[TUHS] ATT Hardware

[TUHS] ATT Hardware

[ron]

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The recent reference to the Dennis's comments on ATT chip production had me
feeling nostalgic to the 3B line of computers.  In the late 80's I was in
charge of all the UNIX systems (among other things) at the state university
system in New Jersey.   As a result we got a lot of this hardware gifted to
us.    The 3B5 and 3B2s were pretty doggy compared with the stuff on the
market then.   The best thing I could say about the 3B5 is that it stood up
well to having many gallons of water dumped on it (that's another story,
Rutgers had the computer center under a seven story building and it still
had a leaky roof).    The 3B20 was another thing.   It was a work of
telephone company art.    You knew this when it came to power it down where
you turned a knob inside the rack and held a button down until it clicked
off.    This is pretty akin to how you'd do things on classic phone
equipment (for instance, the same procedure is used to loopback the old 303
"broadband" 50K modems that the Arpanet/Milnet was built out of).    Of
course, the 3B20 was built as phone equipment.    It just got sort of
"recycled" as a GP computer.

 


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Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[John P. Linderman]

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You just pushed my "3B button". Rudd Canaday (who had a hand in the design
of the original UNIX file system) wanted to create a message-based
"Database Machine". We planned to base it on the MERT (Multi-Environment
Real Time) UNIX variant on VAXen, and had some of the architects of MERT on
the team with real expertise in VAX architecture. Unfortunately, just as we
were getting under way, the AT&T chip project needed clients, so we were
told "Thou shalt use AT&T computers".  Not only did we have no expertise,
the documentation was almost non-existent, so the only way to learn was
trial and error. They installed two 3B20-ish computers that looked like
racks of telephone equipment (because that's pretty much what the were).
The first time we lost power in the computer room, and tried to bring
it/them back up, all the fuses blew. The AT&T techs looked astonished, and
asked if we lost power often (in a switching office, battery backups
ensured that power was never lost). We told them power went down every few
months. They showed us how to power things up by removing all the fuses,
then using a charging device (we called it the fuse-gooser) to charge up a
capacitor, insert a fuse, and repeat until all the fuses had been
reinstalled. Eventually, one of our people discovered an (undocumented, of
course) dial which could be used to ramp the voltage up from 0 to full, so
we didn't have to go through the fuse routine. "Production" versions of the
3B20's had a lead-acid battery built in.

There was no floating point. (Why would a switch need floating point?).
There were things I wanted to do with awk that didn't need floating point,
so I just fiddled the code so AWKFLOAT was typedef-ed to int, and it darn
near worked. The only hitch was a couple of appearances of "%g" in print
statements. I couldn't typedef them away, but I suggested to the ANSI C
folks that I could have done that if the appearance of adjacent string
literals was treated as their concatenation, and they bought it. My only
contribution to ANSI C, courtesy of crappy hardware.

We were also gifted a 3B2. We brought it up single user, and it took 20
seconds to run a ps command. Our computers were theme-named after birds
(the 3B20 pair were heckle and jeckle), so we named the 3B2 junco. Our
director told us we couldn't do that, we had to play nice with the chip
folks. So we renamed it jay. But we all knew what the j stood for.

On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 9:16 AM, <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> The recent reference to the Dennis’s comments on ATT chip production had
> me feeling nostalgic to the 3B line of computers.  In the late 80’s I was
> in charge of all the UNIX systems (among other things) at the state
> university system in New Jersey.   As a result we got a lot of this
> hardware gifted to us.    The 3B5 and 3B2s were pretty doggy compared with
> the stuff on the market then.   The best thing I could say about the 3B5 is
> that it stood up well to having many gallons of water dumped on it (that’s
> another story, Rutgers had the computer center under a seven story building
> and it still had a leaky roof).    The 3B20 was another thing.   It was a
> work of telephone company art.    You knew this when it came to power it
> down where you turned a knob inside the rack and held a button down until
> it clicked off.    This is pretty akin to how you’d do things on classic
> phone equipment (for instance, the same procedure is used to loopback the
> old 303 “broadband” 50K modems that the Arpanet/Milnet was built out
> of).    Of course, the 3B20 was built as phone equipment.    It just got
> sort of “recycled” as a GP computer.
>
>
>

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Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[Clem Cole]

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On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 10:55 AM, John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl@gmail.com>
wrote:

> (we called it the fuse-gooser) to charge up a capacitor, insert a fuse,
>


​Yeah it was wild bit of mechanical design -- it pulled out on a small
rope/wire thingy.  I used to say the 3B was the only computer I knew with a
'pull starter' like on a lawn mower engine.
ᐧ

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Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[Seth J. Morabito]

ron@ronnatalie.com writes:

> The recent reference to the Dennis's comments on ATT chip production had me
> feeling nostalgic to the 3B line of computers.
> [...]

Oh I love hearing anecdotes about AT&T hardware. It should go without
saying that the 3B2, even with all its horrible flaws, is pretty special
to my heart, given all the effort I put into emulating it! I've learned
to really like the WE32000 architecture. It's just so well suited for
UNIX and C. It's a pity the clock speed was so slow, and that the
3B2/310 and 3B2/400 were so limited in memory. A 4MB maximum was not a
lot for a serious multi-user machine, even for 1985.

But, I have absolutely no experience with the 3B5 and 3B20. I would love
to hear more about them from those of you with experience. Were they
ever a marketing success? (And here, by marketing success, I mean as a
general purpose UNIX computer, not as a telephone switch)

Emulating a 3B5 or 3B20 would be fun, but I've seen even less internals
documentation about them than I have about the 3B2, so I fear it's a
hopeless task.

-Seth
--
Seth Morabito
https://loomcom.com/
web@loomcom.com

Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[ron]

My favorite 3B2ism was that the power switch was soft (uncommon then, not so
much now).   I seem to recall that if the logged in user wasn't in a
particular group, pushing the power button was a no-op.   You didn't have
sufficient privs to operate the power.

Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[ron]

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  We were also gifted a 3B2. We brought it up single user, and it took 20 seconds to run a ps command. Our computers were theme-named after birds (the 3B20 pair were heckle and jeckle), so we named the 3B2 junco. Our director told us we   couldn't do that, we had to play nice with the chip folks. So we renamed it jay. But we all knew what the j stood for.

 

Not unlike the “J” prefix in all the 5620 software, the last vestiges of the jab at PERQ calling DMD predecessor the JERQ.

 


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Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[Seth J. Morabito]

ron@ronnatalie.com writes:

> Not unlike the “J” prefix in all the 5620 software, the last vestiges
> of the jab at PERQ calling DMD predecessor the JERQ.

Oh... I guess this should have been obvious to me, but I had no idea
this is where the JERQ moniker came from. You learn something new every
day!


-Seth
--
Seth Morabito
https://loomcom.com/
web@loomcom.com

Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[Perry E. Metzger]

On Fri, 29 Jun 2018 09:16:12 -0400 <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
> The recent reference to the Dennis's comments on ATT chip
> production had me feeling nostalgic to the 3B line of computers.
> In the late 80's I was in charge of all the UNIX systems (among
> other things) at the state university system in New Jersey.   As a
> result we got a lot of this hardware gifted to us.    The 3B5 and
> 3B2s were pretty doggy compared with the stuff on the market
> then.   The best thing I could say about the 3B5 is that it stood
> up well to having many gallons of water dumped on it (that's
> another story, Rutgers had the computer center under a seven story
> building and it still had a leaky roof).

We had huge numbers of 3B2s at Columbia that were gifted to us by
AT&T. They didn't know what to do with the things, so the undergrads
were subjected to using them for their labs for a few classes like
computer graphics. The blits attached to them were neat, though. If
only the same could have been said for the overall system.

> The 3B20 was another
> thing.   It was a work of telephone company art.    You knew this
> when it came to power it down where you turned a knob inside the
> rack and held a button down until it clicked off.

We had one of those donated, too. It was put into an extra machine
room and not used for very much, I think because the version of the
OS it came with didn't really do networking at a point where
everything else at the Columbia CS department did.

At one point we considered reusing its disk pack drives for some of
the Vaxes but unfortunately the cabling was incompatible. 

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com

Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sun, 1 Jul 2018, John P. Linderman wrote:

> Puns aside, anyone who didn't consider pulling the plug was probably not
> someone who should be bringing the system down.

Eggsactly, and you beat me to it: anyone not prepared to "pull the plug"
on equipment should not be in charge of it.

-- Dave VK2KFU, former Station Engineer of VK2WI

Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[Kevin Bowling]

They were also offered with the Alarm Interface Circuit card and
Remote Management Package, soft off might have been required as part
of those design considerations for remote management.

On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 5:20 PM, William Corcoran <wlc@jctaylor.com> wrote:
> No! no! no!  The 3b2 was one of the first supermicros to fully integrate
> power management with the system.   Yanking the cord would be unthinkable
> mainly because it was unnecessary.  The shutdown script would remove power
> to the the system once the system safely went down and buffers were flushed.
> You could also depress this massive rocket switch on the side of the unit
> and it would kick off the powerdown script.  It is noteworthy that the 3b2
> power switch was stateless...allowing human and computer to turn off the
> power.
>
> Finally, the 3b2 is probably the only system in the world with system
> diagnostics so in depth that they were nearly as significant as the
> operating system.   It’s a telecommunications thing.   Interestingly,  the
> color of the 3b2 was similar to a VAX Brown and White.
>
>
> On Jul 1, 2018, at 6:24 PM, John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Puns aside, anyone who didn't consider pulling the plug was probably not
> someone who should be bringing the system down.
>
> On Sat, Jun 30, 2018 at 10:17 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at  7:15:07 -0400, Norman Wilson wrote:
>> > Ron Natalie:
>> >
>> >   My favorite 3B2ism was that the power switch was soft (uncommon then,
>> > not so
>> >   much now).   I seem to recall that if the logged in user wasn't in a
>> >   particular group, pushing the power button was a no-op.   You didn't
>> > have
>> >   sufficient privs to operate the power.
>> >
>> > ====
>> >
>> > Surely you mean the current user didn't have sufficent power.
>>
>> Or was experiencing too much resistance?
>>
>> Greg
>> --
>> Sent from my desktop computer.
>> Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
>> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
>> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
>> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
>
>

Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[William Corcoran]

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It was a safety net designed to prevent operational error.   Naturally, there are limits.

It was a quaint implementation on the 3b2.  I think that’s the gist of discussing it anyway.

However, you can see how the 3b2 designers stressed about a user having to deal with an operating system that required care in understanding that you can’t just remove power.  Rather, an orderly shutdown were required.

If you want to yank the plug, by all means, have at it.  But, I can tell you that I suspect you are the exact type of user that the 3b2 designers felt they were up against in designing this obviously over engineered hardware.

Of course, your point is a good one. Especially, since countless UNIX boxes at the time had nothing more than a good old power switch that truly was akin to yanking the power cord—-thus, procedures must be followed.

Yet, it’s still cool that the 3b2 has that little integrated power feature that most fondly remember.   (Maybe I am on the wrong channel, this is TUHS, right?)

It might be worth noting, nearly every UNIX box today (even x86 hardware) has some variety of this power feature today.    So, clearly the 3b2 was ahead of its time (along with a few other vendors)

One last point,  I have an original NCR minitower UNIX box.  This box had a unique feature where it’s solid state RAM would be backed up by a battery. The registers were saved.     So, if you yanked out the power cord, the system would pick up right from where it left off.  Of course, all of the terminal users would need to redraw their screens.  But, this box was immune to yanking out the power cord.  If you wanted to reboot the kernel, there is a procedure to start from scratch.

Truly,


Bill Corcoran







On Jul 1, 2018, at 8:55 PM, John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl@gmail.com<mailto:jpl.jpl@gmail.com>> wrote:

So prohibiting someone from pushing a button differed in what way from allowing them to pull a plug? I can understand there may have been some difference in state when/if the machine was rebooted. If I just wanted the machine to cease sucking power, what's the difference? I never wanted that box to exist, or come back to life, in whatever color.

On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 8:20 PM, William Corcoran <wlc@jctaylor.com<mailto:wlc@jctaylor.com>> wrote:
No! no! no!  The 3b2 was one of the first supermicros to fully integrate power management with the system.   Yanking the cord would be unthinkable mainly because it was unnecessary.  The shutdown script would remove power to the the system once the system safely went down and buffers were flushed.   You could also depress this massive rocket switch on the side of the unit and it would kick off the powerdown script.  It is noteworthy that the 3b2 power switch was stateless...allowing human and computer to turn off the power.

Finally, the 3b2 is probably the only system in the world with system diagnostics so in depth that they were nearly as significant as the operating system.   It’s a telecommunications thing.   Interestingly,  the color of the 3b2 was similar to a VAX Brown and White.


On Jul 1, 2018, at 6:24 PM, John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl@gmail.com<mailto:jpl.jpl@gmail.com>> wrote:

Puns aside, anyone who didn't consider pulling the plug was probably not someone who should be bringing the system down.

On Sat, Jun 30, 2018 at 10:17 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com<mailto:grog@lemis.com>> wrote:
On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at  7:15:07 -0400, Norman Wilson wrote:
> Ron Natalie:
>
>   My favorite 3B2ism was that the power switch was soft (uncommon then, not so
>   much now).   I seem to recall that if the logged in user wasn't in a
>   particular group, pushing the power button was a no-op.   You didn't have
>   sufficient privs to operate the power.
>
> ====
>
> Surely you mean the current user didn't have sufficent power.

Or was experiencing too much resistance?

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@lemis.com<mailto:grog@lemis.com> for PGP public key.
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Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[John P. Linderman]

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So prohibiting someone from pushing a button differed in what way from
allowing them to pull a plug? I can understand there may have been some
difference in state when/if the machine was rebooted. If I just wanted the
machine to cease sucking power, what's the difference? I never wanted that
box to exist, or come back to life, in whatever color.

On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 8:20 PM, William Corcoran <wlc@jctaylor.com> wrote:

> No! no! no!  The 3b2 was one of the first supermicros to fully integrate
> power management with the system.   Yanking the cord would be unthinkable
> mainly because it was unnecessary.  The shutdown script would remove power
> to the the system once the system safely went down and buffers were
> flushed.   You could also depress this massive rocket switch on the side of
> the unit and it would kick off the powerdown script.  It is noteworthy that
> the 3b2 power switch was stateless...allowing human and computer to turn
> off the power.
>
> Finally, the 3b2 is probably the only system in the world with system
> diagnostics so in depth that they were nearly as significant as the
> operating system.   It’s a telecommunications thing.   Interestingly,  the
> color of the 3b2 was similar to a VAX Brown and White.
>
>
> On Jul 1, 2018, at 6:24 PM, John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Puns aside, anyone who didn't consider pulling the plug was probably not
> someone who should be bringing the system down.
>
> On Sat, Jun 30, 2018 at 10:17 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at  7:15:07 -0400, Norman Wilson wrote:
>> > Ron Natalie:
>> >
>> >   My favorite 3B2ism was that the power switch was soft (uncommon then,
>> not so
>> >   much now).   I seem to recall that if the logged in user wasn't in a
>> >   particular group, pushing the power button was a no-op.   You didn't
>> have
>> >   sufficient privs to operate the power.
>> >
>> > ====
>> >
>> > Surely you mean the current user didn't have sufficent power.
>>
>> Or was experiencing too much resistance?
>>
>> Greg
>> --
>> Sent from my desktop computer.
>> Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
>> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
>> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
>> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
>>
>
>

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Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[William Corcoran]

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No! no! no!  The 3b2 was one of the first supermicros to fully integrate power management with the system.   Yanking the cord would be unthinkable mainly because it was unnecessary.  The shutdown script would remove power to the the system once the system safely went down and buffers were flushed.   You could also depress this massive rocket switch on the side of the unit and it would kick off the powerdown script.  It is noteworthy that the 3b2 power switch was stateless...allowing human and computer to turn off the power.

Finally, the 3b2 is probably the only system in the world with system diagnostics so in depth that they were nearly as significant as the operating system.   It’s a telecommunications thing.   Interestingly,  the color of the 3b2 was similar to a VAX Brown and White.


On Jul 1, 2018, at 6:24 PM, John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl@gmail.com<mailto:jpl.jpl@gmail.com>> wrote:

Puns aside, anyone who didn't consider pulling the plug was probably not someone who should be bringing the system down.

On Sat, Jun 30, 2018 at 10:17 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com<mailto:grog@lemis.com>> wrote:
On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at  7:15:07 -0400, Norman Wilson wrote:
> Ron Natalie:
>
>   My favorite 3B2ism was that the power switch was soft (uncommon then, not so
>   much now).   I seem to recall that if the logged in user wasn't in a
>   particular group, pushing the power button was a no-op.   You didn't have
>   sufficient privs to operate the power.
>
> ====
>
> Surely you mean the current user didn't have sufficent power.

Or was experiencing too much resistance?

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@lemis.com<mailto:grog@lemis.com> for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
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Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[John P. Linderman]

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Puns aside, anyone who didn't consider pulling the plug was probably not
someone who should be bringing the system down.

On Sat, Jun 30, 2018 at 10:17 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
wrote:

> On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at  7:15:07 -0400, Norman Wilson wrote:
> > Ron Natalie:
> >
> >   My favorite 3B2ism was that the power switch was soft (uncommon then,
> not so
> >   much now).   I seem to recall that if the logged in user wasn't in a
> >   particular group, pushing the power button was a no-op.   You didn't
> have
> >   sufficient privs to operate the power.
> >
> > ====
> >
> > Surely you mean the current user didn't have sufficent power.
>
> Or was experiencing too much resistance?
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
>

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Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at  7:15:07 -0400, Norman Wilson wrote:
> Ron Natalie:
>
>   My favorite 3B2ism was that the power switch was soft (uncommon then, not so
>   much now).   I seem to recall that if the logged in user wasn't in a
>   particular group, pushing the power button was a no-op.   You didn't have
>   sufficient privs to operate the power.
>
> ====
>
> Surely you mean the current user didn't have sufficent power.

Or was experiencing too much resistance?

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

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Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

[Norman Wilson]

Ron Natalie:

  My favorite 3B2ism was that the power switch was soft (uncommon then, not so
  much now).   I seem to recall that if the logged in user wasn't in a
  particular group, pushing the power button was a no-op.   You didn't have
  sufficient privs to operate the power.

====

Surely you mean the current user didn't have sufficent power.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON