bis-model Computers?

[BillDowns]

The discussion on terminology got me to thinking again. Probably dangerous

Just what is a bis-model computer supposed to represent? I've been in the computer business for 35 years, and worked on everything from mainframes to minis to micros., but I'll be damned if I know of anything that resembles a Traveller bis-model.

Anyone?

 

[atpollard]

overclocking (from back in the day) comes close in my imagination.

Aircraft computers (as compared with using a laptop and writing an interface) come to mind.

 

[BytePro]

The game mechanic is an obvious comprise of cost/size - bis represents ability to control an extra jump level, without the ability to run normal number/power of programs of the next higher computer.

Like yourself, I don't recall any equivalent RW systems for data processing - were # of processors, speeds and storage are the primary factors. However, I have seen this in industrial control applications - which is more akin to what the computer model is doing in traveller (i.e. controlling the Jump Drive).

In the RW this would be a system that was expanded to support an additional controller card (often piggybacked) or such to control the same number of electromechanical devices as a more powerful version. The older core system was still limited in number of commands (memory) and processing power - often resulting in limitations and timing issues that had to be worked around.

Such was a not uncommon financial compromise similar to Traveller - and the 'displacement' generally wouldn't change either (same cabinet).

 

[atpollard]

Piggybacked cards reminds me of the 'daughter boards' that were once available for upgrading PC Motherboards.

 

[aramis]

Billy,

I like to think of the computers on an Atari-ish model.

There's a cluster of CPUs, and then a bunch of slots, all connected on a main bus. The CPU rating is the width of the bus & number of IRQ/DMA addresses. The Storage + CPU total is the number of slots. Large programs take multiple slots. A computer ships with blanks in all slots, but commercial software can be bought on carts.

Each processor has it's own chunk of width, operating memory, and hardware access, and each slot can be dynamically assigned to any one chunk.

A bis model has each slot dedicated to one processor, instead of the master shared bus, but there's still a bus for correlating the processors.

Best example I can think of for comparison is the Atari 800 computer: it had one processor and 3 slots (Basic, Left Cart, Right Cart), and could switch which it was using, but only used 1 at a time.

It's technically feasable, but by modern standards, inefficient.

 

[jwpacker]

Since the -bis computers were only an improvement in the sense that they could run more programs simultaneously at the expense of storage, and came with less included software, the analogy I used was embedded systems. They get more bang for the tonnage, but it's dedicated hardware that's really designed around jump performance, and not as flexible in other areas.

 

[shadowcat20]

I always thought the Bis would take slots of storage for active memory while running a program. Like using hard drive space for ram memory. It would require some tricky workings due to speed differences and maybe that is where the Bis came in.

Remember most of these rules were written back in the late 70's early 80's when home PC's were c-64s and trash 80's. My cell phone today is way more powerful than these were. Even in the early 90's when I got my 1st real PC it was a 386 with a speed 40 chip and 42 Meg Hard drive. Yep, the whole drive had a total of 42 meg, and it took years to fill it. Ram was sold in quarter meg chips back then also.

So trying to compare RW tec from now to what we had to build off of back then can be tricky.

We had no idea where computers would go.

I still want my flying car they promised though....

 

[aramis]

I always thought the Bis would take slots of storage for active memory while running a program. Like using hard drive space for ram memory. It would require some tricky workings due to speed differences and maybe that is where the Bis came in.

Remember most of these rules were written back in the late 70's early 80's when home PC's were c-64s and trash 80's. My cell phone today is way more powerful than these were. Even in the early 90's when I got my 1st real PC it was a 386 with a speed 40 chip and 42 Meg Hard drive. Yep, the whole drive had a total of 42 meg, and it took years to fill it. Ram was sold in quarter meg chips back then also.

So trying to compare RW tec from now to what we had to build off of back then can be tricky.

We had no idea where computers would go.

I still want my flying car they promised though....

Actually, the computer rules were written in 1977...
ignoring the releases of the Apple II and TRS-80 Model 1, that leaves lots of really unpowerful 4-bit processor and a few 4-bit word bus 8-bit processor driven machines. Even mainframes are typically less powerful than many desktops today... 36 bit 1/2 mips main CPUs were high-end machines.

 

[inexorabletash]

Even mainframes are typically less powerful than many desktops today... 36 bit 1/2 mips main CPUs were high-end machines.

Per http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?p=2684 - the average smartphone today is comparable to a supercomputer from 1979.

 

[saundby]

I saw them as similar to the differences between systems like PDP-8, PDP/LINC-8 or the Cyber-70 and Cyber-170. Plus perhaps the 170/700. It might also be likened to IBM S/370 and S/370 Advanced Function, which added VM capability.

 

[Matt123]

Per http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?p=2684 - the average smartphone today is comparable to a supercomputer from 1979.

And add to that the ability to write software has moved forward in leaps & bounds in the last 30 years.

 

[BillDowns]

Per http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?p=2684 - the average smartphone today is comparable to a supercomputer from 1979.

Besides being off-topic, that's actually very miseading. Those Linpak calculations are purposely chosen to measure cpu speed, memory speed, the interface between the two, and nothing else.

Surely, you can't seriously think you can do a payroll run for 2,000 employees on an iPhone or Droid.

 

[Jeffr0]

Actually... there are databases that run on there... and a decent subset Java runs just fine on the suckers. You could probably rig it up to get only the current months data from the main servers when you run it....

Yeah.... The lack of screen real estate is the main issue... but you can at the least do essentially the same kind of application as the old green screen AS/400 clients if you could stand it.

Actually... the real limitation is the lack of extremely fast touch typing that the green screen users could do. (Those users could process a huge amount of information compared to the slow-poke window-clicky apps. Yeah, it was a procrustean bed of sorts, but what it did do it did well.) OTOH... maybe the app/procedure shouldn't require all that typing anyway....

 

[BytePro]

...
Surely, you can't seriously think you can do a payroll run for 2,000 employees on an iPhone or Droid.

As a programmer who has actually programmed systems that handled over 8x that amount - I can definitively state that the iPhone has the processing and storage capacity to handle that 'processing' task.

Support for multiple users for data entry, corrections and queries in any realistic implementation - no.

In terms of raw processing potential (esp. with the GPU), memory and storage - an iPhone can certainly outperform a 1979 civilian 'supercomputer' and most 'mid/mainframe and mini-supercomputer systems from the '80s and even early '90s.

In the '90s I was consulted as to whether the next upgrade to a midframe system should be to a high-end civilian Cray supercomputer (same 8 figure cost or even less for hardware) - besides pointing out the need for plumbing, I had to relay that there was no software to handle financials or any of the enterprise needs nor hardware optimized to handle the sheer volume of remote connections and simultaneous user needs. (I offered to take a two year sabbatical and write the software for free - in jest, of course.) Processing 'power' alone does not determine suitability for any given application of computing technology...

 

[BillDowns]

As a programmer who has actually programmed systems that handled over 8x that amount - I can definitively state that the iPhone has the processing and storage capacity to handle that 'processing' task.

Support for multiple users for data entry, corrections and queries in any realistic implementation - no.

Like you said, any realistic implemention - no. Along with everything else, you have to have a couple of dozen files for Federal & State agencies, Benefits Providers, Banking transfers, hundreds of reports for department heads, VPs, basic verifications, plus the all important checks themselves.

I am a programmer as well, and have also written such systems. I have yet to see anything on an iPhone/Droid that makes me believe any such sustained, processing job could actually be done on it. Theoretically, Yes, practically No.

 

[aramis]

Besides being off-topic, that's actually very miseading. Those Linpak calculations are purposely chosen to measure cpu speed, memory speed, the interface between the two, and nothing else.

Surely, you can't seriously think you can do a payroll run for 2,000 employees on an iPhone or Droid.

The processor is more than capable of it. As is the memory available. (Many old mainframes had 16 megs or less)

The OS overhead is the issue; strip it down to a bare bones text interface with rotation letter input, and yes, it very easily could.

OS coding is no longer "tight code"... Those early OS's were generally coded very tightly - and highly optimized after - with bare bones functionality.

MS-DOS could run in a 32KiB memory window, and the entire OS for MS-DOS 3 fit on a single 3.5" 1.44MB floppy.

Having seen a several hundred person payroll run off a single PC-AT (local construction company in the 1990's) running MS-DOS 3.3 and D-Base II, using a text-only interface and a 20MB hard drive, plus a dot-matrix printer and a hand-stamp for the checks...

Yes, one could easily, with the right software, reconfigure a smartphone to run software sufficient to do a 2000 person payroll.

Traveller got the computing paradigm wrong. I'm not surprised by how wrong; in fact, I think HG and MT dropping the computer programming rules was a reaction to the advances in computer tech.

That said, CT Bk2 computer rules are FUN. Badly broken, but fun. And they only model reality if the programs are actually cartridges with limited bus capacity; essentially, hot swappable backplane slots.

 

[saundby]

What, isn't there a LEO III or S/360 emulator in the app store?

And here I was wasting my time on a card reader, tape reader/punch, and line printer interface for iPhone 5...:rofl:

I'll keep working on the 9-track mag tape interface, though. That'll put me on Hack-a-Day again, for sure.

I just have to make sure the iPhone doesn't get sucked into the vacuum unit.

 

[BytePro]

What, isn't there a LEO III or S/360 emulator in the app store?

Have you checked?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator)

iPhone could support this with a little effort...

(From the FAQ: 'The prize for the world's smallest mainframe probably goes to Ivan Warren, who claims to have run VM/370 under Hercules on an iPAQ 5450 handheld PDA.' That device is from like 8 years ago, or so, IIRC - and quite wimpy compared to say an iPhone.)

...I just have to make sure the iPhone doesn't get sucked into the vacuum unit.

Beats picking up even one part of them old systems! And a heck of a deal quieter!

'Joey, have you seen the Jump-5 computer anywhere? I had it just before you started cleaning the head...'​

Like you said, any realistic implemention - no. Along with everything else, you have to have a couple of dozen files for Federal & State agencies, Benefits Providers, Banking transfers, hundreds of reports for department heads, VPs, basic verifications, plus the all important checks themselves. ...

Files really have nothing to do with this being 'impractical'... mostly there is the issue of multiple simultaneous user access (besides the hardware and data integrity issues that should be addressed...).

Everything you mentioned can be held in one data system file - and is in an MS SQL database implementation (along with a log file). Sans pictures and videos, such information for a mere '2,000 employers' could fit quite well in 8 GB or more of instant, persistent storage. Easily a year's worth in any even moderately efficient representation. In one international company with ~6,000 employees we had over 10 years of such data, and a lot more financial to boot, all stored in one SQL database (inefficiently) in just 4 GB more than a 32 GB iPhone - and that was with a large log file (the data file itself would easily fit).

And the speed... pffft... the solid state storage would run rings around what we had available, not to mention optimally using the GPU (binary ops of texture would allow some awesome parallel processing for such simplistic operations as are normally required... and produce cool 'processing' status screens too!).

Not saying the software is available at hand to do it, of course (though I could have it ready in less than two years, anybody willing to pay ). Again, all that data has to be entered and accessible and there is the question of simultaneous access and data and hardware redundancy, etc... but with the right software there is no reason 'payroll' couldn't be processed on such a device.

Doing so would be asinine... but then I've seen worse things done by billion dollar corps... and, hopefully, no MIS exec reads this!

 

[PFVA63]

Hi

Just out o curiosity, what does the term "bis' actually mean? I looked it up on Dictionary.com and it suggested that, as an adverb it means 'twice" or "again" or something like that, but I'm not sure if that's the same if its used as a suffix to a name. The only other place that I can recall seeing it before was with regards to some aircraft designations (I think).

Thanks

Regards

Pat

 

[BytePro]

A second version or a revision - i.e. enhanced in this case.

So a Mod-1bis would be an 'enhanced Model 1' capable of performing a higher jump level but not run more software. I seem to vaguely remember the term actually used in the RW - probably in reference to some IBM models or some CPUs with special bit-width enhancements... or maybe some standards docs.