PC or MAC for storage or streaming

[Julf]

Nothing like getting caught out in a thunderstorm with a few thousand cards that have not been duplicated yet.

 

Or even stumbling in the stairs with the stack in your hands... Almost beats the fun of trying to tape together a broken paper tape.

 

THe first computer I built had 20 four bit words of storage. Tubes no less, salvaged of course.

 

Woah! How many tubes did it use - and id the lighst flicker when you turned it on?

 

Wish I could have afforded a 4004.

 

Not sure - it's programming model was pretty awkward. I was so happy when the motorola 6800 showed up - it was such a nice, clean architecture compared to the early Intel ones.

[Paul R]

Or even stumbling in the stairs with the stack in your hands... Almost beats the fun of trying to tape together a broken paper tape.

 

 

 

Woah! How many tubes did it use - and id the lighst flicker when you turned it on?

 

Oh yes, lights would flicker - the tons of peanut lights I used at least. My memory may be faulty, but I think I used 48 tubes in total, 4 of which I actually built, and which were not all that reliable. Had trouble flashing them, if I recall correctly. I think it was 20 bits arranged in five four bit words actually. And I used a whole bunch of cheap relays...

 

It also wasn't a complete computer by any means, though it could add, increment, shift, and no-op, again if IIRC. I can see that beastie in my head, but a lot of the details have escaped...

 

Not sure - it's programming model was pretty awkward. I was so happy when the motorola 6800 showed up - it was such a nice, clean architecture compared to the early Intel ones.

 

Yes, the 6800 and later the 68000 chips very very much like DEC PDP and VAX computers, and by then, Macro-11 was my second language. I dearly loved those beasties, and was sorry to see PowerPC chips come into place. Intel chips still retain that same awkwardness even today.

 

Did you ever play with a 6502? Those were neat little chips, very simple and incredibly powerful for their day.

 

-Paul

[Julf]

I think I used 48 tubes in total, 4 of which I actually built, and which were not all that reliable.

 

My next question would have been about mean time between failures

 

I used a whole bunch of cheap relays...

 

I am sure it sounded somewhat similar to my old Teletype ASR...

 

Yes, the 6800 and later the 68000 chips very very much like DEC PDP and VAX computers, and by then, Macro-11 was my second language. I dearly loved those beasties, and was sorry to see PowerPC chips come into place. Intel chips still retain that same awkwardness even today.

 

Yes, the 68000 was definitely inspired by the PDP-11. They all had a nice, orthogonal instruction set/architecture, but the VAX went a bit overboard with the complexity. Never did any VAX assembler, by the time I got to use VAXen I was into UNIX and C.

 

Did you ever play with a 6502? Those were neat little chips, very simple and incredibly powerful for their day.

 

Only played with it a little bit - the 6502 felt frustratingly like "almost a 6800, but not quite".

[Richard Dale]

Very funny - the days of tabulating cards. Did you prefer the sound from 80 column cards or 96 column cards?

 

You get less jitter from paper tape of course.

[Julf]

You get less jitter from paper tape of course.

 

Doesn't that depend on what cable you use for the current loop interface for the tape reader?

[Richard Dale]

Doesn't that depend on what cable you use for the current loop interface for the tape reader?

 

Yes, could be - they certainly used to use some chunky cables in those days.

 

Hmm, actually I wonder if a card reader is more like an async USB connection where you can request the next card from the reader on demand. With a paper tape, it is going to be spooling off at a constant rate and you would't be able to control when the bits arrive.

 

I wonder how big a reel of tape would have to be to hold a complete 60 Mb track - probably as big as a house.

 

Even when paper tape used to be used to hold program sources, it still seemed a completely stupid idea. I remember being at a customers site in the late seventies when he dropped a paper tape containing his code on the ground, and all I could do was to burst out laughing.

[Julf]

Hmm, actually I wonder if a card reader is more like an async USB connection where you can request the next card from the reader on demand. With a paper tape, it is going to be spooling off at a constant rate and you would't be able to control when the bits arrive.

 

Good point!

 

I wonder how big a reel of tape would have to be to hold a complete 60 Mb track - probably as big as a house.

 

Well, the hole spacing (so spacing between successive bytes) was 0.1 inches / 2.54 mm (according to ECMA-10. "Data Interchange on Punched Tape" from 1965), so 1 kByte would be 100 inches, or 8 feet (2.5 m). 1 Mb would be 8000 feet, or 1.5 miles / 2.5 km (notice how metric units make sense ), and 60 Mb would be 90 miles / 150 km. Not entirely portable, and reading that track in to RAM would take a while - seems state of art was 1000 bytes/s, so reading the whole track would take 17 hours - and using the Teletype ASR33 I used to have, it would have taken 2.5 months...

Even when paper tape used to be used to hold program sources, it still seemed a completely stupid idea. I remember being at a customers site in the late seventies when he dropped a paper tape containing his code on the ground, and all I could do was to burst out laughing.

 

To quote the aforementioned ECMA-10 standard: "It is important that tape for data interchange shall not be damaged or contaminated during transport from one installation to another. It is therefore necessary to provide adequate protection by means of a suitable container. The recommended method would comprise a cardboard or plastic box for each single full sized coil or several smaller ones. The lid of the box must fit well and be capable of being sealed with an adhesive tape."

[ted_b]

I have experience with both Windows and Mac servers. Either would work fine, and there are great players on both platforms...even for bleeding edge formats like my fave, pure native DSD (the format formerly only relegated to SACD discs). Since you are enamored with the QB-9 USB would be your signal path, and both platforms work nicely there. I have a max'd out Hynes-powered Mac Mini with Audirvana Plus and Pure Music, both doing DSD, etc. I am a beta tester for both of these players, and also use J River on Windows to do tagging in the DSD realm, etc. Both platforms are ready for you.

 

HOWEVER, there is one platform we haven't talked much about....a dummy-proof plug-n-play platform that doesn't require $2k+ investment like the Naim's of the world. My Auraliti PK90USB is a $750 Linux MPD server, and it includes a $350 SoTM USB card, the one the Windows Caps V2 is spec'd with (for good reason). It just works, 24/7. There is no need to choose a player cuz it is integrated with the OS. The box is a minimalist approach; it doesn't do display or email or anything but music serving. I have it attached to both a local USB drive and my 8TB Synology NAS. I could use any number of GUI clients (not players, just GUI front ends) but my fave is the $2.99 mPad app for my iPad. The Ayre QB-9 is Linux friendly, meaning you don't need a specific driver to load, and it plays to 24/192 easily. Did I say it's trouble free? I added a Paul Hynes external power supply to replace the PK90USB's cheap wallwart, and voila, a tremendous sounding music server. The Auraliti guys dial in and make any changes required (like when I asked for DSD support). Simple, efficient and for that reason, great sonics. Requires an ethernet cable in and a USB cable out to your DAC.

 

Just another option. FYI.