Slashdot Mirror
New Dual System PC
An anonymous reader writes "ExtremeMhz.com has released an article on how they designed and built a PC containing dual systems. One system is a supercooled Intel and the other is a water chilled AMD. This PC features Dual SCSI storage subsytems also.
Looks like some crazy stuff." Now if only they could put a mac and a PC in one case ;)
Well, there have been PC cards for Macintosh machines for a long, long time, so I guess you can cram an expensive 'PC' (we'll call it 'an IBM' for the old time Mac Zealots) in a Mac case.
It's possible because the PC is an open architecture.
I can imagine the screaming and sputtering and legal injunctions that would stream out of Steve Job's office, though, if someone tried to implement and market a PowerMac on a PCI card that could be plugged into a PC. It's closed hardware, you see.
If I'm not mistaken, there was a range of computers built by (or called) Siamese. They had amiga, atari, mac and PC, and any combination of many others all in the one system, all used through the one monitor and keyboard. I'm not sure about sharing drives however
I always dreamed of this...Play a game on one system, when boss/parent/spouse walks in,push a button & pretend you are working...
When I was in college, one of our labs had these dual Windows/Mac machines... They were kinda crappy though, and broke often.
Now if they can only cram a built in space heater in it to make it perfect. Wait a minute....
Holy shit. Bright green on white text in all my browsers
People, you can build a kickass PC, get some m4d html skillz!
(or stick to black & white)
I understand this has some coolness factor, but does it have any purpose at all? One might as well just grab two cases and duct tape them together. The only time sharing a case would be cool is if they could share other components as well (monitor/keyboard don't count).
When I first heard about the PC and mac combo I thought someone might have found a way for two computers to share components and was wildly disapointed. I'll start getting interested in this stuff when the computers can share a hard drive or a video card. Otherwise it's merely a case mod.
Help I'm a rock.
1) Install lunix 2.4.20;
2) Install kde from cvs-current;
3) Install wine.
4) Install mosfet-liquid & acqua-l3m.
5) Install bochs.
6) ???
7) profit.
TechTV's Screensavers did it. They put a G4 in one of those Antec Cases and then they put a 5 1/4" pc in one of the drive bays.
It was pretty complicated and look largely useless but heh... they did it!
Look back on their site around Oct-Dec to find it.
what a monstrasity, I LOVE IT!!!
It's 2 separate PCs, in one case, with a unified PSU and cooling system...
Next!!!
Seriously, this is a bit boring really, isn't it... wake me up when a MoBo manufacturer develops a dual-machine (not dual CPU!) board with a unified disk subsystem, now that I would buy...
TechTV/The Screen Savers did this about a month or two ago. They built a clone mac machine, and then added the PC Parts and processor to it. http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/story /0,24330,3413988,00.html
Actually, back in the day, they did. Orange computing used to make a PCI card with an entire pentium 100 computer on it that would share the hard drive on your 604 mac, you could access it through a window on your mac desktop. I think they discontinued them because they were useless; 500 mhz processors were showing up in the marketplace and the Orange card was more expensive than a complete PC.
Way back in the mists of time, i remember two occurances of pretty much the same thing. One was a sega mega drive in the same case as a desktop PC, literally it had a place where you could plug in a cart underneath the CD bay. Also the Amiga was released with the same thing, you had a Amiga 1200 mobo and a Intel mobo in the same case, both sitting on the same scsi chain using the same drives at the same time. It was kinda expensive at the time, but useful for the people who needed both. Screen switching was done via a built in kvm or something. Thinking about it now, i think it was a extension to the Siamese which used a serial leed between two seperate cases.
ExtremeMhz.com has released an article on how they designed and built a PC containing dual systems. One system is a supercooled Intel and the other is a water chilled AMD.
For years, you've been able to mix a PC and a SPARC in one case, and you can mix AS/400 and PC too. There are many advantages to this kind of configuration. But why would you want to mix a PC and a PC?
1995: LC 630 DOS. 68040 and 486/66 in one case, swap operating systems almost instantly with a key combination. It even exchanged the clipboard contents.
1997: PowerMac 7300/180. Similar arrangement, Pentium 100 or 166
Sheesh, I thought this was "news for nerds", not the "noise of newbies"
You mean like I had in 1990 with my Amiga 3000 running a Bridgeboard card with a 386 CPU and at the same time running the Emplant on the Amiga side to run Mac software?
Fuck, you're a real visionary Taco!
Yeah right. I'll put a Mac and a PC in one case for you the moment you make oil and water mix. Oh wait. They already did that. Nevermind.
Back in 1992, British PC manufacturer Amstrad built a machine that combined a 386/SX PC with a Sega Megadrive.
It was a complete flop, though.
It's a computer and fridge, with water and ice dispenser! Now if only it had a crisper :)
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I mean, I'm sure it's alright in some circles to talk about police constables with anoraks being shoved into cases, but I always thought those sort of situations were more the preserve of some of the world's seedier clubs...
Ah well, to each his own.
...though I think I've seen it somewhere else...
--Im an oven mitt, not an engineer! (SLArbys Radio Commercial)
There's quite a lively online gaming scene in Poland, but the internet infrastructure is - for the most part - monopoly run by the state telco. One of the telco's largest competitor's (Internet Partners) has been building their own network, and have set it up very well with lots of crossovers to the telco's network.
Anyway, one active scene member managed to hook up 'the scene' (in general) with a place for 2 machines in one of IP's server rooms. The only problem was, how to meet the demand of all of the scene members. Different games, different servers, different loads. The solution was to put together 4 dual processor motherboards into two cases. This let them set up something like 30 different servers for 3-4 different games.
I'll try to find the link to the article (with photos)... I know I had it arround here somewhere.
Dudes, it must suck to be you...
That brought zero to the state of the art. Talk about being stuck on/in a case.
How about improving component accessibility next time. Your case looked like it was filled with flatulent intestines.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Now if only they could put a mac and a PC in one case
can you imagine the consequences?
Dogs and cats living together...MASS HYSTERIA!
Asus and many others already do this, it's called dual CPU motherboards. if you want 2 environments, VMware is out and MSoft is planning a similar software built in.
I thought about this myself, not impressed with it's technical feat, I choose to just run a 2ghz machine and a dual monitor system.
Usefull if you can't afford/aquire another case, but I can't see how this changes the world any more than putting a computer in a 1920's taster case (which I'm trying to do now anyway). I hope I don't wind up on slashdot frontpage.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
That is a very interesting thing - the trend may actually catch up with power users. .
Kind of processor RAID eh ! And atleast the Intel AMD squabble will be reduced to some extent. The redundancy also brings in the best of both worlds to your PC Doesnt it.
PROBABLY THE 2 CAN EVEN BE MADE TO RUN IN TANDEM . .
2 is always better than 1 and varietyis even better !!!
But does this burna hole in the pocket?
The first real incarnation of this was a weird little thing called a MacCharlie. It took what was then the only form factor of the Mac (what I believe folks today call a 128KE) and added a pair of 5 1/4" floppy drives, a system board, and the keyboard extension needed for the F1-F10 keys and the numeric keypad.
:)
Here's a decent webpage about it. It was manufactured by Dayna, and actually was sort of cute.
I believe it was limited to 80x24 text applications (since in that day, the Monochrome Graphics Adapter was actually an expansion, and if you were -really- inventive, you could get (gasp) a CGA card! Woo!
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
If they could get both computes to share the same SCSI buss I would be impressed.
I rember back in 1991 or so I had a friend that did this. He even wrote a program so the computers could pass network data over it.
It never worked that well IIRC, but was a interesting proof of concept.
Umm... wow? They can run two copies of Windows now? The computer sounds like a washing machine?
By the time they modified their system to provide cooling so they can overclock 3% a newer processor was released that makes this system obsolete. They used one large case to hold two motherboards instead of two stacked smaller cases. This is exciting news to that kid back in college who always picked his nose.
Now that would be swank.
The two *are* sharing a disk.
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
As for conformal coating, if you want to try this heed this well meant advice: use the brush on stuff. It is much less likely to get into connectors from BELOW (masking doesn't cover the holes on the board side of the connectors) and it is easier to apply around devices that have heat sinks or just need some air exposure.
I may be wrong but I am going to hazard a guess that a lot of this water cooling stuff is far bigger than necessary in order to look impressive - but that does not improve the performance, neither is a thick walled tube less likely to leak than a properly sized thin walled tube. Computers do not have high levels of vibration and cables and pipes crossing one another or rubbing on metal like they do in the more badly designed cars.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Why he hell would you need a pc?
PC's are for people who don't give a shit about quality, productivity or security.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
....the DEC rainbow?
Ed Chauvin IV
Unfortuntely, these cards are no longer offered - perhaps the power requirements got too obscene for the PCI bus to provide power. I bet nobody thought of hooking up a drive connector to a PCI card back then (as with a Radeon 9700)
I would definetly be in the market for this, as its one less @#$#$#@ box under my desk. I don't need more than a ~1Ghz Pentium III pc (or two). A dual Centrino on a PCI card would be a bonus. Yes I would like to bring it up as a window under os X or X (or optionally full screen cheap but decent 2d-accelerated video out the back of the card)
Anybody going to make that card for me? I believe the highest performance model ever offered by any of the manufacturers was the OrangePC (OrangePC 660 - AMD K6-2/400 @100 MHz bus, L2 cache) That's too pokey for today, plus there's no driver support for doing things between modern versions of the OS, or support for newer macs than a B&W G3.
The VirtualPC route has never interested me too much - every time I've demoed it, its never been quite fast enough for the tasks I wanted it for - like compiling for win32 or a developer install of sql server, etc.
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
Nice. A trick I once pulled was to run UAE (0.3!) on a PC, with the Amiga running ShapeShifter running MacOS 7.1. In theory, I could have installed Unix on that PC and ran DosEmu, UAE and ShapeShufter inside UAE to get 4 OS's on one box. But I didn't.
So yeah. Two PC's in one case. Big deal. Get a bunch of VIA EPIA boards, I bet you could get more than two of those in a server case.
Not quite like that. Your Amiga setup was actually probably better in many ways. Most of the Amiga's hardware was used by the 386 - at least the hard drive and the monitor were. The same goes for the Emulated Mac. Best of all though, you could run apps for all three systems at the same time on the same screen!
There's only a few (good) reasons to do something like this: push price down per performance/application, push performance up per price/application, or push new technological applications per price/performance. This thing doesn't do any of those.
Outside of the usual overclocker zeal, I really don't get it.
vk.
Just two systems? I've got 6 systems in one box. A 386sx, 386dx, 486sx2, 486dx4, CYRIX 686,and a Pentium. It's got a big label on the front too:
Obsolete Hardware
Hmm, I wonder if I could get on the front page if I posted some photos on the web?
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
now there would be a good combo, forget the mac
A computer without two systems is like a duck without a wooden handle.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
You forgot the little arrow thingies "= 60) && (eighties.hairband = "Great White"))
{
cout "Bring 97 Body Bags" endl;
}
Have all Macintosh computers become mainframes? Perhaps the are all mini-computers? No?
Macintosh's ARE personal computers if I am not mistaken. Macs are PC's.
Perhaps we could refer to them as "over-priced PC" vs. "ugly PC"
As huge as that case is, I don't see how it would be difficult to put two complete PCs inside. If it were the size of a standard full-tower (aka, not a doublewide, like it appears to be), or were something engineered along the lines of the Mini-ITX form-factor, I would then be impressed. With how they have it, I'm not.
My old DEC Alphaserver 1000a is smaller than that, and if I took out the raid array section and replaced the power supplies with standard size supplies, I could easily fit two motherboards into the case. I can't see why I'd want to.
If someone is really interested in having an enclosure with multiple PCs in it, I'd recommend getting one of those equipment units that musicians have for sound equipment (one of the deeper ones), and going with 19" rackmount stuff. It's more durable, more standardized, and at this point. the cases can be found from anywhere between $60 and $100, depending on how fancy you get. If you want more than that, get a standard 19" telco cabinet, and put all of your systems, network equipment, etc, in there. It's not difficult.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Because it wasn't made by IBM, it was made by Hercules.
The official choices of display adapters were CGA (Color Graphics Adapter) or the MDA (Monochrome Display Adapter). MDA did 80x25 text only. CGA did 80x25 or 40x25 color text (15 colors or 7 colors plus blinking), 320x200 color graphics (one of 4 ugly palettes of 3 ugly colors plus one RGB background color), and 640x200 color graphics (white on an RGB background). On the CGA changing the background color even changed the overscan color.
Anyway, the real problem was that the text on the CGA was drawn in an 8x8 cell, was very blocky, and very hard to read. Plus CGA monitors were digital (non-standard) and thus very expensive. MDA text was 14x9 I think, either way it was much higher resolution, so the text was far easier to read and it used cheaper, sharper monochrome monitors. But it couldn't draw graphics at all.
Hercules fixed this shortcoming by basically taking an MDA and adding 720x348 mono graphics. Once 1-2-3 added support for it, it took off like a rocket. It was perfect for spreadsheet jockeys and cost effective too.
The second successful mixture of readable text with graphics was on the Compaq (didn't have a model name at the time). On it's little mono 9" screen or whatever they had a special card which had the text of an MDA and the graphics of a CGA. The monitor would audibly click as it switched between the two modes. It was nearly always completely automatic, but Compaq had a built-in override key (something akin to their control-alt-bigplus/bigminus that altered key click noises) in case that wasn't working. So the Compaq had readable text and CGA, but on a tiny monitor with an awful keyboard and in a silly-shaped box. If you used the CGA-out port on the side, it was unable to do high-res text, so you couldn't cheat and get their features on a larger display.
Of course, the killer of the Hercules was EGA (Enhanced Graphics Adapter). It was a true IBM card (who was the mover and shaker at the time) and had text modes essentially identical to MDA, but with downloadable fonts. It also could do 80x40 text with the same resolution characters that CGA used in 80x25. It also added 15 colors at 640x350, which was the first really usable high-res graphics on the PC.
I used to program the PC during these times.
My left mouse button sends ctrl-alt-del. I double-click a lot.
-FF
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
This is truly an amazing feat of boredom, but isnt this why they invented rackmounts?
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I remember a Sega Megadrive and a 386DX(?) were once merged into a single PC-like box in the early '90s. The Megadrive was great for gaming, but sadly the two systems were completely separated. You couldn't program the gfx chips of the Megadrive through the 386. And Sonic the Hedgehog looked much better on a big TV screen anyway ;-)
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
they used to cohabitate way before the mac/pc combo.. the old apple ][ had a cp/m card made by microsoft in the early 80's.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Another person wasting their time and trying to waste mine with something this freaking stupid. Where' the practicality, the cool factor (besides the STUPIDITY of water cooling anything electronic), the actual usefulness?
A Mac and PC in the same case eh? Perfect! When morons can't figure out how to run AOL they won't know if they should call Microsoft or Apple... should cut down on the tech support factor....
I used to be a MS fan but then I was brainwashed. Now I see the Light. Mac OS X pwns u.
Tech TV's show The Screen Savers put a MAC and PC in the same box. It wasn't as cool as I thought it would be, but it worked.
If you really want to do this, the trend is blade servers. HP, IBM and others are very serious about this and the hardware works great IMHO.
Another very good example is the Cosine IPSX IP Services Switch, that shares "blades" with MIPS and PowerPC processors in the same chassis, all running under Linux, according to a sales rep.
RenderCube does 4, they also build in a KVM and a 100Mbps Ethernet switch, it looks quite nice too
Almost. Don't forget the ISA slots in the 3000, the mouse, the floppy and the keyboard. But the biggest hog was the video, so I installed a 512k Trident in there and switched the output to the monitor. Then the hard drive sharing was the next issue, but it was actually good enough. The floppy was shared by hardware, the cables were routed to and from the bridgeboard and you clicked this gadget to swap the drive from one system to the other. :)
It was quite nice actually. I remember back then, I was studying electronics, so I had OrCad running on the bridgeboard, and I did all my scope waveform captures with Digiview on the Amiga, and the graphical word processing as well.
Nobody else at the time was able to pull off what I was doing, not even the teachers!
So, are you saying that Intel processors go through a phase transition when cooled too far? Do they turn into G4's or MIPS processors?
It's called Unix?? Unix had this like 30 years ago.
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/story /0,24330,3413988,00.html
i think that 301 little pc belongs on my dash, rather than in a custom mac case
The Chaintech Zenith 7NJS motherboard that they are using has 32 bit 66 MHz PCI slots. How on earth did they fit a 64 bit 66 MHz LSILogic Elite 1600 SCSI Raid controller!?!?! I think that's a feat in itself... no?
YellowDogLinux has a computer named BriQ which is an apple g4 in aq case that dits in a pc 5 1/4" drive. it comes with linux instead of macos, but just get an istaller cd and you're good to go.
As to your comment about wishing they could put a Mac and PC in the same case, well its been done by mastermind Kevin Rose of the Screensavers! He even used a Samsung SyncMaster 171MP picture-in-picture monitor and a KVM switch that allows you to see and control both on the same screen! Also check out Yoshi's Boxx, with every game sytem you can think of crammed together:
In the early 90s, Motorola was developing a MB that included a PowerPC and a Pentium. It was called the "Common Hardware Refrence Platform", CHRP for short. The protos had a number of problems, but they were basicaly functional. Of course these MBs were not targeting the needs of users, but developers. I don't know what ever became of the project after Apple clenched its asshole. Some readers might remember that Apple was allowing other venders to produce Mac clones for a while. Motorola was one of the manufactures doing so ( Moto alread was making MBs for Apples higher end stuff, and persumably still is).
so, wouldnt the best idea be to implement some sort of hardware standard where the motherboard is just a connceting device where you can just plug in these other boards that contain whole computer systems, it would be good... (imagines what it would be like) mmmmmm... tasty, just imagine, any kind of processor you could put in your computer... it would be universal... i dont really have teh money or skills to prusue that right now, but if anyone has some vc they want to give me, i would try to make it happen... :P
sig is broken try again tomorrow
I'm more worried about condensation than a torn tube, myself.. But I have to ask..
;)
What's the effect of this on heat disappation?
Cards generate heat. My video card generates a shitload of head. My soundcard, not so much.
Actually, I'm willing to wager that this wouldn't provide any better protection then what's already in the computer. I spilled coffee into a box a few years ago, and it should've theoretically hosed my soundcard.
The soundcard is still in use, fully functional, if not a bit sticky.
'sides, what are you going to spray the power supply with? That's the real danger of watercooling. The best thing I can think of is to perhaps seal the powersupply off in it's own 'compartment' - away from tubing, so if there's a leak, water will hit case as opposed to power supply.
First things first. These people have done nothing clever; they've just shoved two independent computers in one big box. Big deal. My hamster could have thought of something more useful... like running round his wheel.
Now, what IS clever is to put two simple motherboards together in a normal ATX case. It can be done. Just a processor, LAN and some RAM... and run OpenMOSIX / MOSIX software. Clustering on the cheap. So it's not dual-proc, but it's much cheaper, and you also get loads of PCI slots, IDE headers, serial ports - the works.
Presumably one can do something clever with Xinerama and the two VGA-outs. Any X-perts here?
Ebuyer in the UK (now the US also) sell a fully-featured motherboard for 35ukp. Just add some RAM, a CPU and some power and stick it into your case. Double the power of your PC for 150ukp.
http://blog.grcm.net/
I dont see the point of having two systems in one box, unless:
you combine mosix
http://openmosix.sourceforge.net/
with ip over scsi.
http://w3.ualg.pt/~dubuf/ipscsi.html
That way you'd have a really capable system.
...thank god for don't ask, don't tell.
though they seem to have disappeared, they built a modular architecture. want x86? slap in an x86 processor daughter board. Want a sparc? slap in a sparc daughter card.
too bad apple didn't want to play. they were all ready to go with MAC daughter cards too.
sadly they now appear to be no more.
>x_x
comment directly in my journal
Brilliant stuff. Now where can I get my dream case from - one with all the drives and IO and switches on the SAME SIDE so I don't have to keep turning the damn thing 180 every time I want to fiddle with something?
This whole idea is such old news. RenderCube has been doing it for years now:
http://rendercube.com/
Mod this up!
And I thought the original Franken-system was the old DEC Robin. I gotta admit, this one is a LOT faster.
Not to mention the VIA mini-itx boards, Shuttle spacewalker flex-atx boards, PCs that fit in a 5 1/4" bay. If I win lotto I'll make a cluster out of a backplane and a bunch of PC cards :)
Check it out here.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Eyetech have sold combined x86/Amiga systems to the Amiga market for years and Siamese Systems announced, though never sold, the 3-Pack and 8-pack Amiga/Alpha-based systems.
This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.
One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
which identifies errors in the original program.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...