HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: shabbir@royalty.mti.sgi.com (Shabbir Latif)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Low-power R4000 ???
Date: 23 Dec 92 20:55:26 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: royalty.mti.sgi.com

It is going on at MIPS and on schedule.

shabbir
-- 
***********************************************************************
Shabbir Latif
Technology Product Group
Phone: (415) 390-4433; email: shabbir@mti.sgi.com
Mips Technology Inc. (subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, Inc.)
***********************************************************************
Newsgroups: comp.arch
From: jan@pallas.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de (Jan Vorbrueggen)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: <None> (Should be Open Systems, bloody NEWS system...)
Date: 22 Dec 92 13:15:34 GMT
	<BzIx0C.C6G@dscomsa.desy.de> <id.GL0W.ED9@ferranti.com>
Organization: Inst. f. Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, FRG
In-reply-to: peter@ferranti.com's message of 21 Dec 92 21:42:13 GMT

In article <id.GL0W.ED9@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
writes:

   In general, user friendliness requires detailed control over every aspect
   of the user interface (as any Apple developer about that!).

Not quite. While being able to tailor your environment to your needs is
important, it's much more important that things are consistent across
applications, intuitive in the sense that you don't need more than two or
three tries to find out how to do what you intend to do, and easy to memorize
(which, of course, is much easier if things are consistent). In some cases,
_reducing_ the options for the programmer while offering easy access to
standard funtions (eg, editor subwindows or flexible filename handling), is
necessary in order to achieve this. For a windowed environment, NeXTstep and
the Mac are the best I know of; for a commandline environment (still useful
in many cases), I don't know of anything easier to use than VMS/DCL.

   Open systems require conformance to externally defined standards and
   interoperability with software you've never had a chance to spec. It's VERY
   hard to get the two together, which is why so many people are excited about
   the NeXT.

I think people are excited about the NeXT because it fits the bill I gave
above...When first introduced, the machine was anything but inter operable
(optical disk, not all SCSI disks talk to it, nonstandard window system with
nonstandard monitors, no power switch :)). But all applications have a
consistent, easytouse and intuitive interface, and things like the interface
builder make it easy for third party products to fit in.

	Jan
Xref: sparky comp.arch:11956 comp.sys.intel:2843
From: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.sys.intel
Subject: Re: Superscalar vs. multiple CPUs ?
Date: 27 Dec 92 20:32:03 GMT
	<1992Dec21.134531.3253@athena.mit.edu> <2121@coyote.UUCP>
	<1992Dec23.025403.21926@athena.mit.edu>
Reply-To: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Organization: Prifysgol Cymru, Aberystwyth

On 23 Dec 92 02:54:03 GMT, solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky) said:

solman> What I am trying to say is that when a task which has been
solman> non-cpu bound, is modified such that it becomes cpu-bound, the
solman> modifications invloved are typically excellent candidates for
solman> parallelization. Thus it still holds that "general purpose"
solman> computing can support the degree of parallelization available to
solman> a deep pipelined "hyperscalar" uP.

This is hopeful speculation.  Especially for the "deep pipelined" part.
Deep pipelines are nasty to exploit across basic blocks, not to say
across threads.

On the other hand, as you seem to argue, many current applications are
under-threaded, mostly because of the cost of threading under many
current OSes.

Still even many common applications can be broken in multiple threads
without much restructuring, and some people do it by hand; for example
recalculating a spreadsheet may be broken in as many threads are there
are independent clusters in the dependency graph between cells, and so
on recursively. Reformatting a document can be broken in as many threads
as there are independent sections, or manually imposed page boundaries.

I even remember that people at a french University (Poitiers?) had built
an Algol 68 compiler that used threads/futures to handle forward
references. I must confess that seeing that paper it had come into my
mind that one could just launch into a dataflow CPU a thread per each
syntactic phrase being parsed, and just let the CPU sort out all the
dependencies ensuring maximum parallel speedup, and I was conforted to
see Hewitt's parallel actors and garbage collection of processes ideas.

But then I started thinking of the likely cost/benefit ratio, and
repented.

The numbers I have seen so far seem to point out that on average
(some/many spreadsheets are poorly clustered, some/many documents have
no sections, in some/many compilations all statements depend critically
on the previous one...) the exploitable degree of parallelism is not
that great for most general purpose applications.

Of course one could claim that an as yet undiscovered architectural
solution will change everything; somebody once remarked, only half
jokingly, in this very newsgroup, that in twenty years time we will boot
ourselves in our massively parallel neural net engines, instead of
booting up our workstations, as we start our workday.
--
Piercarlo Grandi, Dept of CS, PC/UW@Aberystwyth <pcg@aber.ac.uk>
  E l'italiano cantava, cantava. E le sue disperate invocazioni giunsero
  alle orecchie del suo divino protettore, il dio della barzelletta
From: stripes@pix.com (Josh Osborne)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Any new instructions in a i486?
Date: 21 Dec 92 17:42:18 GMT
Organization: Pix Technologies -- The company with no adult supervision

In article <PCG.92Dec19162224@decb.aber.ac.uk> pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
[...]
>No, this cannot be the reason. As a rule the Cyrix 486DLC CPU chip is
>sold with the Cyrix Fasmath (a 387) coprocessor, the combo being touted
>quite reasonably as a 486DX equivalent.

I don't think this is the case (but I would love to be wrong...).  I beleve
the #clocks each insn takes is more like the 386, then the i486.  I know the
i486 takes 1 cycle to add 2 registers, I think the i386 takes 3, and I think
the cy486 does also.  The cy486 _does_ multiply quite fast 'tho, I think faster
then the i486.
-- 
           stripes@pix.com              "Security for Unix is like
      Josh_Osborne@Real_World,The          Multitasking for MS-DOS"
      "The dyslexic porgramer"                  - Kevin Lockwood
We all agree on the necessity of compromise.  We just can't agree on
when it's necessary to compromise.       - Larry Wall
Newsgroups: comp.arch
From: sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu (Doug Mohney)
Subject: Re: Any new instructions in a i486?
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 18:50:56 GMT
Organization: Computer Aided Design Lab, U. of Maryland College Park
Reply-To: sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu

In article <1992Dec22.043040.28363@adobe.com>, zstern@adobe.com (Zalman Stern) writes:

>Its almost certainly true that NeXT has Pentium hardware in house and is  
>working closely with Intel. I doubt they signed a contract boycotting Cyrix  
>though. Having such agreements in writing looks bad during Federal Trade  
>Commission investigations if you know what I mean...

I think it's fair to say NeXT has limited resources, and they probably just
chose to take the path of least resistance by supporting the "mainstream"
hardware.

It would be more embarassing to claim NeXTStep runs on Cyrix hardware only to
discover, after extensive real-world testing, it doesn't work under certain
types of motherboard configurations, etc. etc...


                    I have talked to Ehud, and lived.
  -- >                  SYSMGR@CADLAB.ENG.UMD.EDU                        < --
Newsgroups: comp.arch.storage,comp.sys.sun.hardware
From: mrapple@quack.sac.ca.us (Nick Sayer)
Subject: IOmega 21MB Flopticals & sun4c
Followups-To: comp.arch.storage
Organization: The Duck Pond public unix: +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'.
Date: 25 Dec 1992 21:52:46 UTC

Just saw an add in the (SF) Chronicle about 21MB Flopticals.
I (naturally) have a couple questions that I rather doubt the
fine people at Fry's (Electronics) could answer:

1. What interface flavors are available? More to the point, do they
have a SCSI version?

2. Do they "act" like floppies or hard disks in real usage? If they
act like hard disks, does anyone have a format.dat entry for them
and can the SunOS format command do the right thing? If they act
like floppies, does anyone have a SunOS driver for them yet?

3. Do they handle the other 3.5" formats as well?

4. Have anyone priced out the disks yet? I am hoping that they will
price out like other removable media -- that is, $1/MB, or about
$20 a piece.

Thanks in advance, and if this has already been talked to death
here or elsewhere, I appologise in advance, but my news spool
is short-lived.

-- 
Nick Sayer <mrapple@quack.sac.ca.us> | "Don't try this at home, kids. This
N6QQQ @ N0ARY.#NOCAL.CA.USA.NOAM     | should only be done by trained, pro-
+1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'   | fessional idiots."
PGP 2.1 public key on request        |                     -- Plucky Duck
Newsgroups: comp.arch.storage
From: shall@obiwan.nosc.mil (Scott R. Hall)
Subject: HD problem
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, CA
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 22:24:57 GMT

Hello, I have a problem with either my system or my SCSI hard drive and I  
was wondering if someone might be able to help me figure out which it is,  
and what I might be able to do to fix the problem. About 60% of the time  
after I boot, the HD light on the front of my computer will lock up, and  
the system will halt and beep, then display the words;

NO ROM BASIC
SYSTEM HALTED

Eventually, after booting back up a few times, it will boot up fine with  
no problems. It looks to me like I might have a serious problem here. Any  
ideas? Thanks in advance.

Scott
Newsgroups: comp.arch.storage
From: jalsop@seachg.uucp (John Alsop)
Subject: Re: Dual DOS/UNIX tape backup
Reply-To: jalsop@seachg.UUCP (John Alsop)
Organization: Sea Change Corporation, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 17:18:35 GMT

In article <9212150715.AA13753@forte.shc.uiowa.edu> zubla@shc.uiowa.edu (Samuel Spade) writes:
>
>    I am looking for a backup system that will work for a dual boot DOS/UNIX
>i486 pc clone.  This is for my home/school computer, so money is a constraint.
> .......................
>Oh, yes - I have been considering switching/adding SCSI.  One of my systems
>friends says that this will not help my tape backup problem.  He stated that,
>sure, SCSI is supposed to be able to handle 7 devices, but that almost every
>manufacturer implements SCSI in a slightly different way.  So I should not
>think that I will automatically end up with a controller that will drive a
>HD and a tape drive.  In any case, SCSI is not a driving factor in my decision
>making process - it is just another option.  (Obviously I need more space
>for UNIX.  I'm just trying to decide if I should make my next HD a SCSI - if
>I can stand the financial pain).
>
>    I would like some advice on brands to look for.  Also any advice or
>comments you care to share.  I'm lost without your help.  Thanks!

I humbly suggest that you take a look at our SCSI Navigator product.  It
works with Adaptec SCSI controllers, and lets you backup both DOS and UNIX
partitions to a SCSI tape drive. Also provides many other functions too
numerous to mention.

Send e-mail for more information.

--------
-- 
John Alsop

Sea Change Corporation
6695 Millcreek Drive, Unit 8
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5N 5R8
Tel: 416-542-9484 Fax: 416-542-9479
UUCP: ...!uunet!uunet.ca!seachg!jalsop  jalsop@seachg.com
Newsgroups: comp.arch.storage
From: jalsop@seachg.uucp (John Alsop)
Subject: Re: Dual DOS/UNIX tape backup
Reply-To: jalsop@seachg.UUCP (John Alsop)
Organization: Sea Change Corporation, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 16:59:54 GMT

In article <9212150715.AA13753@forte.shc.uiowa.edu> zubla@shc.uiowa.edu (Samuel Spade) writes:
>
>    I am looking for a backup system that will work for a dual boot DOS/UNIX
>i486 pc clone.  This is for my home/school computer, so money is a constraint.
> .......................
>Oh, yes - I have been considering switching/adding SCSI.  One of my systems
>friends says that this will not help my tape backup problem.  He stated that,
>sure, SCSI is supposed to be able to handle 7 devices, but that almost every
>manufacturer implements SCSI in a slightly different way.  So I should not
>think that I will automatically end up with a controller that will drive a
>HD and a tape drive.  In any case, SCSI is not a driving factor in my decision
>making process - it is just another option.  (Obviously I need more space
>for UNIX.  I'm just trying to decide if I should make my next HD a SCSI - if
>I can stand the financial pain).
>
>    I would like some advice on brands to look for.  Also any advice or
>comments you care to share.  I'm lost without your help.  Thanks!

I humbly suggest that you take a look at our SCSI Navigator product.  It
works with Adaptec SCSI controllers, and lets you backup both DOS and UNIX
partitions to a SCSI tape drive. Also provides many other functions too
numerous to mention.

Send e-mail for more information.

--------
John Alsop

Sea Change Corporation
6695 Millcreek Drive, Unit 8
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5N 5R8
Tel: 416-542-9484 Fax: 416-542-9479
UUCP: ...!uunet!uunet.ca!seachg!jalsop  jalsop@seachg.com
-- 
John Alsop

Sea Change Corporation
6695 Millcreek Drive, Unit 8
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5N 5R8
Tel: 416-542-9484 Fax: 416-542-9479
UUCP: ...!uunet!uunet.ca!seachg!jalsop  jalsop@seachg.com
Newsgroups: comp.arch.storage
From: kdlin@advtech.uswest.com (David Lin)
Subject: Internet Multimedia Archive Info Wanted
Organization: U S WEST Advanced Technologies
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 17:34:42 GMT

Happy holidays.

I'm doing a preliminary survey on the archive sites of Internet/USENET. 
I'll really appreciate it if anyone can point me to where those sites
are located. Basically, I'm looking for multimedia resources archives
such as images, quicktime movies, sounds, text, MPEG, JPEG, DVI movies,
etc. Any multimedia related items will work too.

Please send e-mail to me at: kdlin@advtech.uswest.com.

Thanks in advance.

David

-- 
 K. David Lin, Ph.D.              | IEEE Member, NRA Member, HAM Operator
 Communication Services Research  | U S WEST Life Safety Team
 U S WEST Advanced Technologies   | Defend your life in STEREO - Beretta & SIG 
 E-mail: kdlin@advtech.uswest.com | Disclaimer: Only personal opinions
Newsgroups: comp.arch.storage,comp.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
From: Jack.Smoke@launchpad.unc.edu (Jack Smoke)
Subject: Have I done smoeomething stupid?
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 15:40:35 GMT

I recently purchased a TEAC FD-505 dual disk drive for my home system.
When it arrived, I pulled the old drive out, popped the new one in,
and fired up the box.
	The drive didn't work.  I got seek errors on both drives,
and the BIOS didn't seem to recognize it as two seperate drives.
	The drive came with one (1) page of documentation - 
a chart of jumper configurations.  I pulled the drive back out,
fiddled with the jumpers, plugged it back in.
No good.
	I called the Tech Support at TEAC.  On my third try
at making a long distance call to them, I finally got to talk to 
a human.  (Their answering machine cut me off twice.)
	He said it sounded like a fault in between the boards,
and to send it back (At my expense.)
	I did.
	Then I had a terifying thought.
	My system at home is a PC-XT.  The jumper shhet says 
"When connecting the duel FDD using a PC/AT host interface cable...."

	The cable and power supply plugs both fit the board edge
perfectly, which is why I didn't think of this before.
	Is there a way to convert this drive to an XT interface?
am I screwed?  Did I spend $140 for a drive I can't use?

	Responses by E-mail would be prefered.

--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
Newsgroups: comp.arch.storage
From: cassidy@esd55.enet.dec.com (Charlie Cassidy)
Subject: Re: Query: Solid State SCSI Systems 
Reply-To: cassidy@memory.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 14:51:45 GMT


In article <1992Dec17.035909.1127@ksmith.uucp>, keith@ksmith.uucp (Keith
Smith) writes:
|>Hmm, With a screamer Mag disk running around $2-3 a meg and this guy
|>maybe around $50-100 your application is gonna really have to demand Ultra
|>High speed disk memory to use it...  Of course with the way memory
|>prices go pricing could drop,  Also with cheap CPU's capable of addressing
|>Gigs now, and Terabytes in the near future, I'm not sure of the
|>viability of this technology,  Would seem more prudent to stuff the RAM
|>on the BUS (or BUSes) directly.  I dunno.
|>-- 
|>Keith Smith          uunet!ksmith!keith            5719 Archer Rd.
|>Digital Designs      BBS 1-919-423-4216            Hope Mills, NC
|>28348-2201
|>Somewhere in the Styx of North Carolina ...
|>

For our SDI and DSSI solid state disks, most of the usage has been where
the disk access paradigm and the nonvolatility of SSD is important. 
Most of the systems have been transaction processing systems of one sort
or another.  Examples include financial trading, order entry and
inventory control, and telecommunications (700, 800 and 900
translation).

Another thing that these have in common is that they justified the expense of 
SSD based on the business result (more financial trades = more $$$) rather than
the price/performance comparison to magnetic disk.

If the application supports putting the data in main memory (or you have a 
RAMdisk driver available), and the volatility of main memory is not a problem,
by all means main memory is a higher performance solution.  

--
==============================================================================
"Good things can happen, and frequently do, to people as brainy and footsy
as you." - Dr. Seuss
==============================================================================
Charlie Cassidy                        Internet: cassidy@memory.enet.dec.com
Digital Equipment Corporation          Amateur Radio: charlie@n1hlr.ampr.org
SSD Engineering - SHR1-4/O11
333 South Street                       This posting reflects the opinion of 
Shrewsbury, MA 01545                   the author, not Digital Equipment Corp
==============================================================================
Newsgroups: comp.arch.storage
From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle)
Subject: Re: Inner track transfer rate vs. Outer track transfer rate
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 04:47:28 GMT

martins@TorreyPinesCA.ncr.com (Martin Sandman 3562) writes:
>Two months ago I didn't know about zones on disks that take advantage
>of the greater circumference of the outer zones.  It not only increases
>capacity of a disk but performance as well.  

      Yes, provided you have some kind of high-level drive interface where
true drive layout is hidden from the software, such as IDE or SCSI, this
is a good way to improve drive density.  It's tougher if the operating system's
driver has to deal with all these zones.

      It does create problems for some disk-optimization software,
though, where attempts are made to position files across track boundaries
for optimal reading speed.  Any info on how programs such as the Norton
Utilities deal with this issue?

      There's also the issue that disk drivers which reorder requests
to minimize head movement may not get the results expected.  But then,
with today's physically small drives, head movement time is comparable to
rotational latency, and the old emphasis on minimizing head movement
no longer applies.

					John Nagle
Newsgroups: comp.arch.storage
From: martins@TorreyPinesCA.ncr.com (Martin Sandman 3562)
Subject: Re: Inner track transfer rate vs. Outer track transfer rate
Summary: Outer is Faster
Organization: NCR (Torrey Pines Development Center)
Disclaimer: This posting does not necessarily reflect the opinions of NCR.
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 92 21:46:57 GMT


cyf@sequent.com (Cyrus Foughty) writes:

>I have heard two theories about one element that affects disk transfer
>rate. Help me disect these and find which is true and which is false.
>Of course I feel that there will be some cases where both are true and
>both are false. So, based on that I will tell you that I am dealing 
>with the HP97560 SCSI-2 disk drive.

>Theory 1: 

>A higher transfer rate will result when using the outer tracks. "outer"
>is defined here as "tracks that are the greatest distance from the 
>spindle". I.E., track numbering starting at zero.

>Theory 2:

>A higher transfer rate will result when using the inner tracks.
>"inner" is defined here as "tracks that are the closest to the
>spindle". I.E., track numbering starting at maximum track number and 
>decreasing.

>                       Stuff Deleted

Two months ago I didn't know about zones on disks that take advantage
of the greater circumference of the outer zones.  It not only increases
capacity of a disk but performance as well.  I was using a Seagate Elite
disk to measure SCSI bus performance and found that if I moved to a 
different but equivalent system, I often couldn't duplicate the best
performance I had achieve elsewhere.  I used

	 timex dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s9 of=/dev/null bs=16384 count=1024

and got a bandwidth of about 2.7 MB/second but if I used slice 0, I 
would get about 3.6 MB/second.  Evidently, the way we assign slices,
s0 starts on the outer track and works in.  Slice 9 is in near the
hub.  When the performance seem to be slice-dependent, we went to the
trouble of reading the disk specification.  Seagate calls the technique
"Zone Bit Recording" and trademarks "ZBRtm". The disk is divided into
14 zone where the sectors per track range from 85 on the outside to
61 on the inside.  Zone frequency and bytes/track correspond similarily.

A Seagate document says "Variable Drive Serial Transfer Rate (26 MHz - 
36 MHz) is transparent to host due to buffered interface."  The 
variable transfer rate was not transparent in my test.  We may not 
have tuned the buffer interface.

I don't know about the HP97560, specifically, but I have heard that
some HP disks do something like this but with just three zones, of
76, 88, and 96 sectors per track.

Not a spokesperson for anyone.

-- 
======================================================================
= Martin D. Sandman                                     .........    =
= NCR Torrey Pines                                      ..x......    = 
= 11010 Torreyana Road    martins@TorreyPinesCA.NCR.com ....x....    =
= San Diego, CA 92121     Phone: 619-597-3562           .xx..xxx.    =
= U. S. A.                FAX:   619-597-3501           .........ants=
======================================================================
Xref: sparky comp.arch:11972 comp.parallel:2818
From: array!paran@uunet.UU.NET (Raman Paranjape)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.parallel
Subject: Help with parallel PC (DOS) system
Date: 23 Dec 92 22:37:37 GMT
Organization: Array Systems Computing, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA


I am developing a parallel processing system with a 486 DOS
system as the front end. My application is image processing.
There seem to be a large number of i860 cards around but
my application is not really vector. A super scalar would be
more appropriate. Are there any cards out there which use
any of the following: Motorola M88000, MIPS R4000, TMS320C40
or the AMD29050 processors?
If anyone can provide me with phone numbers or addresses of
manufacturers or users I will be grateful.
Thank you.
Raman Paranjape
Newsgroups: comp.arch