Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#41

Post by whartung » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 4:49 AM UTC

coreload wrote: post #8

Used these for several years. The Apollo Domain OS is still a thing of wonder to learn from.

Do Apollos and Domain have any real presence in the vintage community? Casually, I have never seen it mentioned.

My very brief Domain experience was that it had a very similar shell style UX, with cryptic, Unix style commands (i.e. ld vs ls) making very “tounge tying” for someone comfortable with Unix.

We had a very early Apollo with some CASE software that nobody was particularly interested in, so it pretty well just sat there. And being all alone it couldn’t really show off Domains networking.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#42

Post by johnklos » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 4:49 AM UTC

kingo55 wrote: post #2

Even 10-15 years later, multiple CPUs and 128Mb RAM was quite uncommon. How much did this beast cost back in the 80s? Edit: Max configs were up to $250,000 ($663,937.02 today) back then according to this price list: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apollo/Apollo_Price_List_Jul88....

True, but there were wonderful exceptions. For instance, the Mac SE/30 (1989) could take up to 128 megs, and the Amiga 3000 (1990) was designed to allow for even more (although only 16 megs on the motherboard, but 256 meg Zorro III cards were available in 1993).

Later, some m68k Macs like the Quadra 605 allowed for 128 meg SIMMs, and the PCI Power Macs really took things to a new level. The Power Mac 9500 could take up to 1.5 gigs of memory in 1995.

It's a shame that no computers really distinguish themselves like that any more, aside from high end server systems.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#43

Post by Taniwha » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 5:01 AM UTC

justsomehnguy wrote: post #24

speed_spread wrote: post #11

Wow, never heard of that ambitious CPU arch before. Looks like an early loser in the RISC wars that was recycled into later PA-RISC and Itanium. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_PRISM

> In some respects, the VLIW design can be thought of as "super-RISCy", as it offloads the instruction selection process to the compiler as well. In the VLIW design, the compiler examines the code and selects instructions that are known to be "safe", and then packages them into longer instruction words. For instance, for a CPU with two functional units, like the PRISM, the compiler would find pairs of safe instructio…

I've built VLIW hardware, virtualisation is not an issue, cache usage is not different than other CPUs - in fact modern superscalar, out-of-order CPUs effectively do what the compiler for VLIWs do dynamically on the fly.

The big issue about VLIW hardware is that it tends to address a particular performance point - usually lets you squeeze out the last bit of performance without having to go to the complexity of dynamic instruction scheduling (and doubling the CPU size) - the problem comes when you want to do your next chip and the trade off ends up being different, you can't keep the same instruction set and so making an ARCHITECTURE is hard

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#44

Post by billforsternz » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 5:02 AM UTC

kingo55 wrote: post #2

Even 10-15 years later, multiple CPUs and 128Mb RAM was quite uncommon. How much did this beast cost back in the 80s? Edit: Max configs were up to $250,000 ($663,937.02 today) back then according to this price list: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apollo/Apollo_Price_List_Jul88....

I'm triggered every time I see things like "$663,937.02 today". I just can't help it. There should be a word for [mindlessly] reporting the results of a calculation to arbitrary precision when only one significant digit of precision is warranted. There probably is such a word in German.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#45

Post by Bud » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 5:09 AM UTC

I ran a stack of Apollos in the 90s at the U of Iowa. Student hobby thing. We bought them from university surplus. Had a DN5500, a DN4500, and a DN3500. Ran email, a telnet BBS, and web services on them.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#46

Post by kstrauser » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 5:09 AM UTC

billforsternz wrote: post #44

kingo55 wrote: post #2

Even 10-15 years later, multiple CPUs and 128Mb RAM was quite uncommon. How much did this beast cost back in the 80s? Edit: Max configs were up to $250,000 ($663,937.02 today) back then according to this price list: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apollo/Apollo_Price_List_Jul88....

I'm triggered every time I see things like "$663,937.02 today". I just can't help it. There should be a word for [mindlessly] reporting the results of a calculation to arbitrary precision when only one significant digit of precision is warranted. There probably is such a word in German.

You and me both! When I see something like "a blue whale can be nearly 100 feet (30.48m) long", I want to throw a math book at the author. "Nearly 100 feet" is "nearly 30 meters". "About $250K" is "about $660K today" at best.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#47

Post by bagful » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 5:20 AM UTC

billforsternz wrote: post #44

kingo55 wrote: post #2

Even 10-15 years later, multiple CPUs and 128Mb RAM was quite uncommon. How much did this beast cost back in the 80s? Edit: Max configs were up to $250,000 ($663,937.02 today) back then according to this price list: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apollo/Apollo_Price_List_Jul88....

I'm triggered every time I see things like "$663,937.02 today". I just can't help it. There should be a word for [mindlessly] reporting the results of a calculation to arbitrary precision when only one significant digit of precision is warranted. There probably is such a word in German.

To provide figures in this manner is to report with "false precision", but we could workshop that phrase into something pithier.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#48

Post by BinaryRage » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 5:21 AM UTC

billforsternz wrote: post #44

kingo55 wrote: post #2

Even 10-15 years later, multiple CPUs and 128Mb RAM was quite uncommon. How much did this beast cost back in the 80s? Edit: Max configs were up to $250,000 ($663,937.02 today) back then according to this price list: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apollo/Apollo_Price_List_Jul88....

I'm triggered every time I see things like "$663,937.02 today". I just can't help it. There should be a word for [mindlessly] reporting the results of a calculation to arbitrary precision when only one significant digit of precision is warranted. There probably is such a word in German.

[flagged]

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#49

Post by billforsternz » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 5:26 AM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #46

billforsternz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm triggered every time I see things like "$663,937.02 today". I just can't help it. There should be a word for [mindlessly] reporting the results of a calculation to arbitrary precision when only one significant digit of precision is warranted. There probably is such a word in German.

You and me both! When I see something like "a blue whale can be nearly 100 feet (30.48m) long", I want to throw a math book at the author. "Nearly 100 feet" is "nearly 30 meters". "About $250K" is "about $660K today" at best.

Yes, my comment implied "about $700K" since I said one significant digit, but I have no problem at all with "about "$660K" especially when you add "at best" as you did :-). In general I think these inflation estimators are inherently very imprecise across multi decade timespans because the societal changes that occur over long periods of time mean you inevitably are comparing apples to oranges.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#50

Post by flemhans » Mon, Jul 22, 2024, 5:37 AM UTC

billforsternz wrote: post #44

kingo55 wrote: post #2

Even 10-15 years later, multiple CPUs and 128Mb RAM was quite uncommon. How much did this beast cost back in the 80s? Edit: Max configs were up to $250,000 ($663,937.02 today) back then according to this price list: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apollo/Apollo_Price_List_Jul88....

I'm triggered every time I see things like "$663,937.02 today". I just can't help it. There should be a word for [mindlessly] reporting the results of a calculation to arbitrary precision when only one significant digit of precision is warranted. There probably is such a word in German.

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