morwong

  1. member of the fish family Cheilodactylidae. (source: Australian Museum)

How and when machine obtained:

  • The original Morwong was bought in 1999 with money saved from Coke sales, and with member donations.
  • Morwong was upgraded in 2005 to a UP2000 dual Alpha 833HMz donated to us by Fugro Seismic Imaging here in Perth.

History prior to arrival at UCC:

  • The original Morwong was purchased second-hand from a private company, where it lived life as a server.
  • The new morwong was part of an 8 machine (16 CPU) cluster doing seismic anaylsis for FSI.

UCC history of machine:

  • Bought at the end of 1999/early 2000, with strong support from members who paid for 50% of the machine.
  • A DEC Prioris (pictured right) was cannibalised to add extra disk slots.
  • Successive powersupply deaths and faulty CPU logic caused Morwong to die in early 2005. Thankfully another Alpha, Piggery could be used with Morwong's disk array to keep services running.
  • Morwong was later replaced properly with a UP2000, dual Alpha 833MHz EV68, that was donated by FSI.

Current machine tasks:

  • General purpose user machine, NIS master.

Current software configuration:

  • Digital Unix (Tru64) 5.1B

Current hardware configuration:

  • 2x 833MHz Alpha EV68 processors with 4MB cache
  • 2GB RAM
  • 2x SCSI disks (what size?)

Future plans for machine:

  • Retire as NIS master with the move to LDAP

Special notes:

  • The onboard Adaptec SCSI card in the UP2000 does not play nicely with Tru64 and needs to be disabled.
  • The SCSI card we're using is too tall for the case. To fasten the lid down to the case, some engineering was required with motherboard risers, washers and bolts.

Thanks:

  • All those that donated towards the first machine;
  • Fugro Seismic Imaging for their donation of the new machine;
  • PXY and TRS for getting the new machine working; and
  • Hewlett-Packard, who provided us with Tru64 licensing, gratis

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