• LSSM Parsytec Supercluster progress

    From Dave McGuire@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jul 12 21:19:57 2023
    After getting the 5V/250A power supply going, I did quite a lot of net.archaeology to figure out ncm and get the C004s initialized.

    I'm also able to exercise the whole toolchain from C source to
    running a binary on one of the transputers, but only an individual one
    in a TPM-4 board. After figuring out how to run ncm, I still need to
    determine how to access the array that ncm created. Tonight I'll be
    making another cable (to a BBK-S4) and will work on it some more tomorrow.

    -Dave

    --
    Dave McGuire, President/Curator
    Large Scale Systems Museum
    New Kensington, PA

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  • From Dave McGuire@21:1/5 to Dave McGuire on Sat Jul 15 20:59:11 2023
    On 7/12/23 21:19, Dave McGuire wrote:
      After getting the 5V/250A power supply going, I did quite a lot of net.archaeology to figure out ncm and get the C004s initialized.

      I'm also able to exercise the whole toolchain from C source to
    running a binary on one of the transputers, but only an individual one
    in a TPM-4 board.  After figuring out how to run ncm, I still need to determine how to access the array that ncm created.  Tonight I'll be
    making another cable (to a BBK-S4) and will work on it some more tomorrow.

    Our activities with this fantastic machine haven't seemed to spark
    much interest here, but I'll document them anyway. I've figured out, at
    a basic level, some of the Parsytec-supplied tools used to create and
    manage arrays within the Supercluster.

    Within the Parix distribution, there's a program called mkdesc, which
    takes a "shape" and dimensions (say, "8 4" or "32 1" for an 8x4 or 32x1
    array) and some other stuff on the command line, and it generates a
    description file which looks like this, for a 2x2 array:

    $ mkdesc 2 2 parix.dsc ncm.dsc 2 2 OLDGC parsytec-fe 0 2
    $ cat ncm.dsc
    ROC 0 0 type: 7 ( Processor )
    PROC 1 1 type: 7 ( Processor )
    PROC 2 2 type: 7 ( Processor )
    PROC 3 3 type: 7 ( Processor )
    LINK 0 0, 0 0
    LINK 0 1, 1 1
    LINK 0 3, 2 3
    LINK 1 0, 1 0
    LINK 1 2, 3 2
    LINK 1 3, 1 3
    LINK 2 0, 3 0
    LINK 2 1, 2 1
    LINK 2 2, 2 2
    LINK 3 1, 3 1
    LINK 3 3, 3 3
    $

    Now I send that to the machine via saconfig like this:

    $ iserver -sl 1 -sb saconfig.btl -s -m ncm.dsc

    That creates a 2x2 array with these interconnects:

    $ rspy -sl 1
    # Part-rt Link0 Link1 Link2 Link3
    0 T800-25 HOST ... 1-2 ...
    1 T800-25 ... 2-1 0-2 4-3
    2 T800-25 ... 1-1 3-2 ...
    3 T800-25 4-0 ... 2-2 ...
    4 T800-25 3-0 ... ... 1-3
    $

    The fifth processor (#0) is set up as the root, that's one of the
    TPM-4 boards in the smaller card cage in the rack.

    The saconfig program can also be used to generate a textual report of
    the processor allocations and mappings:

    $ iserver -sl 1 -sb saconfig.btl -f
    Your user channel into SuperCluster: 1 (NCU channels 66, 67)
    Your user channel into MultiCluster: 1 (NCU channel 66)

    Free processors in System : total: 28
    Cluster : 0 1 2
    Free Processors : 0 12 16

    Free special processor boards: 1100 1200 1300 1400

    User allocation of processors:
    User Id. : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
    Used Processors : 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0

    P r o c e s s o r M a p p i n g

    Your processors are mapped to the following System processors

    0 -> 0 1 -> 1 2 -> 2 3 -> 3

    Your processor number -> processor number in system


    N C U c o n n e c t i o n t a b l e s :

    N C U 0
    0 <> 66

    N C U 1
    2 <> 64 5 <> 1 11 <> 3 12 <> 8 14 <> 6
    $

    I'm enjoying figuring all of this out, but I sure wish more
    documentation had been preserved.

    -Dave

    --
    Dave McGuire, President/Curator
    Large Scale Systems Museum
    New Kensington, PA

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  • From Mike B.@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jul 18 02:21:18 2023
    Hi Dave

    I'm enjoying figuring all of this out, but I sure wish more

    Great. Yes. Never get in touch with an Parsytec SuperCluster.

    documentation had been preserved.

    Do you know the document ParsytecNetworkConfigurationManagerforMC2andSCV3.0.pdf?

    The MC2/MC3 equipped with an NCU are very similar to a tiny SC. So maybe the MC2/MC3 parsytec docu may be also useful.

    Kind regards
    Mike

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  • From Dave McGuire@21:1/5 to Mike B. on Tue Jul 18 19:58:01 2023
    On 7/18/23 05:21, Mike B. wrote:
    I'm enjoying figuring all of this out, but I sure wish more

    Great. Yes. Never get in touch with an Parsytec SuperCluster.

    It's a really interesting machine in many ways. It has a graphics
    board, a GDS (1, not 2), that I cannot find any information on, but
    perhaps something will turn up.

    documentation had been preserved.

    Do you know the document ParsytecNetworkConfigurationManagerforMC2andSCV3.0.pdf?

    The MC2/MC3 equipped with an NCU are very similar to a tiny SC. So maybe the MC2/MC3 parsytec docu may be also useful.

    I just got a copy of that file today. I had most of the SC working a
    couple of days ago, but this PDF is filling in a few gaps. Great stuff.
    Now to find some real application (demo) software.

    -Dave

    --
    Dave McGuire, President/Curator
    Large Scale Systems Museum
    New Kensington, PA

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  • From AV_RetroTech@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jul 7 15:29:42 2024
    Hello Dave.

    Intrested you have olso running a Parsytec Supercluster. We olso try to
    run this machine. A couple time ago my cousin wrote a program to
    demonstrate Bitcoin mining on this Supercluster. With the network
    controler software we made a lot of different configuration, from pipe,
    to torax to a long line, a hypercube, a tree, with all Transputer
    processors. The bitcoin mining program was compiled by the 3L compiler
    with farm-function, so the program by it own found how many transputers
    are in the network and start working with all of them. We load the
    bitcoin program from a Win-98 PC to the supercluster. This Win-98 PC is connected to a Win-10 PC which is connected to internet. This Win-10 PC
    storage the whole bitcoin database and is updated each 10 minutes from internet. This new block is send to the Win-98 PC and this Win-98 PC
    loads this new block to the Parsytect Supercluster to calculated this
    blocks.
    We have a lot of fun, first to startup the Parsytec Supercluster, making
    all the netwrkconfigurations, write the bitcoin mining programs for this project and at last running and testing all the differend configurations
    of the network.
    All this software is on this momend not collected and easy to run, but
    when you are intrested in how to start bitcoins mining on a Parsytec Supercluster we can make this suitable for you, but making a good
    description take some time.

    Greeting Abraham Vreugdenhil.

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