We had the usual outage today which was mostly a success. The database compressed and was backed up in just over an hour. Normally this takes almost twice as long but the result table has significantly shrunk over the past two weeks (wonder why?). After that we put the new thumper in the closet (we being me, Eric, Jeff, and Kevin - it's a heavy machine). We also rebooted bruno to cleanly pick up a new disk (replacing a failed disk from yesterday). And I rebooted penguin to attach koloth's old tape drive to it (so it could read the classic data tapes for splitting).

That all went well. We also updated all the BOINC-side code to bring the SETI@home project in line with the current BOINC source tree and a few things broke, namely our validators and assimilators. These aren't project critical for the time being, so we're postponing dealing with these until we deal with the real problem at hand: getting people to connect to our data servers.

I think this is the longest outage we've ever had (even though it wasn't a "complete" outage - just no work was available) and we're in a whole new network configuration since the last major outage (new OS, new servers, new ISP, new switches, new router). In short, we're being clobbered by the returning flood of work requests. The major bottleneck is somewhere in the direction of our Hurricane router or bruno. Or at least that's the way it seems right now and there's no guarantee that when we break that dam a new bottleneck won't arise. I don't have the time to spell out what is broken and what we tried and what failed and what yielded unexpected results. Just know we're working on it and we understand most connections are being dropped.

- Matt

Ok, we're both wrong... I just looked at the card that has the 186 on it, and it's a 80186-20... AFAIK, no-one ever used the 186 in a "standard PC-clone" IIRC, the Bull's (at least) weren't completely compatable (first I've heard of the Mistral...) (actual Intel part number... "N80C186XL20 L5512718D © 1978 1982)

On the status side, most is again green. Why don't I still get any contact? Slowly, the patience gets lost.

SSSShhhhh! All is running like clockwork. ...and the graph is pointing upwards again.

Well done to all concerned. At least one customer is happy.

I am not unhappy!. Just curious as to why the "your computers tab" is showing 50 wu's downloaded to my machines, but they don't seem to be there yet.

Perhaps in the true spirit of debugging, I should uninstall "BOINC" and then reinstall "Boinc" Nothing else including patience seems to be working for me as to the mysterious missing downloads>

O. K. I detached from Setiathome, Then reattached to setiathome. Guess what. I got one work unit. I did seem to lose my optimized program though. that can be fixed later.

(blush)
1st PC I ever used was a DEC Rainbow.
It used a 8088 cpu from which the 80186 was descended....

It's too bad that DEC never figured out where to fit into the PC marketplace. They really knew the mini-computer world though.

I wish they did too - I worked for DEC for 9 years in finance, from '84 to '93. At one point they employed nearly 160,000 people, when I left, they were down to 80,000.

I worked for them from 75 to 80.. had a badge number under 30,000. I left them because they kept me on the road and planes all the time and I seldom got to see my kids. It was a great company, but they just didn't ever get the marketing right.

Hey, anyone (other than me) ever see a 186?

Last time I saw 186, I think I was in 6th grade :(

Looks like a 286, only slower than most 286's (they stayed at 8 Mhz)... they were used for dedicated applications. The one I have is on a SCSI card, (SCSI-2, 50 HD pins) no longer in my computer.

SLT/Telenova Compis

Your actually wrong. Intel got pissed at IBM after the 8086PC and wanted someone else to build the nextgen PC. The bid was crazily enough given to the SLT/Telenova in Sweden. They received the 80186 on a you build you get/no else gets kind of a deal. And for four years they developed and had Intel redevelop the 186 so that it had a lot more functionality onboard than it initialy had. Then they all of a sudden decided to sell it to schools only and in the end SLT/Telenova bankcrupted. After that Bull and Mistral built standard PC clones using the 186.
Strange thing is that a lot of the features of the 186 as hyperburst, multilayer cache, on-board memory controllers and stuff was not Intels copyright but SLTs. So that's why there where things on the 186 that was not on the 286, 386 and 486. And in the end Intel had to change the name into Pentium to break the patent so to speak.
Top spead of 186 was actually 16MHz.

Wow, I knew something about computers that Chicken didn't:-)

Carl

Ok, we're both wrong... I just looked at the card that has the 186 on it, and it's a 80186-20... AFAIK, no-one ever used the 186 in a "standard PC-clone" IIRC, the Bull's (at least) weren't completely compatable (first I've heard of the Mistral...) (actual Intel part number... "N80C186XL20 L5512718D © 1978 1982)

As I heard it, Inte£ changed the name to Pentium™, because the US patent office refused to trademark a number! (I.E. 486, or 80486)

Ok, we're both wrong... I just looked at the card that has the 186 on it, and it's a 80186-20... AFAIK, no-one ever used the 186 in a "standard PC-clone" IIRC, the Bull's (at least) weren't completely compatable (first I've heard of the Mistral...) (actual Intel part number... "N80C186XL20 L5512718D © 1978 1982)

The C in the middle of your part number means this was the CMOS part--a completely new design done several years after the depletion NMOS 80186 by an entirely different design team. The double copyright appears to say that it has significant intellectual property from the 80186, and that the design work on it started about four years later.

I don't know how many features were added, but a CMOS implementation had to be a complete new design from top to bottom and the circuit and layout level anyway, so possibly some of the extravagant claims in this thread for feature insertions long after the start are in fact references to the 80C186. I do suspect if the Garmin rumor is true that it is a use of the CMOS version, as power conservation in a hand-held GPS receiver is a strong motivation.

On the subject of optimised apps - can anyone point me in the direction of one for my Mac Pro Intel Xeon?

There’s a sticky thread in the Number Crunching forum: here’s the most recent posting from Alex Kan, with links to the latest optimized apps for Mac.

And not once was there a fond mention of the sinclair spectrum......or the Timex Sinclair 2068.

That was my first computer. I learn'd alot from that. Not just playing games.

And not once was there a fond mention of the sinclair spectrum......or the Timex Sinclair 2068.

That was my first computer. I learn'd alot from that. Not just playing games.

In the end I had to cut out the sides and the backside of my Spectrum so it could sprout out all the flatcables:-) Ah, fond memories of the days when you upgraded by soldering "flatties" straight onto the motherboard. Best upgrade was to install a Z80 co-processor... *Nerdvana*

Carl

And not once was there a fond mention of the sinclair spectrum......or the Timex Sinclair 2068.

That was my first computer. I learn'd alot from that. Not just playing games.

In the end I had to cut out the sides and the backside of my Spectrum so it could sprout out all the flatcables:-) Ah, fond memories of the days when you upgraded by soldering "flatties" straight onto the motherboard. Best upgrade was to install a Z80 co-processor... *Nerdvana*

Carl

Ah, you don't know the power until you stand behind a CPU the size of an upright freezer and start plugging in inch thick cables just to get it to talk to the world. How many remember "core". How many actually saw a core bank with a soldering gun in their hand?

Yes, "Ah, fond memories of the days..." --- Dennis

(blush)
1st PC I ever used was a DEC Rainbow.
It used a 8088 cpu from which the 80186 was descended....

It's too bad that DEC never figured out where to fit into the PC marketplace. They really knew the mini-computer world though.

I wish they did too - I worked for DEC for 9 years in finance, from '84 to '93. At one point they employed nearly 160,000 people, when I left, they were down to 80,000.

I worked for them from 75 to 80.. had a badge number under 30,000. I left them because they kept me on the road and planes all the time and I seldom got to see my kids. It was a great company, but they just didn't ever get the marketing right.

I still remember my badge number, 171xxx. If you can get access to the old personnel data base you can find out who I am, lol. I worked in their Phoenix, Costa Mesa and Pittsburg offices. It was a good time gone bad.

So! is this my pc, or me being a nod? or is it STILL the server problem??...

Fri 18 May 20:27:39 2007|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
Fri 18 May 20:27:39 2007|SETI@home|Reason: To fetch work
Fri 18 May 20:27:39 2007|SETI@home|Requesting 172800 seconds of new work
[color=red]Fri 18 May 20:29:04 2007|SETI@home|Scheduler request failed: HTTP internal server error[/color]
Fri 18 May 20:29:04 2007|SETI@home|Deferring scheduler requests for 1 minutes and 0 seconds
Fri 18 May 20:30:05 2007|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
Fri 18 May 20:30:05 2007|SETI@home|Reason: To fetch work
Fri 18 May 20:30:05 2007|SETI@home|Requesting 172800 seconds of new work
Fri 18 May 20:31:27 2007||Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
Fri 18 May 20:31:29 2007||Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down.
[color=red]Fri 18 May 20:31:31 2007|SETI@home|Scheduler request failed: server returned nothing (no headers, no data)[/color]

Fri 18 May 20:12:14 2007|SETI@home Beta Test|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta_cgi/cgi
Fri 18 May 20:12:14 2007|SETI@home Beta Test|Reason: To report completed tasks
Fri 18 May 20:12:14 2007|SETI@home Beta Test|Requesting 172800 seconds of new work, and reporting 3 completed tasks
[color=red]Fri 18 May 20:12:20 2007|SETI@home Beta Test|Scheduler request failed: HTTP internal server error[/color]

(blush)
1st PC I ever used was a DEC Rainbow.
It used a 8088 cpu from which the 80186 was descended....

It's too bad that DEC never figured out where to fit into the PC marketplace. They really knew the mini-computer world though.

I wish they did too - I worked for DEC for 9 years in finance, from '84 to '93. At one point they employed nearly 160,000 people, when I left, they were down to 80,000.

I worked for them from 75 to 80.. had a badge number under 30,000. I left them because they kept me on the road and planes all the time and I seldom got to see my kids. It was a great company, but they just didn't ever get the marketing right.

I still remember my badge number, 171xxx. If you can get access to the old personnel data base you can find out who I am, lol. I worked in their Phoenix, Costa Mesa and Pittsburg offices. It was a good time gone bad.

My badge was 142xxx - joined DEC in March 1983, survived the Compaq and now HP mergers, and will be taking early retirement from HP at the end of May after 24 years. Spent all my time in NC offices. Been thru the good and bad times, got frustrated and decided it was time for a new challenge.
After 9 years, it sucked, but sh*t happens. Congrats to you :)