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Miscellaneous => The Lounge => Topic started by: cahult on 9 May 2002, 03:39

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: cahult on 9 May 2002, 03:39

Came across this site a few days ago: http://www.castle.uk.co/castle/front.htm (http://www.castle.uk.co/castle/front.htm)

RiscOS? What is that? Can anyone tell? No conclusive info on this site on what it is.

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: Gooseberry Clock on 9 May 2002, 04:16

Looks like they sell Acorn Archimedes clones.

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: psyjax on 9 May 2002, 04:55

These machines are so low-end. What's up?

Obsolete before they were up to date.

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: ravuya on 9 May 2002, 18:47

RiscOS (http://www.riscos.org/) is a very popular operating system in backbone jobs. It doesn't require much in the way of hardware to get massive performance returns. It's one of the better written OS's on the planet.

The reason why it isn't popular is because it's RISC and won't run on the x86 platform.

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: ravuya on 9 May 2002, 18:50

There's lots of cheap hardware (http://www.cumana.demon.co.uk/products/riscstation/lite.htm) for them. The OS (http://www.riscos.org/cgi-bin/artcl?a=welcome), from what I've heard and seen, is kind of like Mac OS 7.5, except with UNIX-level stability and less personality (and a Dock).

I'd try it out, but the hardware investment is a bit much.

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: Ravuya ]

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: Ravuya ]

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: Calum on 9 May 2002, 19:29

This  Slym (http://www.cumana.demon.co.uk/products/acorn/nc.htm) looks really cool!

and this laptop looks pretty smart too (http://www.riscstation.co.uk/html/portable.html) although a bit behind its time...

This RiscOS.org site (http://www.riscos.org/cgi-bin/artcl?a=RO-Ltd) that Ravuya posted seems really good, and they have a list of retailers in their "Hardware" section.

Here's one site (http://www.apdl.co.uk/micoff.htm) offering a Risc computer for

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: voidmain on 9 May 2002, 21:13

On a RISC processor (reduced instruction set) the Mhz ratings have absolutely no comparison to the Mhz ratings on x86 based processors. They can do much more per cycle. I remember when we got our first IBM RS/6000s back around 1993 with the Power2 chips, the computational power blew anything else away yet the Mhz ratings were nothing to be excited about. We quickly migrated applications off our mainframe and onto the RS/6000 cluster. Ever hear of "Deep Blue" (IBM RS/6000 SP2)? Now I don't know how the RISC processors mentioned in this thread compare to the type I used to use but I can certainly say the Mhz ratings can't be compared to x86 Mhz ratings.

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: psyjax on 10 May 2002, 04:05

Even tho, coming from a MacOS background, we have been using RISC processors for years. A 233MHz RISC chip is something like a first generation iMac. Which, BTW, is still a great machine, but is no AMD/Intel killer.

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: voidmain on 10 May 2002, 04:32

Yes but I don't think the RISC processor architecture in the Mac was much like the IBM implementation.  Here's a good sheet on the RS/6000 processors:

http://www.mhpcc.edu/training/workshop/ibmhwsw/MAIN.html (http://www.mhpcc.edu/training/workshop/ibmhwsw/MAIN.html)

Notice the one I was working with in 1993 (Power2) only operated at 66.6 MHz but performance was 254 MFLOPS. What do you have on a 1993 model Mac RISC processor? At that time they were running 6 instructions per clock cycle and I don't see it on that sheet but I believe it had a 256 bit data bus. Weren't the Macs running the PowerPC?  IBM had low end machines running the early versions of the PowerPC chip but they couldn't hold a candle to the performance of the Power2 chips. Power2 had many times the performance.

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: cahult on 10 May 2002, 04:55

The first Mac with a RISC-processor was Power Mac 6100/60 (60 MHz). It was introduced in early 1994. Someone once said to me that it was the equivalent of a Pentium 75 MHz.

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: voidmain on 10 May 2002, 05:05

And around that time I remember writing some of my own benchmark tests in C and running both on the RS/6000s and on the fastest PCs we had available running Linux. Things like calculating PI out to 100,000 decimal places for instance. Both floating point and integer type tests and I remember the results were drastic. For instance a test that may take 30 seconds on the RS/6000 could take 30 minutes or more on the PC. Granted, my tests were not scientific but the same code, compiler, and optimization flags were used on both machines.

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: cahult on 10 May 2002, 05:08

IBM may not be the best of companies but they can build computers, can

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: voidmain on 10 May 2002, 05:19

You can guess where we ran our password crack programs...  (http://smile.gif)

Title: Anybody know what this is?
Post by: dbl221 on 11 May 2002, 08:34

I used the RS/600 AIX boxen for many years and they
performed well enough except when we were doing the
gated-cardiac 3D studies....man they would just slow
down to a crawl.....ah!  good times... good times.