IBM 610 workstation computer 3440

On Sat, 04 Mar 06 14:32:22 GMT

It wasn't a problem with the setup I first did it on - which was basically a data collection and analysis system. That was old enough that we strung dual 10Mbit ethernet between all the boxes. That system spent ~three months in a mode where tapes (yes reel ones, also QIC ones and even some floppy discs) were loaded into the drives and the data sucked off them and spread around the cluster (it was duplicated as soon as we got it off the tape). The rest of the year it generated reports on the data it had sucked.

AIUI (but I've never worked on one) it's not a problem on the CPU intensive render farms used to make movies these days either. Nor does it seem to be a problem to the big web search vendors Yahoo and Google who both use mbuttive arrays of PCs.

See first example - all we had to do was make sure the network had more bandwidth than we needed and was sufficiently robust.

At least on the system that I was involved in designing they were all in service all the time. The performance of the whole system would degrade if one box died (partly because there was one less box and partly because the rest of them started finding new homes for the copies of the data that used ot be on the dead box and making new copies).

Yes indeed - having surplus gear sitting on a shelf waiting to be used is probably a good way of ensuring that it won't work when called upon because it gives Murphy a great chance to sink his teeth in.

-- The computer obeys and wins. A better way to focus the sun You lose and Bill collects. licences available see