response 75 of 136:

Apr 23 20:15 UTC 2002

TI-8x series programmable calculators use Z-80s, too.  The Nintendo
Gameboy uses a modified version of the Z-80.

response 77 of 136:

Apr 24 06:47 UTC 2002

#71:  you really think SPARC isn't fast?  the only thing SPARC isn't is cheap,
and didn't someone actually offer to donate an Ultra-II or two for grex? 
Ultra-II's are pretty damn fast.  SPARC is inherently "faster" than x86
architecture-wise.  x86 manufacturers have to boost clock cycles through
transistor compaction and high-throttle fsb speeds, whereas the intelligent
designed of the SPARC architecture and even the mere abundance of temporary
registers in SPARC allow for comparible speeds without making up for the
latency of a complex instruction set combined with the throughput retardation
courtesy of excess memory transfers.  sure, you can accellerate bus speeds
to make your excess memory transfers faster, but ultimately you are going to
be putting the assembly programmers of the world through the pain of dealing
with a shitty instruction set.  IA-64 attempts to address the innate crapiness
of x86, but the prices are outrageous (maybe it's all just several dozen grand
for the test models right now, and they're going to ditch the project anyway?
dunno...). because they recognize that you can only invest so much into
transistor packing and and bus amphetaminization before physical limits are
reached and they are left with the walls of crackheaded design that they
themselves erected.  give yourself a frame of 32 general purpose registers,
and allow yourself a save instruction, and suddenly the cycles required to
perform menial tasks are extraordinarily reduced, particularly with function
calls.  plus, with SPARC-V9, you have 64-bit arithmetic, so you don't have
to worry about quad_t double register operation emulation with gcc, because
a single add instruction can handle that in SPARC-V9.  why go with x86? 
dunno...because there's so much hardware available for it?  because it's
cheap?  sure (again, didn't someone offer to donate Ultra-II's?).  i would
just personally rather not
        a) perpetuate mainstream acceptance of piss-poor CPU architecture
        b) rely on such a system whose components, although cheaper, are
          are likely not going to withstand the test of time that the
          current grex has endured.

/$.02

response 79 of 136:

Apr 24 17:56 UTC 2002

Regarding #78; Yes, that person who offered to donate an Ultra 2, and who
did so, was me.  It's much slower than the kind of x86 hardware you can get
for the same money, though.

Look, SPARC might be better than i386, but don't hold it up as some
pinnacle of good design.  Take a look at MIPS for something much nicer.
In the meantime, do some benchmark comparisons.  The x86 architecture
might not scale as well, but (a) it's integer performance meets or
beats comparable SPARC chips, and (b) it's high clock rate pushed it over
SPARC in terms of performance.

response 81 of 136:

Apr 24 19:43 UTC 2002

Regarding #80; I donated the two Ultra SPARC workstations, with 768MB
RAM between them, and over 20 GB of disk.  I understand that another user
is donating x86 hardware comparable to what I donated; I think that the
several thousand dollars worth of equipment I already donated to grex
is quite enough for right now, thank you very much.

But that's an aside; the main issue that is that x86 hardware is simply
the appropriate hardware to use for the ``main'' grex.  SPARC hardware
would be fine for satellite machines, but not the main host; I've given
reasons why.  Perhaps you can give us a well-reasoned engineering
rationale for why using UltraSPARC hardware is the appropriate choice?

response 83 of 136:

Apr 24 21:20 UTC 2002

I don't know if she can or cannot reason, but I find it pretty insulting
that I donate thousands of dollars worth of equipment to grex, and this
individual thinks I should donate more.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I
feel good about giving things to what I consider a worthy cause, and I
think that the debate around x86 vs. SPARC is both useful and interesting
(and perhaps the other participants feel the same way), but really, I
think it's in grex's best interest to strongly pursue x86 hardware, and
I'm not in a position to provide it.  Sorry.

response 85 of 136:

Apr 25 03:04 UTC 2002

As a general rule, I think x86 hardware *does* retain its value better,
precisely because it can continue to run MS windows in people's homes
years after the equivalent scientific/research hardware would normally
be replaced by something newer and the older hardware junked.

I should state that for the record, *I* certainly appreciate Dan's
generosity, and I feel it will benefit grex, one way or another.  The
hardware he donated is indeed not suitable to be the replacement grex,
but will very likely be helpful for producing future grex software
offline, or may turn into a future satellite server.  It's certainly
already been directly useful to the openbsd folks; I found and reported
several bugs, some with fixes, that they might not have found nearly so
fast otherwise.  Even if we go strictly with i386 in the end, this
hardware will still be of benefit - a lot of OpenBSD is the same no
matter what the hardware platform, so the effort we sink into higher
level software is going to be very transportable between platforms.

response 89 of 136:

Apr 25 15:07 UTC 2002

My major concern is that we pick the path which makes it easier to find new
people to work on the system.

response 91 of 136:

Apr 25 16:10 UTC 2002

That's good to know.

response 93 of 136:

Apr 25 20:56 UTC 2002

I agree with #90.  Administering OpenBSD on a SPARC isn't really any
different than administering it on an i386.  When I tried it, the
installation went a little differently, but once the system was
installed there wasn't much of any noticable difference.

response 95 of 136:

Apr 25 22:14 UTC 2002

There's installation, and then there's Installation.  The installation
of the operating system on the bare hardware is a couple of hours work,
maximum.  The installation of all the software, services, configuration
of those services, etc is that Installation that takes a *long* time,
but that's independent of hardware once again.  About the only part of
the actually system installation that takes a while is figuring out how
to partition the disks, but that is also independent of the hardware.

response 97 of 136:

Apr 26 03:28 UTC 2002

Performance.  Reliability.  Serviceability.  Vandal-resistance.  Spare
parts.  Cost.  Availability.  Resale value.

Some of these are easy to quantify.  Some of them are much more fuzzy.

response 99 of 136:

Apr 26 15:54 UTC 2002

I'd say judging by our past record, resalability isn't a big factor, since
we've never sold an old machine.  Could you explain what you mean by
servicability, Marcus?

Does anyone have anything to add to Marcus's list?