1 Jul
2016
1 Jul
'16
9:48 a.m.
On Jun 30, 2016, at 5:53 AM, Ronald Natalie
<ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
Ah yes, the 3B’s. Running the state university computer department (in NJ) we got a lot
of 3B’s (3B2, 3B5, 3B20).
We had the misfortune of being donated a 3B4000.
The 3B20 was definitely a piece of telephone
equipment.
The 3B4000 had a 3B20 inside that acted as the bootstrap controller (ala the micro-pdp
inside the larger Vaxen doing similar duty). Most impressively, said 3B20, with the CPU
and IO power of a match stick, was also the Ethernet portal for the entire 3B4000. It
couldn't even come close to keeping up with its 10 mbit/s NIC.
AT&T flogged this abomination to us as the core of our "distributed network
environment." Actually, they flogged it to us as a "1 million dollar donation
in kind" because they knew nobody would buy that piece of shit, but this way they got
the tax write off, and our beloved University president got to grin madly at a press
conference.
When they replaced it with a half-dozen 3B2-xxx servers (about a year later) we at least
got a marginal improvement in network throughput. But they cancelled that out with RFS.
Basically, the 3B2s (and the 3B4K by extension) were designed to hang off the side of the
4ESS and collect toll call records for billing purposes. Anyone remember Tuxedo?
The 3B5 was an interesting machine. We found out how
rugged it was when a drain pipe broke over the top of it (the Rutgers main computer center
was underground under a court yard between the twin towers of the Hill Center). The
thing survived a deluge of water being dumped into it.
I don't think we ever landed one of those in the shop. It seemed like an intriguing
bit of gear back when I looked at it. Decades ago, now.
--lyndon