C'mon. The E10K isn't power hungry. Its the multi-terrabytes of disk attached to it. Now, if the Terascale facility were built of a cluster of 1100 E10Ks - THAT would be power hungry!
Re:Preserve the Hardware as Well?
on
Software Archaeology
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There are some who do preserve old hardware and software. My current collection consists of (all working) a PDP-8/E, PDP-11/24, PDP-11/83, HP 9000/832, DecServer 3000, SparcClassic, and a C-64. I can read everything from papertape to DVDs, including both 10 track (DecTape) and 9 track tapes.
I have personally driven almost 3000 miles one way to keep a piece of vintage hardware from ending it's life on the scrap heap.
I think the biggest losses, howver, have been in documentation. People will tend to hang on to disks and hardware a lot longer than they will keep manuals.
People would not believe how much of the old software, documentation, and hardware has already been lost. That is why a few people spend a great deal of their personal funds and time trying to preserve as much as possible.
I also have this license, plus the original CD's that came with it. I plan to use them to test how "Bulletproof" SCO's O/S is. Bulletproof as in 30-06 or 7.62mm bullets.
This is by no means a new or unique project. PDP-8s have been cloned using various chips for years. There is the SBC-6120, the PDP-8/X and many others. Of course, none of these are as much fun as the real PDP-8/E and PDP-11 I have in my basement.
Re:Interesting tidbit
on
Book on NR-1
·
· Score: 1
I seem to remember a reactivity rate componant in the Startup Rate equation I was taught in Nuke School. I'd enter the equation here, but then I'd have to kill you....
Re:Interesting tidbit
on
Book on NR-1
·
· Score: 1
From the time I was 6 until I was 11 (1969 to 1974) I lived on an army base with a reactor. The reactor was the SM-1A reactor at Ft. Greely, Alaska. This plant provided power and heating for the base and was also used for 'research' purposes. The plant was basically a navy design, and, as I recall, The Master Chief who lived next door to us was very involved in its operation. I eventually grew up to become a Navy Nuke myself and was stationed on both a Ballistic Missle Sub and a Fast Attack Sub.
Whoops. It looks like tentec's web server is case sensitive. The correct URL for the schematics and programmers guide is http://www.tentec.com/RX320FTP/htm
TenTec has had a similar product out for quite awhile. The RX-320 has been out for a couple of years, and (IMHO) is a much better solution. The RX-320 is an external general coverage receiver that is completely DSP based. I've had one of these for a couple of years and love it. TenTec even publishes a complete "programmer's guide and schematic" on their website, which includes the entire spec for controlling the radio. Using this spec, I've written control programs in C, PHP, PDP-8 assembler, and am now working on one in PDP-11 assembler. The RX-320 is encased in a steel box and seems to be fairly impervious to RF interference, at least in my environment. It also doesn't take up a slot inside the pc which could be used for other things.
I can think of several great products released by Borland over the years - Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, and Turbo Basic to name a few of them. There was a time when Borland's products were the "compiler of choice" for most developers, especially in the CP/M and early MS-Dos days. For the longest time, Borlands Debugger (TDebug) was shipped with Microsoft's C compilers.
I have an ancient PDP-8 that I would say is very secure. The only input devices are front panel switches, a current loop driven teletype, and a paper tape reader. Storage (even the 2 MegaWord disk packs) is all removable. You have to toggle in the proper boot code (via the switches) to load anything, so it is not something your average script kiddie would be able to do. I do have some serial boards that I will (some day) connect to a linux box for remote access.
When radio first started being used, it was not regulated. Anyone could use any frequency they wanted at any time. The end result was that the radio spectrum became virtually unusable due to massive interference. This was why the ITU was founded, and why the FCC was created. Left to free agents, frequency wavebands have been proven to settle into utter chaos. Read up on a little RF history, before you decide to repeat failed experiments.
It is highly likely that this is due not to the Ham, but to cheaply made consumer equipment. Most modern televisions, radios, stereos, etc. are not properly shielded against interference. For example, I heavily filter my Ham station with a low pass filter directly at the antenna feed point. I have also installed high pass filters on the antenna inputs of all the Televisions in my house. I've verified with a spectrum analyzer that the station does not emit any spurs or harmonics above 30 Mhz. Despite this, I still have one television that gets interference when I am transmitting. If the television interference is determined to actually be coming in on the cable, then you should contact the cable company. They probably have technical problems in their system. Your friend should contact the Ham directly (if they have not done so already) and ask him if he can recommend any filtering devices for their equipment. If he is like most hams, he will be glad to help. They should also contact the manufacturer and get their recommendations. One furthur note: Due to poor manufacturing quality and design, most Consumer goods are provided almost no protection against interference by the FCC.
The 160M band runs from 1.8 Mhz to 2Mhz. The AM Broadcast band runs from 535Khz to 1705Khz, with the spectrum from 1605Khz to 1705Khz shared with radiolocation beacons. In the 3Ghz to 6Ghz band lies a wealth of services, including Amateur, Radiolocation, Satellite, and Space Research.
In my opinion, the DEC PDP-8 was the "Model-T" of the computer industry. It was essentially the first computer you could actually buy, instead of having to lease. At an entry level cost of around US$ 18,000 it was easily affordable by most businesses and universities who needed a computer. There were enough of them made that a lot of third parties developed add-ons. Also, there are still a few PDP-8's running production applications as controllers for manufacturing machinery.
In the past we did not have those little logos. They are a recent (within the past 10 years) development. In the past, we would have to 'pause for station identification' every so often. In the past the station would list all their FCC callsigns and frequencies at signoff each night (Between the national anthem and the indian head). No, the logo's don't bother me too much, unless they are obscuring something on skinemax.
While Meteor Scatter is an interesting mode, I think that Airplane Scanner is even more interesting. Recently Hams have been bouncing Signals in the 10Ghz range off the metal skins of high flying Aircraft. Communication ranges of up to 500 miles have been recorded. A recent (last few months) article in QST had the details...
I'm really pleased with the Dodge Durango I own. Euro and Jap cars are just too damn small! By the time you load in all the stuff you need for a one week camping trip, there's no room left for the people. And look at the Mercedes series of SUV's. Talk about Fugly!
"That being true, quantum computers could obsolete the silicon chip much as the transistor did the vacuum tube" - Not exactly true, as Vacuum Tubes are still used in many applications, including X-Ray machines, high power radio frequency and audio amplifiers, your television set, etc. Even the light bulbs (both incandescent and flourescent) in your home are a form of vacuum tube.
My God! Is the 1802 still being made? My very first computer was a bread-boarded device using the 1802 and 256 bytes of RAM. This, of course, was way back in '77.
Marconi invented his 'spark gap' transmitter in December of 1894 and did not patent it until February of 1896. He used it from his home as an amateur for over a year before he started making money off of it.
I guess I could ask the same question - could we have our spectrum back? Radio technology was invented by Amateurs, not commercial interests. For almost a century now amateur radio has been losing bandwidth at an ever increasing rate. I can name the 11 meter band and portions of the 1.25 meter band to start with. Also, Austrailian Amateurs will probably soon lose the very portion of the 70cm band that the Oscar satellites use. All due to the greed of big business, who would rather use existing (amateur developed) technology than develop their own stuff that would use the existing non-used portions of the radio spectrum.
Amateur radio is not just for allowing "a hobbiest the chance to chat to a person they don't know in Australia", it also serves a vital purpose during emergencies such as hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.
As a general rule, the public infrastructure such as telephones and cellphones, do not do well during natural disasters. In these cases, ham radio operators have been, and will continue to be, called on to provide vital communications with the rest of the country and the world.
In addition, Amateur Radio is the ONLY form of communications available to many people in the world who are in areas considered 'too remote' by the local telcos.
Slashdot Mirror
The hash mark ('#') means that he/she (or his/her login script) has set her/his prompt to '#'. That is all it means. Example:
bash-2.05a$ PS1=#
#PS1="~~~~ "
~~~~ PS1=bash-2.05a$
bash-2.05a$
It is nice that you are using a Unixoid system, but you should probably learn a little bit about how to customize the shell.
including a very power-hungry Sun E10K
C'mon. The E10K isn't power hungry. Its the multi-terrabytes of disk attached to it. Now, if the Terascale facility were built of a cluster of 1100 E10Ks - THAT would be power hungry!
There are some who do preserve old hardware and software. My current collection consists of (all working) a PDP-8/E, PDP-11/24, PDP-11/83, HP 9000/832, DecServer 3000, SparcClassic, and a C-64. I can read everything from papertape to DVDs, including both 10 track (DecTape) and 9 track tapes.
I have personally driven almost 3000 miles one way to keep a piece of vintage hardware from ending it's life on the scrap heap.
I think the biggest losses, howver, have been in documentation. People will tend to hang on to disks and hardware a lot longer than they will keep manuals.
People would not believe how much of the old software, documentation, and hardware has already been lost. That is why a few people spend a great deal of their personal funds and time trying to preserve as much as possible.
I also have this license, plus the original CD's that came with it. I plan to use them to test how "Bulletproof" SCO's O/S is. Bulletproof as in 30-06 or 7.62mm bullets.
This is by no means a new or unique project. PDP-8s have been cloned using various chips for years. There is the SBC-6120, the PDP-8/X and many others.
Of course, none of these are as much fun as the real PDP-8/E and PDP-11 I have in my basement.
I seem to remember a reactivity rate componant in the Startup Rate equation I was taught in Nuke School. I'd enter the equation here, but then I'd have to kill you....
From the time I was 6 until I was 11 (1969 to 1974) I lived on an army base with a reactor. The reactor was the SM-1A reactor at Ft. Greely, Alaska. This plant provided power and heating for the base and was also used for 'research' purposes. The plant was basically a navy design, and, as I recall, The Master Chief who lived next door to us was very involved in its operation. I eventually grew up to become a Navy Nuke myself and was stationed on both a Ballistic Missle Sub and a Fast Attack Sub.
Here is a picture of Will Crowther's Adventure running under RT-11 on my PDP-11/24.
Whoops. It looks like tentec's web server is case sensitive. The correct URL for the schematics and programmers guide is http://www.tentec.com/RX320FTP/htm
TenTec has had a similar product out for quite awhile. The RX-320 has been out for a couple of years, and (IMHO) is a much better solution. The RX-320 is an external general coverage receiver that is completely DSP based. I've had one of these for a couple of years and love it. TenTec even publishes a complete "programmer's guide and schematic" on their website, which includes the entire spec for controlling the radio. Using this spec, I've written control programs in C, PHP, PDP-8 assembler, and am now working on one in PDP-11 assembler.
The RX-320 is encased in a steel box and seems to be fairly impervious to RF interference, at least in my environment. It also doesn't take up a slot inside the pc which could be used for other things.
I can think of several great products released by Borland over the years - Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, and Turbo Basic to name a few of them. There was a time when Borland's products were the "compiler of choice" for most developers, especially in the CP/M and early MS-Dos days. For the longest time, Borlands Debugger (TDebug) was shipped with Microsoft's C compilers.
I have an ancient PDP-8 that I would say is very secure. The only input devices are front panel switches, a current loop driven teletype, and a paper tape reader. Storage (even the 2 MegaWord disk packs) is all removable. You have to toggle in the proper boot code (via the switches) to load anything, so it is not something your average script kiddie would be able to do. I do have some serial boards that I will (some day) connect to a linux box for remote access.
When radio first started being used, it was not regulated. Anyone could use any frequency they wanted at any time. The end result was that the radio spectrum became virtually unusable due to massive interference. This was why the ITU was founded, and why the FCC was created. Left to free agents, frequency wavebands have been proven to settle into utter chaos. Read up on a little RF history, before you decide to repeat failed experiments.
It is highly likely that this is due not to the Ham, but to cheaply made consumer equipment. Most modern televisions, radios, stereos, etc. are not properly shielded against interference.
For example, I heavily filter my Ham station with a low pass filter directly at the antenna feed point. I have also installed high pass filters on the antenna inputs of all the Televisions in my house. I've verified with a spectrum analyzer that the station does not emit any spurs or harmonics above 30 Mhz. Despite this, I still have one television that gets interference when I am transmitting.
If the television interference is determined to actually be coming in on the cable, then you should contact the cable company. They probably have technical problems in their system.
Your friend should contact the Ham directly (if they have not done so already) and ask him if he can recommend any filtering devices for their equipment. If he is like most hams, he will be glad to help.
They should also contact the manufacturer and get their recommendations.
One furthur note: Due to poor manufacturing quality and design, most Consumer goods are provided almost no protection against interference by the FCC.
The 160M band runs from 1.8 Mhz to 2Mhz. The AM Broadcast band runs from 535Khz to 1705Khz, with the spectrum from 1605Khz to 1705Khz shared with radiolocation beacons. In the 3Ghz to 6Ghz band lies a wealth of services, including Amateur, Radiolocation, Satellite, and Space Research.
In my opinion, the DEC PDP-8 was the "Model-T" of the computer industry. It was essentially the first computer you could actually buy, instead of having to lease. At an entry level cost of around US$ 18,000 it was easily affordable by most businesses and universities who needed a computer. There were enough of them made that a lot of third parties developed add-ons. Also, there are still a few PDP-8's running production applications as controllers for manufacturing machinery.
In the past we did not have those little logos. They are a recent (within the past 10 years) development. In the past, we would have to 'pause for station identification' every so often. In the past the station would list all their FCC callsigns and frequencies at signoff each night (Between the national anthem and the indian head). No, the logo's don't bother me too much, unless they are obscuring something on skinemax.
Uhm, Sting was with the Police. Mark Knopfler was the lead for Dire Straights.
Not really, considering the Radar systems that 'paint' these aircraft every few seconds are MUCH more powerfull than the Puny amateur transmitters.
While Meteor Scatter is an interesting mode, I think that Airplane Scanner is even more interesting. Recently Hams have been bouncing Signals in the 10Ghz range off the metal skins of high flying Aircraft. Communication ranges of up to 500 miles have been recorded. A recent (last few months) article in QST had the details...
I'm really pleased with the Dodge Durango I own. Euro and Jap cars are just too damn small! By the time you load in all the stuff you need for a one week camping trip, there's no room left for the people. And look at the Mercedes series of SUV's. Talk about Fugly!
"That being true, quantum computers could obsolete the silicon chip much as the transistor did the vacuum tube" - Not exactly true, as Vacuum Tubes are still used in many applications, including X-Ray machines, high power radio frequency and audio amplifiers, your television set, etc. Even the light bulbs (both incandescent and flourescent) in your home are a form of vacuum tube.
My God! Is the 1802 still being made? My very first computer was a bread-boarded device using the 1802 and 256 bytes of RAM. This, of course, was way back in '77.
Marconi invented his 'spark gap' transmitter in December of 1894 and did not patent it until February of 1896. He used it from his home as an amateur for over a year before he started making money off of it.
I guess I could ask the same question - could we have our spectrum back? Radio technology was invented by Amateurs, not commercial interests. For almost a century now amateur radio has been losing bandwidth at an ever increasing rate. I can name the 11 meter band and portions of the 1.25 meter band to start with. Also, Austrailian Amateurs will probably soon lose the very portion of the 70cm band that the Oscar satellites use. All due to the greed of big business, who would rather use existing (amateur developed) technology than develop their own stuff that would use the existing non-used portions of the radio spectrum. Amateur radio is not just for allowing "a hobbiest the chance to chat to a person they don't know in Australia", it also serves a vital purpose during emergencies such as hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. As a general rule, the public infrastructure such as telephones and cellphones, do not do well during natural disasters. In these cases, ham radio operators have been, and will continue to be, called on to provide vital communications with the rest of the country and the world. In addition, Amateur Radio is the ONLY form of communications available to many people in the world who are in areas considered 'too remote' by the local telcos.