Talk:Power 6/32

Speed info

(The spammers constantly delete this page. I frankly cannot keep up.)

The Power 6/32 was the famous Tahoe machine of 4.3 BSD fame, made by Computer Consoles Inc

All that I can find out about them is this table from http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/dhrystone.c

 *----------------DHRYSTONE VERSION 1.0 RESULTS BEGIN--------------------------
 *
 * MACHINE      MICROPROCESSOR  OPERATING       COMPILER        DHRYSTONES/SEC.
 * TYPE                         SYSTEM                          NO REG  REGS
 * --------------------------   ------------    -----------     ---------------
 * CCI POWER 6/32               COS(SV+4.2)     cc              7500    7800
 * CCI POWER 6/32               POWER 6 UNIX/V  cc              8236    8498
 * CCI POWER 6/32               4.2 Rel. 1.2b   cc              8963    9544
 * VAX 11/780   -               UNIX 5.2        cc              1515    1562
 * VAX 11/780   -               UNIX 4.3bsd     cc              1646    1662

Which may give some indication on the initial reasons why the Power 6/32 was chosen as the sucessor to the VAX by CSRG. Neozeed (talk) 17:01, 10 February 2009‎

More info coming

Working on obtaining some images and background information on Tahoe from one of the designers. Stay tuned. Retrev (talk) 18:02, 1 May 2018

It would be interesting to hear what "Retrev" was able to find out. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 09:09, 10 August 2023 (CEST)

Well, that was the only thing they ever posted here. I'll send them email, using the send email link - assuming the email address they had back then still works. Jnc (talk) 00:46, 11 August 2023 (CEST)

Our own User:Neozeed may already be on the case? (Read bottom comments.) Jnc (talk) 01:37, 11 August 2023 (CEST)

Oh, good catch! Let's hope so, but also try the email to Retrev.

Many tidbits in magazines can be found here: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22computer+consoles+inc%22+site:bitsavers.org (Not suggesting anyone should pick this up right away.)

I emailed Ed Scott.

Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 07:31, 11 August 2023 (CEST)

I checked with neozeed, but he was sworn to secrecy regarding the info he received. Larsbrinkhoff (talk)

Pity. In this, I found little, but did find this:

"I read some of their manuals. The instruction set of the cpu was tailored to running C programs. There was a *single* instruction that did what strlen() did... it took an address from a register and read down memory until it found a null byte. It returned the byte count of the string in another register."

about the HCX-5. Pity none of those manuals appears to be extant! Jnc (talk) 18:21, 22 December 2023 (CET)

I surmise it would be possible to reverse engineer the instruction set and other hardware from BSD source code and compiler toolchain. I also found a copy of Harri's HCX Unix which might be helpful in such an endeavor. At the end of the day, it would just be another also-ran running another Unix port same as all others, so I don't see much point. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 18:41, 22 December 2023 (CET)

Workstation?

Was it a workstation? Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 08:13, 22 December 2023 (CET)

Ooh, good catch! Looking at the image of one in the Harris HCX-5 ad that neozeed found, it looked like one, but when I read the copy, probably not! "costs from $124,500", and, even more tellingly, "supports up to 128 users"! Definitely supports its classification as a 'super-mini'! I'll fix that, and upgrade he article a bit at the same time.

I was just trying to empty all the random machines out of Category:Computers; I'll have to check and see if I made any other errors! :-) Jnc (talk) 13:25, 22 December 2023 (CET)

I asked neozeed, and he replied "from what I know its def a super mini. the image looks like a full rack, and the stories I heard about their use is that they weren't exactly something you could take home in a car." Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 16:09, 22 December 2023 (CET)

"We can infer a lot"

User:Jonathanjo wrote: "We can infer a lot from the 4.3BSD-tahoe source file [...]" I haven't checked, but I was assuming there is a complete toolchain. And perhaps even binaries? I kind of suppose there is enough information to make a Tahoe emulator running 4.3BSD. Also, as Yoda points out, there is another source: Harris HCX/UX. Unfortunately it can't be made public, but certainly a lot can be learned.

Now, clearly the end result would very much like running 4.3BSD on a VAX, so it's more hack value than actual utility. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 16:43, 20 December 2024 (CET)

There does seem to be a complete toolchain (much of it in the Reno release). If you go to the top-level page (here), and enter 'tahoe', and do a search, you get a long list of stuff - including the PCC and assembler. I don't see a linker, but maybe there's nothing CPU-specific in that?

Installing and Operating 4.3BSD UNIX on the Tahoe shows that it used a VERSAbus. Jnc (talk) 18:02, 20 December 2024 (CET)