[Gllug] Computer shopping

[John Hearns]

>
> And here's the paper:
>
> http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~garth/RAIDpaper/Patterson88.pdf
>
Thanks.
And we might recall why this was such a great concept.
Remember that SCSI stands for Small Computer Systems Interface.
In that era, SCSI disks were only for small, personal computers - like the
Mac.
One SCSI 1 standard disk certainly wasn't up to the demands of a mainframe,
and would have been considered a 'toy' by the guys running the mainframe
shop.
Disks for IBM mainframes in them thar days were channel-connected, using
cables as
thick as a fire hose.


Amusing (I hope) anecdote. My particle physics research group had an IBM
mainframe
on a leased line to RAL and onwards to EARN/Bitnet.
We wanted to put the mainframe on the Ethernet, so we could FTP data to
graphics
workstations - in my case a DEC VAXstation 3000 which was my main
workstation.
Sigh - lovely machine. DECwindows and VMS. Many happy hours spent
programming GKS graphics in FORTRAN and using TeX.
Anyway, the day of the Ethernet 'adapter' arrived, which cost many thousand
pounds.
It arrived in a crate, and consisted of an IBM industrial PC (probably 386),
complete with an Ethernet card and a channel adapter card.
Makes sense really - channel adapters have a lot of 'smarts' to unload the
main processor
from tasks, which is I guess why they still live today.


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