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HP still keeps OpenVMS alive. Somewhat unwillingly. They cancelled the Hobbyist Program again, so I can no longer get licenses for my systems.
Unsure whether or not the referenced technology is similar to a DEC cluster or more like a QNX cluster -- in which (if I recall correctly) you can essentially have one logical computer spread across multiple devices.
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At one time I had thought about getting a uVAX but things happened and I got cast into another dimension so to speak.
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The first uVAX I worked on was around 86,don'tremember the model, but quit the company not long after they got it and I moved to Florida to work on a PDP 11/23. Like going from a Cad to a Pinto!
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I used PDP-11s in high school and some college, then VAX-11.
My co-op job in college was managing a MicroVAX 3600 -- their PDP-11 was sitting cold and unused by that time.
Then I used mostly VAX and Alpha until 2002. Just a hobbyist since then.
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I used VAX-11 too...
diligent hands rule....
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ditto mike. amazing os
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Would you elaborate a bit? The chassis has room for a switch at the bottom, so networking is not an issue. Coordinating communications in a cluster/os style would be significant.
Why does programming these things suck? I defer to your experience as to comparing a rPi dev env to ESP32. Maybe a few words? I am just moving into this with two specific projects.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Their HAL is either accessible via C or MicroPython but ALL of their energy is clearly spent on the Python end of things.
You have to use their garbage toolchain to get anything to compile with it. Last I checked (though maybe it has changed) PIO didn't work very well with it, if at all.
Unless you like thonny, pick another MCU, in my opinion.
I'm talking about the Pico, not the regular RPi to be clear. Maybe I got my wires crossed?
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I just scrolled through the thread. I was thinking of the RPi Pico, not the RPi Zero. I don't know anything about the latter. I *did* get my wires crossed. Mea culpa.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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No worries - and I can summarize my question as "What?" I'm catching up into this arena - there are so many low cost boards out there. Pi is the low hanging fruit - you can't do real embedded in Python, but I'm learning. I just object to the "cluster" marketing phrase.
In 2003 I migrated into the Windows universe, and the first thing I noticed was that absolute BS of Microsoft marketing. My first task was learning all about activeX. I learned of COM, COM+, DCOM, etc. I really don't care what they do with tech, but ffs name it consistently.
Appreciate the feedback.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Upgrading this site's hosting setup?
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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A couple years ago I had set up a 3-rPi cluster where one was hosting an ngix server, ideally to route different domains coming in on the same public IP to different web applications, which was working great. The second rPi was the database server and had an external SSD connected to it, and the third rPi hosted the actual web apps. All was working, then a traumatic event happened in my life and the project and Code Project articles I had planned to write went to the wayside. It was sad. I hope I still can find my notes on how all this was configured when at some point I resurrect this project.
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Marc - why would that be a "cluster"? How do you define it? The only experience I have with the word cluster is what DEC did with it. What you describe is 3 cooperating systems. I'm not trying to be pedantic. Being able to stack rPis into an environment is intriguing to me.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Look up Jeff Geerling on the various platforms - youtube. He has been reviewing different housing / backplane for the Pi family.
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Well I'm pretty sure you can use OpenMPI on any Raspbian distribution but I think, alternatively, OpenCL is available on the Pi3 (and I heard Vulkan has parallelism, so you can use that on the Pi4).
In short, anything that would've required a cluster of 4 SGI workstations back in the day. Probably a cool, portable, quick and dirty render farm?
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cool ideas!
diligent hands rule....
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Southmountain wrote: What kind of projects can we do on this?
I would say that is exactly the question - why would you want to do that?
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because this is a cluster, I am thinking to run some machine learning model to absorb a knowledge in a specific domain...
diligent hands rule....
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So let us say you hypothetically have a specific need to solve a problem that would require a 'cluster'. Not just the desire to create anything for that hardware but rather a specific problem that needs to be solved.
Why would that hardware be the way to solve it?
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How about calculating Pi? 
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You could do data mining with an open source tool that can do parallelism to distribute the compute capabilities among all the cluster members. You could as well load balancing for Web Apps. Many posibilites limited by your imagination.
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I'm all into the cluster thing - but that's a really big word technically. DEC had the tech for clustering. That said, negative feedback on the product - for $80 you get a frame you can plug boards into. Okay, I get that.
Where are the boards? The listing implies you get 4 boards, but I don't think so.
Many years ago, I worked in the land of VME. By definition - if you had a VME board, it adhered to that standard. Rolling out a product based on this, I would hesitate. Heck, most pi boards do quite well performance wise, so why do I need a cluster?
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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thank you for sharing this
diligent hands rule....
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Okay, I've gone through this link for a few days. The title is completely misleading. The chassis is little more than sheet metal allowing you to put up to 4 rPis in it of some flavor, exposing the I/O ports up front. That is not a cluster, it's a bunch of organized rPis.
Now if you had the software to allow those rPis to "cluster" as to what it actually means... I need to go read up on the link someone posted for some s/w to do something like that.
I would call this a rPi appliance chassis.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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