David Ives Posted November 15, 2007 Share Posted November 15, 2007 just been reading that they have restored a colossus link below for the challenge http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/474682 dont know if anyone is intersted Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony B Posted November 15, 2007 Share Posted November 15, 2007 Goldbeach has just worked a deal to disply the Y Service QLR up there. hopefully begging of next year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeEnfield Posted November 15, 2007 Share Posted November 15, 2007 Just seen item on the news,...................putting it up against a modern pc, to 'crack' a code. No idea which machine did it the quickest, though. :dunno: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick W Posted November 15, 2007 Share Posted November 15, 2007 I live about 5 miles away from Bletchley Park and never been! I'll make an effort to go there and take some pics. Incidentally the regional MVT vehicles were all stationed there until they told them they had to move. Which was due to some of the Park being redeveloped into office units. Shame really, I couldnt think of a better place to store them. Just before my time into this world though! :dunno: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlienFTM Posted November 16, 2007 Share Posted November 16, 2007 Just seen item on the news,...................putting it up against a modern pc, to 'crack' a code. No idea which machine did it the quickest, though. :dunno: I was posted to the RAPC Computer Centre at Worthy Down in December 1985. They were rightly proud of their two bleeding edge IBM 3083 mainframes, comprising a staggering 96 megabytes of core memory ("RAM") and a DASD farm capable of holding 134 terabytes of data on Direct Access Storage Devices (hard drives). About ten years ago I read that the entire processing power put on the moon by the Apollo programme amounted to no more than the average engine management system of a BMW (ten years ago). About five years ago our processor farm in the next block to where I am sitting amounted to IIRC 124 mainframe images. You can split one mainframe box the size of a large wardrobe into a number of discrete logical mainframe images and you can likewise take multiple boxes and link them all together into one machine, so counting how many mainframes we have is difficult, though a few years ago our lab director informed us that in our machine block we had more than half of the MIPS - a measure of mainframe processing power in millions of instructions per second - of IBM EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) North. When the Z990 T-Rex (King of the dinosaurs - that name always cracked me up) came out about that time, it was possible to install 128 discrete mainframe images in a single box, i.e. the whole of our processor farm. So you can see that the truism that processing power doubles every 18 months is very much true. Pleased to report that our build machine, a Z9109 was, the day it was installed, the fastest box on the site. The AIX server decides when to run a build. The AIX server extracts the code. The AIX server starts a build on the mainframe. The mainframe determines what needs to be built. The mainframe determines what order to build them. The mainframe builds them (usually twice, sometimes three or more times per night). The mainframe packages the build. The mainframe loads the build onto tapes. The mainframe copies the build to a web package. The mainframe test installs the build. The mainframe reports the build. I Feed The Mainframe. FTM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N.O.S. Posted November 16, 2007 Share Posted November 16, 2007 I'm sure my mobile phone could run rings around that lot of hardware (that in the time you've taken to post the info is now probably obselete ) - trouble is I can't work out how to use 99.9% of its functionality :-D So are you saying Collosus didn't stand a chance? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlienFTM Posted November 16, 2007 Share Posted November 16, 2007 I'm sure my mobile phone could run rings around that lot of hardware (that in the time you've taken to post the info is now probably obselete ) - trouble is I can't work out how to use 99.9% of its functionality :-D So are you saying Collosus didn't stand a chance? Hard to say. Collosus was dedicated hardware designed and built for one purpose and run by dedicated people who knew what they were doing. IBM mainframes run z/OS: zero downtime Operating System, by definition being unavailable no more than five minutes per annum - it takes about 1/2 hour to IPL (Initial Program Load = reboot). To do this, some years ago when z/OS was called MVS (Multiple Virtual Storage), I was told that 80% of the work MVS did was to monitor and run MVS. Definitely NOT dedicated, but who would by a mainframe to run a single task. IBM mainframes require System Programmers to keep them running. Mainframe SysProgs are one of a very small number of people I look up to (provided they can do their jobs: when I was in consultancy it wasn't unknown for me to tell them how to do it), but the breed is dying. You spotted the dinosaur joke in my previous post? THEY have been telling us as long as I have been in the industry (1985) that the days of the mainframe are numbered. Mainly because universities could never afford to buy mainframes, pay SysProgs, Data Management teams, operators, etc when Windows boxes are available over the counter. In the 1990s "mainframe" became a dirty word and they became Enterprise Servers, but a couple of years ago our proudly informed us that mainframes are IN again, and sexy, and we make all our money from mainframes. Did you know that every single byte of Barclays' system-critical data is on mainframes? 80% of the world's corporate system-critical data are on mainframes. In the USA some 137 universities and colleges teach about System Z; in the UK, that figure is zero. So long as it remains that way, I have a job for life, and the way things are going, when I reach compulsory retirement I could earn a mint as a consultant, because there are only the two of us can do this job. That's why calling the Z990 T-Rex tickled me. Truly it was king of the dinosaurs I'd be surprised if Colossus won, but there would be a lot of handicapping to consider. Would the Colossus team be as well trained as their predecessors? Would the modern team have to start from scratch? etc, etc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony B Posted November 16, 2007 Share Posted November 16, 2007 Speckenze Inglish? If you can't turn it with a spanner or hit it with hammer, beyond me! Just sit quietly and watch the pretty lights. :dunno: The thing is we now it works, Collouss was a massive leap of faith for which Tom Flower's never got his just laurels. How about MOD naming a network after him? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CanadianScottish Posted November 17, 2007 Share Posted November 17, 2007 There was an article with photos in yesterdays Daily Mail, I seem to recall it reported that Collosus had already cracked 2 of the messages and was working on the third..... They were still waiting for the moderns to check back in :whistle: Unfortunately my housemaid has already despatched the paper to the bin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CanadianScottish Posted November 17, 2007 Share Posted November 17, 2007 Tony, there are several BT exchanges around the country with areas known as collosus. IIRC the originals were dispersed to various GPO sites for security. I think it would be reasonable therefore to assume that these were the sites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony B Posted November 17, 2007 Share Posted November 17, 2007 Never new that. Collous was based on Tom Flower's work that he had done for switching in exchanges, so it make a lot of sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick W Posted November 17, 2007 Share Posted November 17, 2007 Ive just spent a day manning a stall in the local archaeology day at the library in sunny old MK, it gave me a chance to have a root in some old archives. They have got the records of decoded messages from Bletchley Park.Makes for interesting reading! Will post some up here next available oppurtunity. ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeEnfield Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 Ive just spent a day manning a stall in the local archaeology day at the library in sunny old MK, it gave me a chance to have a root in some old archives. They have got the records of decoded messages from Bletchley Park.Makes for interesting reading! Will post some up here next available oppurtunity. ;-) Cheers Rick,................sounds interesting. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony B Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 You can now buy an electronic Enigma, Phil Webb has one, be fun to try original messages against it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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