expected to have a computer at their desk and so worrying about the cabling situation is definitely good engineering.
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Jul 6, 2017 01:27
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I kinda miss plug in plug out PSUs. Of course back then a computer with multiple monitors was a crazy fever dream.
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Jul 6, 2017 03:29
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Three-Phase posted:I kinda miss plug in plug out PSUs. Of course back then a computer with multiple monitors was a crazy fever dream. Come to think of it, It's been at least a couple years since I've seen any monitor that used IECs. I install 70 inchers at my job pretty regularly and even those just use the little two prong infinity sign thingies like my old boombox.
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Jul 6, 2017 03:40
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Three-Phase posted:I kinda miss plug in plug out PSUs. Of course back then a computer with multiple monitors was a crazy fever dream. Yeah, but running the whole system off one wall plug was pretty great. Also full height scsi drives 
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Jul 6, 2017 03:43
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Three-Phase posted:I kinda miss plug in plug out PSUs. Of course back then a computer with multiple monitors was a crazy fever dream. SGI used to tour a tractor trailer called the Magic Bus that had a 5 (or was it 7? I don't remember) monitor surround setup for their flight sim demo running on an Onyx. Back around 1994 or so seeing panoramic real-time 3d texture mapping was off the loving hook.
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Jul 6, 2017 04:15
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My high school had a bunch of SGI and Sun machines and hosed if me or any of my friends ever figured out what the gently caress any of them were for 
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Jul 6, 2017 05:18
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I miss psus with passthrough.
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Jul 6, 2017 05:44
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Fuckface the Hedgehog posted:I miss psus with passthrough. On the other end of the spectrum, I think the concept of modular PSUs is awesome but have never gotten around to actually getting one. The inside of my tower is so drat cluttered with cables 
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Jul 6, 2017 05:47
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Titus Sardonicus posted:Man, so do I. Maybe not that old, but a mid-'80s Japanese compact would scratch a certain itch. But yikes. I had a 1989 Civic Si that was an absolute blast to drive, but no airbags or anything. Hell, I had an '85 Toyota Van that I get nostalgic for that I know would be a death sentence just on the antiquated cab-forward design alone. I'd love to get my hands on a CR-X or an MR2 but I know it's a terrible idea. Stop making me miss my sadly deceased CR-X, the Red Rollerskate. (The timing chain snapped while my ex-wife was driving it, which set off a cascade of failures that cost more to fix than I could afford.  )
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Jul 6, 2017 07:48
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Powered Descent posted:Typewriter chat and plotter chat come together in a little device I had in the 1980s, the Brother BP-30 graphing typewriter! Heh. I remember arguing with a couple of my teachers in high school that wouldn't accept chart/graph printouts from ApplePlot since they didn't believe they would be correct. I also remember, 40 some years ago, a guy that worked for HP let me play a space game that used the plotter for output. One ship on either side with random planets. You would enter an angle and shot power and it would calculate the ballistics and draw out the shot. The suspense was amazing.
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Jul 6, 2017 08:17
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Samizdata posted:I also remember, 40 some years ago, a guy that worked for HP let me play a space game that used the plotter for output. One ship on either side with random planets. You would enter an angle and shot power and it would calculate the ballistics and draw out the shot. The suspense was amazing. Needs to be a loud clunky dot matrix. Make it real time. You can fire before it finishes printing but you don't have any data to work on until it prints.
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Jul 6, 2017 22:36
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Collateral Damage posted:I love those old promotion videos. This sounds like a precursor to the GPGPU computing model - many lightweight threads doing work in parallel. Except for the 1-bit part.
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Jul 7, 2017 02:44
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Croccers posted:Honestly that sounds cool even today.
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Jul 7, 2017 02:51
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SubG posted:SGI used to tour a tractor trailer called the Magic Bus that had a 5 (or was it 7? I don't remember) monitor surround setup for their flight sim demo running on an Onyx. Back around 1994 or so seeing panoramic real-time 3d texture mapping was off the loving hook. That bus came through the Microsoft campus when I was working there in 1993 or 1994 - around Jurassic Park time.
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Jul 9, 2017 03:09
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySxO6gV7mvQ
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Jul 9, 2017 04:03
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HotCanadianChick posted:(yes, I'm aware of the open-source Haiku project to remake BeOS) Unfortunately, it isn't going to happen. Not that long ago, posted either in this thread or the Tech Relics thread, there was a video demonstrating BeOS. I scoffed at first but looking at it, I really wish I could have used BeOS when I was in art school nearly 20 years ago, it seemed like a much better solution for computer generated imaging than the Windows 98 machines we were using at the time.
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Jul 9, 2017 20:46
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Titus Sardonicus posted:Unfortunately, it isn't going to happen. I've used Beos exactly once in my life and it was very much "oh this is speedy oh there's no software oh well".
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Jul 9, 2017 20:51
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Isn't Free DOS like the only free clone of a commercial microcomputer operating system to ever actually happen? e: Immediately after pressing submit I realised there's probably a free CP/M clone but who gives a poo poo. ee: Oh CP/M itself is free nowadays. That's cool. 3D Megadoodoo has a new favorite as of 20:55 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 20:53
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this is the most zen Youtube video I have ever seen in my life omg
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Jul 9, 2017 21:00
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Kelp Me! posted:this is the most zen Youtube video I have ever seen in my life omg
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Jul 9, 2017 21:03
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Titus Sardonicus posted:Unfortunately, it isn't going to happen. That article reminded me that Be Inc. was bought out by Palm which is like the most ignominious death for a tech company I can possibly imagine
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Jul 9, 2017 21:04
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Titus Sardonicus posted:Unfortunately, it isn't going to happen. It's still not great, but it's much more alive than Ars suggested. https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/pulkomandy/2017-07-03_haiku_monthly_activity_report_june_2017/
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Jul 9, 2017 22:06
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Kelp Me! posted:this is the most zen Youtube video I have ever seen in my life omg I have that song stuck in my head now.
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Jul 9, 2017 23:51
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Jerry Cotton posted:I've used Beos exactly once in my life and it was very much "oh this is speedy oh there's no software oh well". Was there any 3D modeling software that could run on it? I've tried to do poo poo with 3dsmax back in 2000 that murdered the workstations on campus, let alone on my own machine, so frustrating. And rendering raytraced scenes? Forget it.
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Jul 10, 2017 00:59
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I ran it back in the day(2000-ish) on a spare box - version 4 or 4.5, can't remember, and there wasn't much of anything available for it except little open-source programs and what came with it. Like, OS/2 Warp had more software available at the time. It was lightning fast and could play a bunch of media at the same time, but the supported hardware list and software availability was pretty grim.
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Jul 10, 2017 01:59
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Titus Sardonicus posted:Was there any 3D modeling software that could run on it? I've tried to do poo poo with 3dsmax back in 2000 that murdered the workstations on campus, let alone on my own machine, so frustrating. And rendering raytraced scenes? Forget it. I had a friend who ran Blender 2.11 on BeOS. I think that was before Blender was free - but I'm not positive. But it was way less expensive than 3dsmax - and none of the school computers we had access to could run a render without crashing. Also: 3DSmax parallel port dongle!
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Jul 10, 2017 03:57
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Jerry Cotton posted:Isn't Free DOS like the only free clone of a commercial microcomputer operating system to ever actually happen? Linux 
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Jul 10, 2017 05:51
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blugu64 posted:Linux "Actually happen" was a criterion there. e: So was "free", unless you consider your time valueless in which case you become correct. Exit Strategy has a new favorite as of 06:19 on Jul 10, 2017 |
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Jul 10, 2017 06:17
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Jerry Cotton posted:Isn't Free DOS like the only free clone of a commercial microcomputer operating system to ever actually happen?
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Jul 10, 2017 08:32
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Exit Strategy posted:"Actually happen" was a criterion there. Are you confusing it with GNU Hurd? You are also moving the goalpost into the wrong direction if you are arguing that the time to set it up makes it not free.
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Jul 10, 2017 09:11
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