[pixelbart]

..

I always wondered what happed to his yacht.. I remember seeing photos of it and wondered if all that extra iron made the boat a bit slow.

It seems to be a charter yacht now. The new owner replaced the computer system with a Windows-based system. Unfortunately.

Hmm. It was built 30km (20mi) from here. I didn't even know that. I'm not really a boat guy.

[jan-jaap]

Oh, my 4D/440 VGX: Came from FGAN Forschungsgesellschaft (now a Fraunhofer Institute). No idea what they did with it, but interestingly I got a thick binder with all documentation of the sale (the quotations, the haggling and the invoice, field service reports etc etc). Quite revealing

[hamei]

... I was told they just got a pallet of o2s from a large effects house in San Rafael that came off lease, CA, but he wouldn’t tell me the name of the company.

If that was accurate, it would be the Kerner Company (on Kerner Blvd, ended at the back of my shop.) Lucas Valley Road (*not* named after George, Lucas Valley Dairy was up there decades before, when I was a little kid) is not actually in San Rafael. It's unincorporated.

I used to do little stuff for them sometimes, one job was making minimum-backlash drive gears for some ancient camera they were reviving ... it was just about impossible to get in there to measure centers and they were crossed-axis helicals anyhow, so I just made about ten with the tooth thickness going up by about a thou each time. Then they could selectively install to get whatever they wanted - was easier and cheaper than trying to make one set that was "perfect".

Also did another odd one, they brought in some robot arms to vapor blast.  Of course they wouldn't say what they were, but pretty easy to figure it out. I'd say they were, dunno, maybe 18" long ?  So a year or so later I was with a lady with large bazooms, just met her, what shall we do ? How about go to the new Star Wars movie ?  We're both kinda tipsy by now, I don't even remember the movie except about halfway through, in come these galumphing big things, after about a minute "I know those things ! They're only a foot long ! Damn !" then she wacked me in the head for being so noisy, but it was cool. Empire walkers.

Got laid later, too.

One kind of goofy thing about them was, they were very secretive. I think everyone in the neighborhood knew, Tijuana Taco across the street did for sure, that place was great, the owner hired only top notch lookers, he was a Castle & Cooke heir until he got arrested for robbing Redwood Bank, but he was so nice the teller he tied up ended up marrying him, anyway Kerner was no secret but maybe not to tourists .... but cute, they'd answer the phone "oh two two oh" instead of using their name. I thought that was dumb, cuz the invoices and all had their name on them (I shoulda kept some) so what was the point ? So like an asshole I used to say "Hi ! This is oh three eight eight and your parts are ready !" then hang up.

They were always in a rush anyhow so it didn't matter, someone was always calling to see if their stuff was done.

The eighties were pretty fun.

It seems to be a charter yacht now. The new owner replaced the computer system with a Windows-based system. Unfortunately.

Unfortunately ? I'm surprised they didn't throw the useless pieces of trash overboard halfway across the Atlantic. I would have.

That boat was a disaster. The effing thing never worked, moron Jim Clark set off across the Atlantic with systems that had never been tested, with O2's fer godssake running stuff, the programmer also didn't know a damn thing about either boats or industrial electronics, the Coast Guard had to come and helicopter Clark off the boat in the middle of the ocean and I believe they towed the damn thing the last 500 miles. Total crap.

If your O2 did come off that mess, it's historically significant like the flu Napoleon had at Waterloo

[pixelbart]

[..]

It seems to be a charter yacht now. The new owner replaced the computer system with a Windows-based system. Unfortunately.

Unfortunately ? I'm surprised they didn't throw the useless pieces of trash overboard halfway across the Atlantic. I would have.

That boat was a disaster. The effing thing never worked, moron Jim Clark set off across the Atlantic with systems that had never been tested, with O2's fer godssake running stuff, the programmer also didn't know a damn thing about either boats or industrial electronics, the Coast Guard had to come and helicopter Clark off the boat in the middle of the ocean and I believe they towed the damn thing the last 500 miles. Total crap.

If your O2 did come off that mess, it's historically significant like the flu Napoleon had at Waterloo

So that's where the saying "if it compiles, it ships" came from :')

The seller showed me a powerpoint of the software and it looked quite nice. He told me that the main requirement of the system was "no Microsoft, no Intel" and after a few years on the job I know that these kinds of non-functional requirements don't often result in good products.

If I think about it, why the hell did they use O2's? Did they have a full time babysitter sysadmin on board?

[indigofan]

..

I always wondered what happed to his yacht.. I remember seeing photos of it and wondered if all that extra iron made the boat a bit slow.

It seems to be a charter yacht now. The new owner replaced the computer system with a Windows-based system. Unfortunately.

Hmm. It was built 30km (20mi) from here. I didn't even know that. I'm not really a boat guy.

Dutch and not a boat guy? Bet you like those pickled herrings though. Almost took a job in Rotterdam to move boats across the Atlantic, glad I didn't take it.

---

... I was told they just got a pallet of o2s from a large effects house in San Rafael that came off lease, CA, but he wouldn’t tell me the name of the company.

If that was accurate, it would be the Kerner Company (on Kerner Blvd, ended at the back of my shop.) Lucas Valley Road (*not* named after George, Lucas Valley Dairy was up there decades before, when I was a little kid) is not actually in San Rafael. It's unincorporated.

I used to do little stuff for them sometimes, one job was making minimum-backlash drive gears for some ancient camera they were reviving ... it was just about impossible to get in there to measure centers and they were crossed-axis helicals anyhow, so I just made about ten with the tooth thickness going up by about a thou each time. Then they could selectively install to get whatever they wanted - was easier and cheaper than trying to make one set that was "perfect".

Also did another odd one, they brought in some robot arms to vapor blast.  Of course they wouldn't say what they were, but pretty easy to figure it out. I'd say they were, dunno, maybe 18" long ?  So a year or so later I was with a lady with large bazooms, just met her, what shall we do ? How about go to the new Star Wars movie ?  We're both kinda tipsy by now, I don't even remember the movie except about halfway through, in come these galumphing big things, after about a minute "I know those things ! They're only a foot long ! Damn !" then she wacked me in the head for being so noisy, but it was cool. Empire walkers.

Got laid later, too.

One kind of goofy thing about them was, they were very secretive. I think everyone in the neighborhood knew, Tijuana Taco across the street did for sure, that place was great, the owner hired only top notch lookers, he was a Castle & Cooke heir until he got arrested for robbing Redwood Bank, but he was so nice the teller he tied up ended up marrying him, anyway Kerner was no secret but maybe not to tourists .... but cute, they'd answer the phone "oh two two oh" instead of using their name. I thought that was dumb, cuz the invoices and all had their name on them (I shoulda kept some) so what was the point ? So like an asshole I used to say "Hi ! This is oh three eight eight and your parts are ready !" then hang up.

They were always in a rush anyhow so it didn't matter, someone was always calling to see if their stuff was done.

The eighties were pretty fun.

It seems to be a charter yacht now. The new owner replaced the computer system with a Windows-based system. Unfortunately.

Unfortunately ? I'm surprised they didn't throw the useless pieces of trash overboard halfway across the Atlantic. I would have.

That boat was a disaster. The effing thing never worked, moron Jim Clark set off across the Atlantic with systems that had never been tested, with O2's fer godssake running stuff, the programmer also didn't know a damn thing about either boats or industrial electronics, the Coast Guard had to come and helicopter Clark off the boat in the middle of the ocean and I believe they towed the damn thing the last 500 miles. Total crap.

If your O2 did come off that mess, it's historically significant like the flu Napoleon had at Waterloo

There is a killer taco joint in Mill Valley on the main strip... Can't remember the name. Also Tres Amigos tacos in Half Moon Bay, love that place... Almost got a job at Skywalker Ranch working the pipeline for the first prequel which was ruined by that damn goofy character that Lucas threw in. Didn't get the gig but sent them 50 USR modems to play with.

[hamei]

If I think about it, why the hell did they use O2's? Did they have a full time babysitter sysadmin on board?

This is one of those strange things, where a total lack of knowledge about your own field bites you in the ass ?  You know, SGI, so cool, 3d, graphics, blabla bla. But there were industrial controllers running 50 and 100 hp machines starting in 1952. Motion control is not as simple as 3d graphics. 900 lbs of steel hitting you upside the head at 400 ipm is not the same penalty as seeing artifacts on a red cube.

Jimbo is obviously not stupid but after hubris comes the fall, right ? Oedipus was king before he found out his girlfriend was also his mom .... JC and some dork he hired were going to do all this cool stuff, but they didn't know a damn thing about the field. And he had more money than brains.

Which was a good thing for him, or the Coast Guard might not have rescued him. And then we'd never have had Netscrape or the browser wars or ... ta-daaa ! fireflop.

Damn. Why didn't they leave him out there, might have taught him something about quality control :(

p.s. They did have a babysitter, the guy who did all the work. But it didn't help, his stuff was shit and failed right off. Jim did leave him on the boat tho, which is what he deserved. Or maybe dragged behind at the end of a fifty foot line

There's even a chapter about this in The New New Thing, which you might enjoy. Michael Lewis. It's kind of a boot-licker but still a fun read.

[Pentium]

Quite a few of my machines are liquidated Boeing assets from the days when they had a surplus outlet near Seattle. It's likely they were all used for some pretty intense aircraft and related component development. One of my PI's was formerly used briefly for 3D modelling and CAD at a geotechnical engineering firm out east.

[Raion]

Oh hey, Pentium's back.

[RageX]

I have an Onyx2 I bought form some sort of investment bank in NY. It came with the original shipping crate, a 24" monitor, and all the cables. They didn't really know much about it. I asked why they had it, they said the owners bought it in the late 90s and it sat in the lobby behind glass and ran some graphics demo. It's job was to basically look cool. The demo it ran could probably have been handled by a desktop PC. They said the price was something like $700,000. Sounded like morons to me but I'm guessing their bank accounts are bigger than mine.

[Jacques]

My O2 (bought from another local SGI user / fan) was used to port / design software for making shoe lasts and cutting patterns by a local firm. The software was used by Clarks Shoes I believe. There is a mural on one of the town walls (in Street) showing a rather vague rendition of the software running. I'll try and take a picture next time I go past.