Comments on: The Harris HCX-9 aka TAHOE platform

By: neozeed

neozeed — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 15:43:15 +0000

In reply to Joe Perry. SENT!

By: Joe Perry

Joe Perry — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 22:11:28 +0000

In reply to neozeed. I was fortunate to be in charge of Tahoe. Send me an e-mail and I can send you some information.

By: neozeed

neozeed — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 10:44:48 +0000

In reply to Rob Zombie. As far as system images, all I found was the advertisements on the post. Until I managed to figure this out, I never found anything definitive what a 'Tahoe' even was. Maybe one day someone will surface with a computer room image, but I don't see that happening anytime soon sadly, this machine was basically scrubbed from history.

By: neozeed

neozeed — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 10:42:37 +0000

In reply to Rob Zombie.

Looking at here: https://www.quora.com/How-long-did-it-take-to-render-the-original-Pixar-Luxo-Jr-short-film

According to the ACM article “The Reyes image rendering architecture” from July 1987, frames from Luxo Jr. each took 1.5 hours of CPU time to render at a resolution of 724×434.

In the same ACM volume within the article “Rendering Antialiased Shadows with Depth Maps”, we learn that the computation time for a sample frame from Luxo Jr. including shadows was 88.8 minutes using Reyes on a CCI Power 6/32 computer.

With the short film’s running time being 174 seconds and assuming 24 FPS, it took ~2,131 minutes (or ~35 hours) for a single second of Luxo Jr. to be rendered in 1985 / 1986.

So for the complete short film, I would suggest that it took around 370,000 minutes (or ~6,166 hours) to render, which comes out to ~257 days. It’s not clear to me how many CCI Power 6/32 computers were available to Pixar at the time, though, to handle the rendering in a shorter number of days.

By: Rob Zombie

Rob Zombie — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 00:19:11 +0000

After some research I found that Luxo Jr. was rendered on Power 6/32. Where can I find photos of this computer?

By: neozeed

neozeed — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 08:33:59 +0000

In reply to Bob Turner.

they evaporated into legend so quickly. It’s funny but for so long if you asked around about this ‘Tahoe’ port of 4.3BSD, but wtf is a Tahoe you’d get nothing but people sheepishly not knowing. It’d been a long time quest of mine to figure it out!

Like many things I guess, it’s common enough to get a nickname, but once it drops out of use, it just loses all significance.

By: Bob Turner

Bob Turner — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 03:24:02 +0000

Wow. I figured no one ever knew about the HCX-7 and HCX-9. I was a grad student in at the University of Dayton in the School of Engineering computer center. We got an HCX-9 as a donation. Harris wanted to sell computers to the Air Force (Wright Patterson AFB is nearby and the University does a lot of work). I was the Sysadmin for four years until I graduated. I think it went away around 1995 or 1996. Good box. We used for general Unix programming. I learned named configuration on that system. Long time ago…..

By: neozeed

neozeed — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 14:52:07 +0000

In reply to Xavier. That is interesting! Now I wonder who and how it was made

By: Xavier

Xavier — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 09:21:48 +0000

In the credits of the 1985 movie Young Sherlock Holmes there is a reference:

Power 6/32 Computer Systems supplied by COMPUTER CONSOLES, INC.

By: Mark Brennan

Mark Brennan — Mon, 27 Aug 2018 22:52:25 +0000

Hi Neozeed/Clayton/Helge etc.
I am wondering did you ever come across any product brochure on the HCX range or other systems in the CCI range as I am looking for information to add to our Computer History preservation online efforts.
Regards Mark