Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!purdue!decwrl!amdcad!rpw3
From: rpw3@amdcad.AMD.COM (Rob Warnock)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Curb feelers (was: Cray architecture)
Message-ID: <21328@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 28 Apr 88 04:22:10 GMT
References: <7762@alice.UUCP> <418@ole.UUCP> <3216@phri.UUCP> <1574@osiris.UUCP> <505@xios.XIOS.UUCP> <4777@cup.portal.com> <9357@weitek.UUCP> <2087@gumby.mips.COM>
Reply-To: rpw3@amdcad.UUCP (Rob Warnock)
Distribution: na
Organization: [Consultant] San Mateo, CA
Lines: 26

In article <2087@gumby.mips.COM> earl@mips.COM (Earl Killian) writes:
+---------------
| My favorite cpu meter was on the MIT AI Lab PDP-10 in the mid 70's.
| AI had about 20 bitmap screens...  (ITS) would execute a SETOM [SETZM]
| when it began [stopped] running one of your processes,...[to] a 36-pixel
| bar in the corner... showing when you were getting cpu cycles.
+---------------

Ah yez... PDP-10's. Well, PDP-10's also had the ability to display in real
time the contents of any memory location if you set the front panel switches,
though normally that was location 0 (= reg. 0), where an idle counter ran.
I added a 3-4 line hack to the scheduler to stuff "Bit0 >> job_no_being_run"
(note: BigEndian, bit 0's on the left) into a location, and set the front panel
to display that. As long as there were less than 35 active user jobs, that
gave you a light for each job (including 0, the null job). Gave a really
good overview of system mix and load, especially since the major daemons
(batch, lptspl, etc.) always ended up with the same job numbers at boot time.


Rob Warnock
Systems Architecture Consultant

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