Wow, would love to have a machine like that. The “weird unix” was probably MP-RAS which was NCR’s SysVr4. NCR was selling massive x86 MCA systems for Terradata setups in the early ‘90s.
On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 8:54 AM Chris Zach via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Now in terms of the most MANLY system I worked on, that would be the > NCR3550 we had at the IEEE Computer Society. When I arrived in 1993 it > had been donated, but was doing nothing with 4 486 CPUs in it and a > weird copy of AT&T unix. I took one look at the 256 bit interleaved > memory architecture the 3 levels of cache with affinity, the infinite > amount of space for disks, and the dual micro-channel busses and fell in > *love* > > We talked to NCR, upgraded it to 512mb memory, 8 Pentium Pro/200 CPUs, > and dual Microchannel busses with FDDI and Ethernet interfaces. Loaded > it with disks, installed Windows NT 4.0 on it, and turned it into TALOS, > the main server for the IEEE Computer Society's Digital Library (which I > built). > > Partnered with Anderson and Netscape to multi-thread commerce server > (SSL), built an E-account system in Lotus Domino/Notes, and loaded up > all of our SGML with an SGML to HTML converter (Dynaweb) and a custom > tool that could convert Tek math to GIFs on the fly. That process could > take advantage of all 8 CPUs and render complex math articles in real time. > > Also did e-commerce for awhile with online credit card processing for > memberships and conferences (SuperComputing/95 was the first conference > to do on-line credit cards, I built that too because I was sick and > tired of keying in the cards myself. Laziness is next to godliness) > > It served for years as the CS Digital Library core server with > 30,000-40,000 accounts in active use. Man that thing was a truck, I wish > I knew what had happened to it. > > And to think, it all started with the computer room ceiling collapsing > from all the RS232 cables from the Vax and crushing our Sun Sparc 20 web > server that kicked off this whole thing. > > I should write a book or an article about that. We did so much that was > so... new... and all of that could be forgotten like tears in the rain.... > > CZ > > On 7/16/2020 11:40 AM, Ali via cctalk wrote: > >>> Had a full compliment of memory, > >>> max internal disk on the ATA controller, > >> > >> ATA? That long ago? > >> > >> Possible but unusual in a server, I would have thought. > > > > Funny story about that - I just setup a Systempro XL at home to play > with. It is fully decked out w/ dual processor 50MHZ 486s (not DX2), 512MB > of memory, a 4GB SCSI Boot Drive and six 2GB SCSI drives in RAID 5. The > Compaq systems came standard with what Compaq called the IDA (Intelligent > Drive Array). It was IDE based but did not use standard IDE drives. I think > it could do RAID 0, 1, and 3 (or the equivalents there of). Compaq even had > a few iterations of the controller and cached ones. Interestingly the > Systempro XL had a SCSI 2 controller on the MB mainly used for the tape > dive or CD while the base config came with an IDA 2 controller and could > have up to eight drives. In addition you could install extra IDA > controllers for even more drives or to drive external boxes. Or you could > upgrade to a SCSI array - which is what I have running in my Systempro XL. > > > > > >> > >> What OS, just out of interest? > > > > Target OS was WinNT 3.1 initially and then 4.0. 2K was also supported > but the machine really was not meant for 2k. You could also run OS/2, > Novell Netware, Compaq DOS, and supposedly there was even a version of MS > LanMan (the full server OS not the client) for the Systempro that allowed > SMP. > > > > -Ali > > >
