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New Dual System PC

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the cram-more-in-the-box dept.

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 ;)

16 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. cool by Captain+Galactic · · Score: 4, Informative

    I always dreamed of this...Play a game on one system, when boss/parent/spouse walks in,push a button & pretend you are working...

  2. They have done PC and Mac together by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

  3. PC/MAC Machine by rminear · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  4. mac and pc in one case by ZeissIcon · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:mac and pc in one case by artemis67 · · Score: 2, Informative

      The company was Orange Micro , and they've long since gotten out of the business.

      Their cards were always priced similarly to a complete PC system at the same Mhz; what you were paying for was a) the convenience of running two systems out of one box, and b) the interoperability of the two environments. Their competition was Insignia's SoftWindows emulator, which was as zippy as a tortoise in a vat of cold molasaass, so Orange Micro offered a significantly better solution.

      I think what killed their business model was that Macs got fast enough to run PC emulation software at acceptable speeds (about the time the G3's first came out). No, you still couldn't do 3D modeling with it, but when you double-clicked on the My Computer icon on the desktop, the window would open and render in seconds rather than minutes. That also meant that Office-type applications now ran at acceptible speeds, despite the fundamental x86/PPC incompatibility of having to convert big endian/small endian numbers for every byte that passed through the CPU. Orange Micro just couldn't compete because their PC cards started at just over $1000, whereas VirtualPC cost (back then) about $250.

  5. Already been done... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  6. I don't get it by sql*kitten · · Score: 3, Informative

    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?

    1. Re:I don't get it by 3waygeek · · Score: 3, Informative

      FWIW, SPARC cards date back to the early 90s; Definicon had an ISA bus SPARC coprocessor in 1991 or so. It ran SunOS 4, a forerunner of Solaris.

      Definicon had other coprocessors, too, including 68K, AMD 29K, and National 32K families. When I worked there (90-92), I developed firmware and about half of a SVR4 kernel for an i860 coprocessor; unfortunately the project was cancelled (lack of funds).

    2. Re:I don't get it by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Informative
      SunOS 4, a forerunner of Solaris

      Solaris == SunOS + OpenWindows.

      Solaris 1.x is based on SunOS4 which in turn is based on 4.3BSD.

      Solaris 2.x is based on SunOS4, which is based on (or at least is a workalike for) SVR4. The SunOS4/BSD codebase was (ostensibly) used to create the /usr/ucb binaries included with it, which are BSD-style commands (SVR4 commands being the default.)

      SunOS4 is not a forerunner of Solaris, SunOS4 is the prior major revision of SunOS, a component of Solaris. SunOS4 is SunOS5's predecessor, though.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  7. Mac and PC in one case? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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"

  8. Wow! A Mac and a PC in the same case, Taco? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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!

  9. Re:Siamese did this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    There was bridgeboard for the Amiga A500 and A2000 (circa 1989/90) that was essentially a 286/386 on a card. It shared the Amiga's memory and drives and you could pull up a PC DOS session in a window within the Amiga's OS. It's the most integrated dual-hardware system I've ever come across. Heck, you could even copy and paste text from one to the other - later versions even let you transfer files between the two machines.

  10. What an innovative concept... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    ...though I think I've seen it somewhere else...

  11. MacCharlie by Shayde · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/
  12. PC and MAC in one by Milliardo · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  13. Re:Mac in a dual case. by notinuse · · Score: 3, Informative

    Commodore did this in the '80s, with the Amiga 2000 and the Bridgeboard. The various models of Bridgeboards had x86 processors and their own RAM. They could share the floppy drive, and could display simple graphics on the Amiga screen, in a window. Or you could install a separate video card and use a switch. My A2000 was setup to run MacOS, Windows and AmigaOS simulataneously, all in one box, many years ago. As has been already stated, Apple had PC cards available for Mac for some models also. Again, many years ago.