PZ wrote:
Michael J. Mahon wrote:PZ wrote:I picked them up on ebay last year for $39. I was the only bidder. I couldn't allow something like that get trashed. Someday I'll build a IIGS Beowolf Cluster. Muahahahaha!I was just going to suggest building a IIgs-based "AppleCrate". ;-)I actually thought of something similar a few years ago (one of my extra motivations of picking up these GS mobo's) was to put 16 motherboards + a mac into a box, network them via Appletalk, and run a 16 node Futurevision BBS off of them using a terminal server through the serial ports. I've got all of the pieces, the only thing that I still need is to pick up is the time to do it, and the purpose of doing it since the whole BBS scene is quite dead and has been for a number of years now. So naturally, I got quite a kick when you annouced the Applecrate. I was actually going to try to make my sytem fit in a 19" rackmount enclosure.
That would be beautiful. I've been thinking about making another wooden AppleCrate, perhaps with 12 machines rather than the current 8. If I had another half-dozen digital oscillators for CrateSynth, it could support a lot more polyphonic music without cheating, and also provide better percussion. My plan would be to cascade both crates together as a 16-24 processor machine, which is trivial to do. The only conection between machines besides NadaNet is the "boot" daisychain wire, which determines the enumeration order of machines during network boot. Since they all boot in parallel after ID assignment, the network boot time is independent of the number of machines. If you decide to go ahead with your IIgs AppleCrate, I would make a new IIgs version of NadaNet software to permit the IIgs's to run at "fast" speed when they are not actually communicating. (NadaNet already supports the Zip Chip accelerator for the //e, but the IIgs "downshifting" mechanism is a bit more onerous.) -michael NadaNet networking for Apple II computers! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."