Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!cs122aw
From: cs122aw@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Scott Alfter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Parallel processing (was Re: Rom 04 comment)
Message-ID: <1990Mar8.002515.12831@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 8 Mar 90 00:25:15 GMT
References: <48000015@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> <1990Feb28.061841.29116@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu> <13715@fs2.NISC.SRI.COM> <1151@madnix.UUCP>
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Lines: 25

Just think:  if I'm right, the Connection Machine uses 65536 8-bit processors.
I'm not about to suggest that you hook up 65536 Apple IIs :-) , but why not
hook up all those IIs in the closet?  You might even whip up a dirt-cheap
connection utilizing the 16-pin DIP game ports, but that would lock out the
IIc and IIc Plus.  (Yeah, you could connect the annunciator outputs from one
II to the button inputs of the next II to set up a ring of computers, and write
drivers to set up a type of round-robin communications.  Too much overhead?
Instead, have one machine (your GS, probably) connect (through TTL buffers,
of course, to prevent burnout!) to all of the other machines in the network;
it can then call only one computer to the side.  A couple of dollars for some
simple logic on a board and a connection somewhere to generate interrupts, and
you have the world's cheapest LAN!  Don't know how it would do for speed,
though--it would depend on the speed of the machines in the network.  Put a
TWGS or 10 MHz RocketChip in every machine, and you could probably get some
pretty decent speed!)

Talk about digression!  Anyway, you could distribute the workload of your
programs more easily this way--make a file server/disk cache, a print spooler,
and do all sorts of other neat things.  Who knows what you could come up with?

Scott Alfter-------------------------------------------------------------------
Internet: cs122aw@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu    _/_  Apple II: the power to be your best!
          alfter@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu/ v \
          saa33413@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (    (              A keyboard--how quaint!
  Bitnet: free0066@uiucvmd.bitnet    \_^_/                     --M. Scott, STIV