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50 Year Old Computer Still Going
The Angry Mick writes "Geek.com is running a blurb on a 50 year old CSIRAC computer that is apparently still functional, if lurking in an Australian museum. Sporting a whopping 2K of RAM and screaming along at a blistering 300 khz(!) it proves the adage that they really don't make 'em like they used to . . ." Yes, because if they did, they'd be really, really slow.
...30 more years and my Apple //e will have been running for 50 years! Woohoo!
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
A Beowuld cluster of- oh never mind, where would you fit it?
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
and linking that to yesterday's discussion about the lack of quality these days, i bet we won't have any/many of today's computers around in another 50 years time... or 50 days for some of them...
- Welcome the coming of the New World Odour
By reading the horde of nested articles, I got the impression that the machine hasn't run in decades, and probably would not if powered.
Correct me if I'm wrong. But please quote a piece that says it is actually running now.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Although I have the advantage of having a whopping 64k of ROM. I only have to use the RAM for my data. I would expect that computer also has to store the program binary in the 2k. Overlays, anyone?
Lately I've been finding it worth my time to spend a few hours recoding some functions in order to shave just a few bytes off their stack usage.
Kids these days, assuming everyone's got 128 megabytes for their application. They just don't code 'em like they used to.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
My first computer, the C64 runs at a massive 1Mhz, only about 3 times faster than this machine.
:)
Commodore released the 64 in 1982, this puts it at 20 years of age. That's 30 years between these two machines. When did Moore make that law again?
Yikes, imagine what the computer world will be like in 30 years time! Assuming MS haven't screwed it up for everyone.
Not bad for a living dinosaur. Listen to it yourself :)
It does annoy me that people , even though its in good humour , snigger at these old machines with their "paltry" 2K memory and slow speed. Yeah , sure they're not exactly a Cray. But look at what was done with this one. Skyscraper design , cloud droplet simulation, antenna design! Lets see even the best programmers used to point and drool GUI interfaces and hand holding wizards try and do that in 2K now using little more than paper tape! The people who designed, built and programmed these machines REALLY knew what they were doing and probably forgot more about efficient programming and code compression than todays "top" coders ever knew in the first place.
god I feel old...
Years ago, when I worked at the CSIRO I worked on this machine for a while. I'm amazed it didn't die long ago. It used RPN for calculations, which takes getting used to, but is far better then algerbraic.
It's processor (not CPU - it consisted of multiple chips) is a hardware FORTH type. The jokes about FORTH programmers are true!
"A lot of its components would not stand having voltages applied to them again," says Thorne. "I think it would probably catch fire."
Reminds me of some of the old linux kernel code, and thinking its good to have a sense of humor.
Trying to get a printer working and getting a kernel message saying Lpt:1 on fire!
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
" Sadly, it's not an option to make CSIRAC operational again today. Time has taken a toll on this fragile dinosaur.
So what exactly would happen if anyone tried to relive the magic by switching it on?
"A lot of its components would not stand having voltages applied to them again," says Thorne. "I think it would probably catch fire."
300kHz may not sound like much, but with overclocking and a decent watercooling setup you could crank it as high as 334kHz!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
When I'm at my wittiest, she just sort of rolls her eyes, groans, and goes back to whatever she was doing.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The Geek.com article says:
" A half-century old computer, called CSIRAC, is still operating in Australia. The computer, which was Australia's first, ran at a blistering 300 kilohertz, had 2 KB RAM, and 2.5 KB storage."
But the Inquirer article linked by the above Geek.com article says:
"The machine was the fourth computer to be built anywhere in the world, ran at 0.001MHz, and had a massive 2000 bytes of memory and a behemothic 2500 bytes of storage."
Which, by my calcuations, would be 1000 hertz or 1 kilohertz. I tend to believe the Inquirer, since they're running the source article. And besides, the 1977 Apple ][ was only 1 MHz, Don't you think there was a bit more progress than less than doubling in processor speed from 1949 to 1977?
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
It's not just that the simpler chips are more reliable, but they use less power, generate less heat, cost less and take up less space and don't weigh as much.
I have heard that the ARM chip is the most popular for embedded applications these days, and many of the ARM chips in use are quite tiny, have no cache and run in the 40 Mhz range, like the ARM7TDMI.
68000-based chips from Motorola are also very popular.
And check out uCLinux, a linux port to several microprocessors that run without a memory management unit.
Why bother with an MMU when there's no disk to swap to, and the failure of a user program would mean the failure of the whole system?
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Check out this page which tells us the history of the said computer. In the end, it says the following:
Following the University of Melbourne's purchase in 1964 of a Control Data 3200 from the USA, CSIRAC was donated to the Museum of Victoria. At this time it was realised that CSIRAC was the oldest computer still in operation, and worthy of preservation so it was carefully dismantled and stored.
CSIRAC is now the centre-piece of the IT display at the Museum in Melbourne.
As I understand it, the music was recorded by building a replica of the sound hardware and connecting it to the emulator. People who heard the music have confirmed it sounds pretty much like the original in 1955 (IIRC, it was around that time).
Perhaps the coolest thing that they did with CSIRAC was build a HLL and compiler for it, which they called Autocoder IIRC. It looked like a cross between FORTRAN and BASIC and avoided some of the thinkos of FORTRAN, as far as I could tell.
CSIRAC is now permanently on display at the museum in Melbourne, Australia. It's the only complete, original machine of its generation in existence, and well worth a look if you come down our way. There is also a book on CSIRAC called "The Last of the first", which is a fascinating read if you can get your hands on a copy.
One of my university lecturers, Peter Thorne, got his start in computers as an operator for the machine. He met his wife there - she was a fellow computer operator!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Moore's Law includes price. Did you take into account, that you might have payed less when purchasing your 1982 C64 than was spent on CSIRAC, 20 years earlier?
Btw, C64's feature 64kB which is 32 times 2kB, so at least memory size doubled five times in 20 years, that is: it doubled every four years.
--
In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. But in practice there is -- Jan L.A. van Snepscheut
That computer could process larger amounts of data than anyone giving weather forecasts on the radio at the time...
It seems laughabel to us now, but back then, it was an advancement. Ever onward and upward, such is the progress of computing.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Who's there?
*60 second pause....*
CSIRAC!
On one occasion, they gave a demo to an organisation called the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), but apparently a memory error occurred and the thing printed "CSIRAC welcomes the members of the IRA) :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
For those of you who didnt read the article pointed by the parent poster before listening, that is NOT music being played by the CSIRAC itself but rather a software recreation of the original hardware, and a modern recreation of the original speaker. :)
It basically sounds like my old spectrum, only a bit worse
I wonder what all the background noise on it is, though, it certainly sounded like they had a massive computer in the room while playing it.
I sold a few programs for the beast on 2KB EPROMS. There can be quite much stuff in 2K. (for example an editor + assembler + disassembler). Once I added almost 500 bytes in a 2K program, and optimized it back into a 2K chip. Talk of ugly coding, used all the tricks I knew (reusing jump addresses for instructions, self-modifying code (written backwards in the rom to save a byte in copying it into ram), jumping into unrelated routines to reuse 4 bytes of the exit code, you name it. All done in pure hex... Man, those were the days...
In Murphy We Turst
One of my neighbours helped to build CSIRAC. My guess is the computer looks better than he does.
Great old guy. His wife does a great pumpkin scone.
It says "typical" not "state of the art". Most desktop PCs *ARE* around 500Mhz and *DO* have only 64mb of RAM.
The article is clearly dated "Dec 10 2002" so it's not "from around a year ago" at all - no idea where you got that from.
Nick...
The C64 was a CONSUMER item. When the CSIRAC was built there was no such thing as a computer for consumers. It would be more appropriate to compare the CSIRAC to the so-called supercomputers that were availiable in 1982. Machines like the Cray X-MP and Cyber 205 were availiable in 1982. The costs to own and operate them are comparable to what it took to operate the CSIRAC in it's day.
i ca l/computers/history.html
The UK's weather bureau give specs on the Cyber 205 they were using in '82:
http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/nwp/numer
CDC Cyber 205
200Mhz Clock
1 MegaWord of memory
The Cyber had a 64 bit word size so that amounted to 8 MB of ram. So clockspeed has increased over 600 times and memory has increased over 4000 times in that time frame. This is just confining myself to the 205. I didn't look for the specs on other large machines like the Crays that were availiable then.
Computers as something just anyone could play with were pretty much nonexistant prior to 77 (true you could build something ENIAC-like anytime in the seventies if you were REALLY good with electronics). It's more instructive to see what the kind of money they had to spend on the CSIRAC will get you as time moves forward. Power comparable to the C64 was availiabe in the early sixties for that kind of money.
Okay, some quick math:
50 years * 366 days/year (rounding up) * 24 hours/day * 60 minutes/hour * 60 seconds/minute * 300000 cycles/second = 4.74336e14 cycles
Now, my Athlon XP 1600:
4.47336e14 cycles / 1400000000 Hz / 60 sec / 60 min = Roughly 89 hours
So even if this machine were still running (which, incidentally, it's not. RTFA), in terms of pure cycles of functionality pulled out of the machine, my Athlon beat it in the first four days. It's a lot easier to maintain a pair of shoes than it is an airplane. And of course, this machine ISN'T still running, and would likely execute an HCF instruction (Halt and Catch Fire) if powered on, so you really can't call it reliable.
(Of course, my Athlon's running Windows (needed a games machine), so it's debatable whether or not these cycles have actually been functional...)
--AC
I would have thought many of them would no longer be manufactured. (Computers went solid state- discrete transistors- in the late 1950s and integrated circuits in the early 1970s.)
...is to combine the best ideas from old and new technology alike, and blend them into an entirely new result. That, to my eyes, is what real "innovation" or R&D is all about.
Some examples: DEC (Digital Equipment), in their heyday, came up with some great techniques for memory management at the hardware level. I'd be curious to know how many of those ideas got rolled over into more current stuff.
Another one; Where would we all be if Xerox's PARC facility had never come up with what has morphed into today's electronic rodent? Heck, IBM was using light pens years before that.
In short; You don't want to just ignore something because it's "old" or "obsolete" (Essence, I loathe that word!). You need to take the good ideas from the old stuff and build on them.
Somehow, I doubt that we would have so many tons of electronic junk choking landfills today if computer and electronics hardware was (a), really built to last, like the old stuff was; And (b), built to be easily upgradeable.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Here's a photo
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.