[HECnet] [Simh] Pi VAX Cluster

[Dave McGuire]

  Yes it was.   I had several of them, and I had fun with them.   Until I
learned of the 21066's performance issues and UDB design's thermal
problems, I had high hopes of replacing half of our datacenter
(thousands of machines) with these little boxen.

  Fortunately I was able to take one or two home after we decided not to
do that. :)   I never ran VMS on them, but I did run Digital Unix, which
worked well.   I later tried Linux, but in those days, on Alphas, half of
the processor cycles were spent in the alignment fixup trap handler, so
even waiting for keystroke echo was painful...not a good sign for a
processor clocked at 166MHz or 233MHz!   I went back to Digital Unix in a
hurry!

                        -Dave

On 06/16/2012 03:46 PM, Kari Uusim  ki wrote:

I agree absolutely. It was a good beginning though.

Kari




On 16.6.2012 21:33, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 06/16/2012 02:31 PM, Kari Uusim  ki wrote:
Unfortunately the Multia was way too early for the customers. Nobody
seemed to understand the the point with a minimal design.
A few years later it would have been a real success.

    Well...a few years later, with better cooling, and with something
other than the 21066 as its CPU.   That chip had a memory controller
designed by the "NEW GUY!" and it was slower than pissing tar.   The
21064's memory bandiwdth is far superior.

                          -Dave





-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA