Old vs New cpu's

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nairb

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Message 1105065 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 2:09:11 UTC

My trusty old pentium 100 completed a w/u in 1,983,296.00 seconds (cpu time) for its massive 138.55 credits.
The other machine which also did this w/u had a cpu time of 52.95 seconds - a tad faster.
They landed on the moon with less power than a pentium 100. So what has been done with all this extra processing power?.

Well lots I'm sure.

Anyway ..... shame I cannot get boinc to run on my window 1 machine with its cyrix fastmath co-processor.

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Message 1105165 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 13:51:00 UTC - in response to Message 1105065.  
Last modified: 11 May 2011, 14:43:20 UTC

My trusty old Pentium 100 completed a w/u in 1,983,296.00 seconds (cpu time) for its massive 138.55 credits.
The other machine which also did this w/u had a cpu time of 52.95 seconds - a tad faster.

Obviously this 52.95 seconds CPU time task is done on GPU (and real "Run time"/"Elapsed" was ~1000-2000 seconds, very small part to prepare the data to be send to GPU is using the CPU)
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=1882574000

The fastest CPUs today using optimized apps can do SETI tasks in ~4000-5000 CPU-seconds:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=1882840467


Anyway ..... shame I cannot get boinc to run on my window 1 machine with its Cyrix FasMath co-processor.

You are kidding about that ;)
Despite the Cyrix FasMath was faster than Intel 387 @ 33-40 MHz it will be unable to finish SETI task in time to meet the deadline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrix




My first home computer in ~1994 was with Cyrix 486DLC @ 33 MHz ( ;) overclocked to 40 MHz) + 4 MB RAM ( ;) upgraded to 8 MB for AutoCAD 12 for DOS)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/486DLC




I still keep the motherboard + CPU + IIT 3C87-40 FPU hanged on the wall to remind me of "good old days" ;)
http://www.cpu-collection.de/?l0=co&l1=IIT&l2=FPU#3C87-40




 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 
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Message 1105168 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 14:21:21 UTC - in response to Message 1105165.  

Despite the Cyrix FasMath was faster than Intel 387 @ 33-40 MHz it will be unable to finish SETI task in time to meet the deadline.


Deadlines are artificially low. We could always extend the deadlines! ;)
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Mike Sebrey

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Message 1105171 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 14:56:20 UTC

My Intel Macs do more in one day than my PPC (601 - 604) machines did in 6 years.

There is a huge difference in how the code runs on Intel chips. The PPC versions were painfully slow.
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Message 1105176 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 15:09:05 UTC

i remember an article in "Sky and Telescope"
that said the new 386 was just as powerful as
a cray supercomputer of three years before...

i still have a 286 buried somewhere.



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Message 1105185 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 15:23:47 UTC - in response to Message 1105176.  

i still have a 286 buried somewhere.


I still have mine! And I added an Intel 80287 copro to it, running at a blinding 12MHz! I think it's running MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.0 on a whopping 130MB hard drive.
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Profile Paul D Harris
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Message 1105187 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 15:29:42 UTC

My first computer was a Texas Instrument. It didn't have a hard drive it used a cassette recorder. It didn't use a monitor it used my TV. I had to write my own programs in BASIC. The year was 1982.
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Message 1105192 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 15:40:00 UTC - in response to Message 1105188.  

and Windows 3.0


Cut my teeth om Wndows 286 through to Windows for Workgroups 3.11. MSDOS 5 was the best though.


DR DOS was much better.



With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.
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Message 1105195 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 15:42:15 UTC - in response to Message 1105188.  

and Windows 3.0


Cut my teeth om Wndows 286 through to Windows for Workgroups 3.11. MSDOS 5 was the best though.


I rather liked the DEFRAG utility included with DOS 6.0 and the Scandisk utility included with MS-DOS 6.2 and later. HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE seemed to be optimized for UMB/HMA use in DOS 6 as well.

Other than that, there wasn't too many important differences between DOS 5 and 6.
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Message 1105216 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 16:08:43 UTC - in response to Message 1105192.  

and Windows 3.0


Cut my teeth om Wndows 286 through to Windows for Workgroups 3.11. MSDOS 5 was the best though.


DR DOS was much better.


I never got a chance to play with DR DOS until Caldera gave it away for free, originally as Caldera OpenDOS 7.01, then as DR DOS 7.02 and DR DOS 7.03.

It was fun to play with, and they had some interesting enhancements that IBM (PC DOS) and Microsoft (MS-DOS) didn't have, but nothing that was a "must have" to switch. Still fun to play with nonetheless.
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Message 1105230 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 17:09:20 UTC

I started using a C-64 but it was my brothers, The first one I bought was a 286 that ran at a blazing 12mhz and had a 18 Mbyte HD.DOS 3.2 I think, maybe 3.3, I remember after setting it all up and using it for a while it crashed and displayed the message " Fatal Error ", My first thoughts were "Oh no I've killed it",I remember feeling great fear as I powered it down and then back on that it would not restart and that it was truly dead. Ah the memory's, the cryptic dos messages, the needing to reboot after every program ran cause even if it didn't crash when you exited one program the next probably would crash it when launched.
at least we still have the cryptic messages
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Message 1105247 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 18:20:06 UTC

Don't have my old copies of DOS, but do have 6.22, COA and WFWG disks:
Old MS disks

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Message 1105259 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 19:57:43 UTC - in response to Message 1105165.  
Last modified: 11 May 2011, 20:13:52 UTC


I simply forgot - my first home computer was with IIRC Siemens 8086 (or 8088 ?) 4.77 MHz CPU, 640 KB RAM, HDD 20 MB, 5" floppy, DOS 3.30
(but I leaved this computer in another town and it was probably thrown in junk)
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/8086/MANUF-Siemens.html





It was Bulgarian made ;)
(very bad and unstable - many capacitors "saved" in factory,
very bad monitor - "Black and White" (Green phosphor) flicker all the time - cold soldering)

The brand-name was Pravetz-16

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravetz_computers
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=615
http://www.pravetz.info/en/pravetz-16.html





" Pravets (Bulgarian: Правец, also transliterated as Pravetz or Pravec) is a town in central western Bulgaria, located approximately 60 km from the capital Sofia.
Bulgarians associate the town with its (now closed) computer manufacturing plant and with the birthplace of Bulgaria's last communist dictator, Todor Zhivkov."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravetz


(Earlier I worked on (not mine but at university) Apple II+ using 1 MHz 8-bit 6502 CPU (BASIC, 6502 Assembler), and on Mainframes (Bulgarian made) similar to IBM 360 (Fortran compiler))


 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 
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nairb

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Message 1105261 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 20:23:09 UTC

Once these old cpus were kings. Then thrown away as scrap. Along with the rest of the kit - including software and winchester hard drives.

I still find it amusing to get one of these old motherboards setup and running. Often needing an ISA disk controller card etc. I have several 80286 machines with their 20 meg hard disks running CDOS or win 1/2/3/3.11. All pretty useless today.
And a machine that takes a month to do a w/u is a waste of electricity. But having said that I started up the Dual socket 7 machine. With its two P75 cpus it will race thru 2 w/u in a month.

I guess in the future boinc will evolve so that these machines will be useless too. Along with the pentium 60 machine as well. Its not much of a loss. But progress seems to leave a heap of useless rubbish behind it.

Good old dos 6.22, compaired with dos 2 or 3 it was a huge leap forward. Well a step anyway

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Message 1105271 - Posted: 11 May 2011, 20:56:49 UTC

You make me wish I'd kept my 486DX2/66 that all of a sudden one day (only a few years ago) said: ok not going to boot up to the lo-level splash screen no more.

Compared to some of the machines mentioned above it would have been like quadGTX590s...

Mmm quad GTX590s...
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Message 1105510 - Posted: 12 May 2011, 19:07:54 UTC
Last modified: 12 May 2011, 19:10:05 UTC

My second computer was a Tandy it had only a 5.25 inch floppy and no hard drive and 2 speeds slow 4 megahertz and fast 8 megahertz . It was my fathers and he gave it to me when he got his windows 95 custom built. It was a late 80's model.
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Message 1105520 - Posted: 12 May 2011, 19:51:06 UTC

Yes, those old graphics cards. The VESA Local Bus cards or VLB cards are just great for the size of the things. I still have a few of them and the m/b's they go in. Oh and the Hercules compatible cards too. I have 3 RM Nimbus machines which need their own monitors as well. Nothing standard with them.

And those old m/b's which had a turbo button. Supose you dont need one on a quad core cpu. Nor do we need 5.25 inch drives either. Which is all good news.

The latest fastest kit is always the best...... But I still like the old socket 8 cpus. Huge, weight a ton and covered in gold - except the 1meg l2 versions which seem to be black (Mine are anyway).

One use for the old socket 3 cpus is to run Screen Antics Johnny Castaway screensaver - I dont think seti runs in 8 meg ram

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Message 1105524 - Posted: 12 May 2011, 20:01:19 UTC

After almost 12 years I'm still running my first cruncher.

1995 – Micron Millennia Mxe
200MHz Pentium MMx P55 128MB UW2SCSI
Processor: 1 Intel x86 Family 5 Model 4 Stepping 4 199MHz
Processor features: fpu tsc mmx
OS: Windows XP: Professional x86 Edition, Service Pack 2, (05.01.2600.00)
Memory: 127.55 MB physical, 507.49 MB virtual

With the rise of electrical cost$ and being a pensioner now I have had to back off a little with crunching on my older computers. Cost is too much. RAC of 20 at $100US a year for this puppy.

At the 12 year mark it will be interesting to see who all is still running the old crunchers.
...
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Message 1105531 - Posted: 12 May 2011, 20:33:39 UTC - in response to Message 1105524.  

I still have a Pentium II @ 300MHz with Window for Workgroups(3.11).
The most stable version of Windows 3.x, IMO.
But it still works, a bit slow, internet is faster as HDD :)


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Message 1105557 - Posted: 12 May 2011, 22:17:46 UTC


:)
Don't you think this thread becomes "A Gathering of Old Men"
to chat about "Good Ol' Days"?

;)


 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 
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