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From: Rowland McDonnell on 19 Feb 2010 12:56 David Sankey <David.Sankey(a)stfc.ac.uk> wrote: > real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid (Rowland McDonnell) wrote: > > > David Sankey <David.Sankey(a)stfc.ac.uk> wrote: > > > > > real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid (Rowland McDonnell) wrote: [snip] > > > That said, more often it's the metadata getting snarled so the data > > > still exist, you just don't know where. > > > > > > Also we tend to have more on disk, our pool for January being 2.9PB disk > > > vs 2.2PB tape. > > > > <goggles> Wha? Whee! > > > > Any idea how much power it takes to keep 2.9PB of HDDs running? I could > > do an approximation, but - what's /really/ the case? > > These are mainly 500GB and 750GB drives. Righto. > I can't remember if they are in the high power density or low power > density room. We've got a few thousand CPU in there as well. Some day, someone will figure out a way to do that sort of thing much much more efficiently than the methods currently in use. I can smell it. Not that the leccy bills for *your* sort of place would go down, I wouldn't have thought. You'd just end up doing more. > The rooms > aren't full yet and the current system is good for around a MW (CERN > machine room is 2.7 to 2.9 MW I think). Hmm - not /too/ bad, then. btw, has anyone ever come up with a Stirling engine using a low vapourization temperature working fluid, with a view to using the waste heat to run the cooling system? > Our leccy bill over the Christmas break was �80k. Mine wasn't. ;-) > The accelerators were in shutdown, they are the real power hogs. I bet they are. > > > Disks being continuously on tend to fail more often than > > > tapes, we lost some 400 disks last year. RAID saves you, file system > > > loss was only 4. > > > > I can remember thinking that a 20MB HDD was stupidly big. I'm thinking > > how stupid I was. And am. Ye gods! > > We put 5MB RAM in our first Mac II. My recollection is it cost > somewhere north of �4k. We're currently wondering whether we can afford > to put 64GB in our latest worker nodes... Whee! again. And where will we be 20 years from now, I can't help wondering? Mind you, what's /really disappointing is that 20 years on, we're still stuck on Unix. When's the fancy new approach going to take over, eh? Rowland. -- Remove the animal for email address: rowland.mcdonnell(a)dog.physics.org Sorry - the spam got to me http://www.mag-uk.org http://www.bmf.co.uk UK biker? Join MAG and the BMF and stop the Eurocrats banning biking
From: Graham J on 19 Feb 2010 15:45 [snip] > I was allowed a calculator for that. So I took three calculators into > the exams and the slide rule and the 4 figure tables. I wasn't going to > be let down by the kit. Nor was I let down by my brain. I got an A, > and I'd've been embarrassed if I hadn't. I also got an "A" but I never saw myself as especially clever - I was about half way down a class of 30. With my slide rule the slide could be put in upside down. So I calibrated it with crude inch markings on its reverse and used it for decibel conversions ... -- Graham J
From: Duncan Kennedy on 19 Feb 2010 17:18 In message <1je65iu.171t89o6949xgN%peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk>, Peter Ceresole <peter(a)cara.demon.co.uk> writes >Duncan Kennedy <nospam(a)nospam.otterson-bg.couk> wrote: > >> I didn't remember - it wasn't exactly IBM quality keys - perhaps Peter C >> will remember - wasn't cheap. > >I got the Maplin one, which was a kit and *was* cheap. Can't remember >exactly how much. Hundreds of soldered joints to make but I learnt to >solder properly, which I could already do but this gave me a lot of >practice and the joints were all okay. > >I made a box for it out of some thin board and plastic glue. It didn't >look that bad (not that good, either, as all surfaces were flat) but the >main thing was that it was *so* much nicer. Ah - mine came ready made in a very light weight plastic moulded "case". But Maplin sounds familiar - perhaps not. I got a, lot of my ribbon cables and connectors for the ZX81 from Maplin. I can't remember what I paid - wouldn't be more than the RAM / computer itself at the time - 50 quid. (my first one was 100 quid). -- Duncan K Downtown Dalgety Bay
From: Duncan Kennedy on 19 Feb 2010 17:20 In message <4b7ef869$0$2484$db0fefd9(a)news.zen.co.uk>, Graham J <graham(a)invalid.?.invalid> writes >[snip] >> I was allowed a calculator for that. So I took three calculators into >> the exams and the slide rule and the 4 figure tables. I wasn't going to >> be let down by the kit. Nor was I let down by my brain. I got an A, >> and I'd've been embarrassed if I hadn't. > >I also got an "A" but I never saw myself as especially clever - I was about >half way down a class of 30. > They let us use Log Tables. -- Duncan K Downtown Dalgety Bay
From: Peter Ceresole on 19 Feb 2010 17:50
Duncan Kennedy <nospam(a)nospam.otterson-bg.couk> wrote: > I can't remember what I paid - wouldn't be more than the RAM / computer > itself at the time - 50 quid. I remember my ZX-81 was thirty quid from a shop in Kensington High Street. I was waiting for a bus and thought 'at that price, I can afford to get one just to find out what computing is about'. So I got one. I really had not the slightest clue, beyond very basic theory, how or what computers did. Nowadays of course, I'm hardly any further advanced (the Mac protects me nicely from needing to know too much) but I certainly enjoy what they can bring. But word processing was a huge boon in my script writing days, and I had a lot of fun along the way. However the only computer game I ever really enjoyed was '3-D Monster Maze' on the ZX-81. Better than 'Doom' which came closest on the PeeCee and the Mac. I did enjoy messing about with CP/M, though. -- Peter |