[AUUG-Talk]: 1988: Specs and costs of mini-computers

[Peter Yardley]

Hi,

Take a look at ...
http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/cm003_en.html#mini

steve jenkin wrote:
> I was hoping some of you on-list might remember the specs and costs of
> mini-computers circa 1988.
>
> A 2009 piece on ACM Queue, "Triple-Parity RAID and Beyond" by Leventhal
> sent me back to re-reading the seminal 1988 paper by the UCB group
> (Patterson et al):
>    "A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)".
>
> It wasn't until I read the '88 paper I put the BSD / CSRG at UCB connection
> together... So this group would've had a lot of VAX knowledge.
>
> I've been trying to recalculate the various cost/MB given in the paper.
>
> The RRP's given in the press (Computerworld) and IBM Archives for
> 3380 disks (7.5Gb, 14" platter, 6.5kW) and their controllers suggest to
> me $63/Mb for 'SLED' (Single Large Expensive Disk) rather than the
> "$18-10" in the Patterson paper. [Educational pricing?]
>
> I haven't tracked down the RRP's of the Conner CP-3100 (3.5", 100MB
> SCSI) drives mentioned in the paper for "$10-7/MB", but have found an
> on-line collection of disk prices suggesting the drives would've cost
> around $1,000 ea. (Dahlin's collection below)
>
> Have no real idea about SCSI controllers at the time, costs or models.
> Back then I worked on a new PDP-11/23 system with dual SCSI disks. I
> believe we used Emulex SCSI controllers.
> Can't remember price of system or disks. $30-$50,000 probable.

We had some Emulex controllers (don't think they were SCSI) on our VAX 
750 and think they cost about $10k.

>
>
> What I'm writing to you about is how, in 1988, a system mentioned at the
> end of the paper could've been built and a guess at their cost:
>    comparing an IBM 3380 disk
>    with 100 * 100Mb CP-3100 disks,
>    costing "disks and controller" $11-8/MB.
>
> I think there are 3 reasonable configurations to consider:
>   - small scale. eg. PDP-11 with 2-4 SCSI controllers and some uplink.
>   - high-end device: VAX with 16 SCSI controllers + IBM channel(s).
>   - high-end system: VAX with 16 SCSI controllers, part of a VAX cluster.
>
> In their follow-up paper in 1994, Chen et al, "RAID: High-Performance,
> Reliable Secondary Storage" use two widely sold commercial system as
> case studies:
>    NCR 6298 and
>   StorageTek's Iceberg 9200 Disk Array.
>
> The (low-end) NCR device was more what we'd call a 'hardware RAID
> controller' now, ranging from 5 to 25 disks. Pricing $22-102,000.
> It provided a SCSI interface and didn't buffer.
>
> The StorageTek's Iceberg was high-end.
> Starting at 100GB (32 drives) for $1.3M, up to 400Gb for $3.6M.
> Not sure the interface, probably multiple IBM 'channels' (ESCON by then?)
>
>
> I've been able to find technical data on VAX systems:
> HP's page for VAX 6000/300 tantalisingly says:
> <http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/archive/vax6000_300.html>
>
> 'VAXcluster I/O Servers:	Up to 15'
> with
> 'Max I/O Throughput:	60 MB/s'
>
>
> Whilst NetBSD provides a very rich catalogue of the VAX series, it's too
> much volume for me, cryptic and without pricing.
>
> <http://netbsd.org/docs/Hardware/Machines/DEC/vax/vax8000.html>
> <http://www.netbsd.org/docs/Hardware/Machines/DEC/vax/vax6000.html>
>
>
> Through this I have learnt that the original SCSI bus was 8-bits wide,
> single-ended and did 5MB/sec (uni-directionally?).

My memory is that SCSI-I was 1 MByte / sec if you had TTL transcievers 
and 500Kbytes / sec if you only had OC ones (like the early Apples). 
IPI-2 did about 6MBytes / second and ESDI (which was pretty common) did 
about 2 Mbytes / sec.

> The UNIBUS, the original PDP-11 backplace, did 5MB/sec, whilst the
> cheaper Q-BUS did 3.3MB/sec.

Think Q-Bus was on the LSI-11, but it could have been on the lower end PDPs.

> There was also SBI, VAXBI, XMI and CI (Cluster Interconnect), with
> speeds of 13.3MB/sec to the "60MB/sec" above:  maybe for 6*VAXBI.
>

I think the VAX had Unibus and Massbus as an IO Bus. The main bus on a 
VAX 780 was 10 MWords / sec. And I think the bus was 64 bits wide even 
tho the machine was 32 bit. That was Synchronous Backplane Interconnect 
(SBI) by memory.

>
> If you can point me at any resources or recount any of your
> memories/experiences at the time, especially with rough pricing and
> configs for my 3 'reasonable configs', I'd much appreciate it.
>
> If you actually built a somewhat comparable system at the time, VAX or
> not, that'd be even better :-)
>
> I already have one recollection from the time:
>   At Sydney Uni, they paid $30k for a 1MB RAM upgrade for a VAX (11/780?)

Sydney Uni Electrical Eng had 2 x VAX 780 and they home brewed their own 
clustering. The memory boards were 1 Mbyte a piece and you could have 8 
(I think) if you had twin memory bus controllers.

>
> regards
> steve jenkin
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> IBM Archives: '20th Century disk storage chronology'
> <http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_chrono20.html>
>
> Dahlin's Disk price data: RRP's of HDD's
> <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dahlin/techTrends/data/diskPrices/data>
>

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