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View Full Version : A lot of macs - it made me smile :)




Eomando
Aug 30, 2004, 10:39 AM
I'm not sure how fitting this is here, but I thought it might make some people feel a little happier, just like it did for me...

Just on Friday, I went to the HERA particle accelerator in Hamburg, Germany (I'm a summer student working for DESY, if anyone feels like looking the place up) and they took us down into the accelerator ring...passing through the main control centre on the way..

...and what made me smile was seeing more old macs than ever before, all being used as the backbone of controlling every aspect of the collider - absolutely amazing! :D (To put it in perspective for non-physicsy people, they're helping to control two extremely high energy beams of protons/electrons, travelling around in a massive circle, and arranging it so that these two beams collide at highly precise points about the ring...and making sure that nothing goes horribly wrong)..

Admittedly I didn't see any *new* macs there (which was a little sad :( ) but as far as i can remember, there were lots of apple IIci, IIe, a few that looked oldish but whose names i couldn't see...and a strange monitor that was portrait instead of landscape (really i'm a newb here, my first macs my powerbook g4 ;) ).. but 3/5 of the computers controlling the ring were macs, still being used (and being used whilst i was there too)...

Just thought I'd share, it was a little surprising for me to see them all there :)



CmdrLaForge
Aug 30, 2004, 11:38 AM
I'm not sure how fitting this is here, but I thought it might make some people feel a little happier, just like it did for me...

Just on Friday, I went to the HERA particle accelerator in Hamburg, Germany (I'm a summer student working for DESY, if anyone feels like looking the place up) and they took us down into the accelerator ring...passing through the main control centre on the way..

...and what made me smile was seeing more old macs than ever before, all being used as the backbone of controlling every aspect of the collider - absolutely amazing! :D (To put it in perspective for non-physicsy people, they're helping to control two extremely high energy beams of protons/electrons, travelling around in a massive circle, and arranging it so that these two beams collide at highly precise points about the ring...and making sure that nothing goes horribly wrong)..

Admittedly I didn't see any *new* macs there (which was a little sad :( ) but as far as i can remember, there were lots of apple IIci, IIe, a few that looked oldish but whose names i couldn't see...and a strange monitor that was portrait instead of landscape (really i'm a newb here, my first macs my powerbook g4 ;) ).. but 3/5 of the computers controlling the ring were macs, still being used (and being used whilst i was there too)...

Just thought I'd share, it was a little surprising for me to see them all there :)

Sounds pretty cool, I guess unfortunatly you don't have any pics ? Or do you ?

Eomando
Aug 30, 2004, 01:44 PM
Not of my own, i'm afraid :(

Still, a few other people had their camera's with them, and i'm the only one with enough free hard disk space on their computers to store them, so i'll get to see if there are any there - if there are, i'll certainly post them.

Eomando
Aug 30, 2004, 02:06 PM
Actually, I lie... I already have some of the photo's and there are indeed a couple of the control room..

Ignore the grinning posing bloke ;)

http://tmp.lithitux.org/DSC02319.JPG
http://tmp.lithitux.org/DSC02316.JPG <-- this one has the portrait monitor

Now people can play "spot the apple" :)

vollspacken
Sep 1, 2004, 06:03 PM
the links don't work

vSpacken

Eomando
Sep 2, 2004, 08:50 AM
:/ they work fine for me.. i click, then there's the picture :confused: Perhaps the server just had a blip?

cubist
Sep 2, 2004, 09:15 AM
They work fine for me too... Wow, I see some Mac II's, a IIci, and several apple monitors. In the first picture there's a guy using a USB (iMac) keyboard, maybe he's got a blue & white below the desk. Cool pictures!

vollspacken
Sep 3, 2004, 03:38 PM
it's working now :)

vSpacken

CmdrLaForge
Sep 5, 2004, 09:26 AM
Actually, I lie... I already have some of the photo's and there are indeed a couple of the control room..

Ignore the grinning posing bloke ;)

http://tmp.lithitux.org/DSC02319.JPG
http://tmp.lithitux.org/DSC02316.JPG <-- this one has the portrait monitor

Now people can play "spot the apple" :)

Thanks, thats great ;)

Macmaniac
Sep 5, 2004, 10:44 AM
They are the macs that never die. It really goes to show you how well an old Apple can do.