Sunday 20 May 2012

Where to live in Eindhoven NETHERLANDS




Where to live in Eindhoven

By EXPATICA.COM
Mon 21 May 2012

PHILIPS and Eindhoven go hand-in-hand, but the city, dubbed the smartest in the world in 2011, has a lot more to offer - as many expats have already discovered.


In 2011, Eindhoven was dubbed the smartest city in the world by the Intelligent Community Forum ICF in New York. This doesn't mean that the citizens have the world's highest IQs but rather that the region makes best use of ICT and broadband internet. It's not surprising that 40 percent of all Dutch spending on research & development takes place in this region and Eindhoven and the surrounding region is officially referred to as ‘Brainport', a public-private partnership whose projects include broadband deployment and applications, workforce development, digital inclusion, marketing and advocacy for the region - and especially innovation.

Until the arrival of Philips in 1891, Eindhoven was not much more than a collection of villages. Because of 19th century urban planning decisions, there are no longer canals and pre-1940 architecture was destroyed by war-time bombing. But over the years, things have changed immensely and for the better. Thanks to hi-tech multinational employers, there’s a large community of expats. Eindhoven railway station is close to the centre, and the airport is about three kilometres away.

Although, In 1997, Philips decided to move the headquarters from Eindhoven to Amsterdam, a move which they completed in 2001, Philips Lighting, Philips Research, Philips Semiconductors (spun off as NXP in September 2006) and Philips Design, are still based in Eindhoven.

Most expats live in the villages that surround this industrial city, although the centre of Eindhoven is popular with those looking for apartments. Eindhoven railway station is close to the centre of the city, and its airport is about 3km away.

Central Eindhoven
Accommodation is mainly in new and rather pricey apartments— plus hotel-apartments for short stays — popular with single expats and couples without children. People living in the centre have plenty of facilities, including a shopping mall and scores of international restaurants.The central district includes the international schools--attended by children from Den Bosch and Tilburg--and PSV football stadium.

North (Woensel)
North of the centre is divided by wide, treelined boulevards. Housing is mostly newbuild with apartments and terraced houses for all budgets. Woensel south is cheaper and the market is great for ethnic shopping.

East
Situated around the Karpendonkse Lake and Eckart Forest, the area has a range of
housing including some exclusive detached properties.


South
The Philips High-Tech Campus is situated at Gestel along with the International Primary School, the Open-air Museum and the Tongelreep International Swimming Complex.

The villages surrounding Eindhoven’s centre are popular with expats. International schools are still within cycling distance and the sense of community is greater.

Nuenen
Van Gogh's birthplace has become a popular expat location. This characteristic Dutch village about three kilometres north-east of Eindhoven has many detached houses on 1,000 sq metre plots.

The village is popular with expat families, and children are able to cycle to the international schools in Eindhoven. A car-pooling system for the school run is also in operation.

This compact village has restaurants and a shopping centre, plus a nearby golf course. There is a good road connection with Eindhoven and further afield.

Veldhoven
Veldhoven is virtually a south-west suburb (the other side of the A2 from Eindhoven). Bigger than Nuenen, Veldhoven is stocked with houses mostly built in the past 20-30 years. These detached properties are slightly smaller than those in Nuenen.

Well situated for the international schools, Veldhoven has a large, new shopping centre and plenty of restaurants. The Philips campus is right here.

Waalre
There are some gorgeous — but more expensive — villas to be had in parts of Waalre, in the forest that surrounds the area. These larger houses sometimes have swimming pools and two bathrooms, and sit in up to 3,000 sq metres of land.Popular with top executives and their families, this old village has plenty of shops and restaurants. It's also next door to the Philips campus.

Son en Breugel

Philips Tower: the company that put Eindhoven on the map
Son has excellent transport facilities thanks to the A50 towards Nijmegen — indeed, there are several villages close to the highway that are popular with expats. The village itself has detached houses popular with families. It is 3km from the city centre.

Click here for an overview of new building projects in Eindhoven.

Eindhoven city facts:

Population: 216,068 (www.eindhoven.nl) (The region has around 725,000 inhabitants)
International residents: 29 percent





International schools: Regional International School (4-12) and the
International Secondary School Eindhoven: www.isecampus.nl

Links:
www.eindhoven.nl
www.eindhoven.eu




Saturday 12 May 2012

A Tale of Two Alphas




A Tale of Two Alphas

DEC's new Alpha RISC chip provides high-end performance for both a Unix workstation and a Windows NT server

By RICK GREHAN
BYTE Magazine
DECEMBER 1993

Promising to bring to the desktop a level of computing power once available only from supercomputers, DEC's new Alpha AXP microprocessor recently arrived in two very different guises. The DEC 3000 Model 300 is a small but powerful Unix box with DEC's TurboChannel expansion bus; the DECpc AXP 150 is a compact EISA server that runs Microsoft Windows NT.

Lack of applications makes it hard to flesh out the full performance picture for these two Alpha systems, but a detailed under-the-hood examination and testing with BYTE' s low-level benchmarks gets the process off to a good start. Both systems use a 150-MHz version of DEC's 21064 Alpha CPU, a 64-bit RISC chip.

The architectures of these two machines are quite different, however, with some resulting performance implications. The Model 300 channels data to its CPU via a 64-bit data bus. The AXP 150 provides the Alpha chip with a 128-bit external data bus and a 512-KB secondary RAM cache
that is twice the size of the Model 300's.
Although the two systems are aimed at different markets, the AXP 150 generally does a better job of getting the most power from its Alpha chip.

DEC 3000 Model 300

The Model 300 is the low end of a line of Alpha-based systems designed to run DEC OSF/1, a Unix operating system that supports the DECwindows GUI. DECwindows is more or less a variant of the X Window System. The Model 300's steep entry-level price of $9995 includes a 16-inch color monitor, 32 MB of RAM. a 426-MB SCSI hard drive, and built-in 1280-by 1024-pixel, 256-color accelerated graphics. DEC also provides OSF/1 and all necessary licenses.
Besides the model I reviewed, the DEC 3000 series includes the Model 500. Model 400, and several variants. Models differ in their initial hardware and ultimate expandability. For example, the Model 500 is capable of handling up to 1 GB of system memory, while the Model 300 tops out at just 256 MB. The Model 300 uses parity checking, while the 400 and 500 use ECC (error-correction code).

Compared to the 400 and 500, the Model 300's design sacrifices performance for the sake of cost. Its 64-bit external data bus and 256-KB external cache are half-size compared to those of the higher models. The even less expensive Model 300L forgoes Turbo-Channel expansion slots and runs its Alpha chip at 100 MHz instead of 150 MHz.

DEC provides several graphics configurations for the 3000 line; again. the exact configuration depends primarily on the particular model. The Model 300 system I tested came with a 16-inch color monitor driven by DEC's own HX graphics accelerator. This on-board accelerator provides eight planes of color (256 simultaneous colors on-screen), a frame buffer, and a graphics coprocessing system that' off-loads from the main CPU such fundamental 2-D operations as drawing lines and rectangles. Resolution is 1280 by 1024, pixels with a 72-Hz refresh rate.

The Model 300's 150-MHz Alpha microprocessor communicates to the rest of the system through separate address and data buses (see the figure "DEC 3000 Model 300 Bus Architecture"). The 34-bit address bus contains a separate cache-tag address bus that feeds the cache circuitry; it provides the mechanism to associate memory blocks in the cache with physical memory in system DRAM.

The Model 300's external 256-KB cache is direct-mapped and write-back. The cache's write-back nature means that a write operation from the CPU does not necessarily trigger a write to the slower system memory. Data moves from the SRAM cache to the slower DRAM main memory only when absolutely necessary. This cache augments the Alpha chip's own internal 8-KB instruction and 8-KB data caches (the internal data cache is a write-through cache). For increased performance, the address-data-control logic allows concurrent traffic between the TurboChannel bus and system DRAM and between the CPU and its memory cache.








DIGITAL DEC 3000 Model 300 computer hardware











alpha computer axp 150













Friday 11 May 2012

PHILIPS PTS 6000 Financial Terminal System/PHILIPS PTS 6000 Banking Systems computer hardware







Pictured (picture obtained from Internet) above, if I am not wrong, is PHILIPS PTS 6810 or PHILIPS PTS 6811 minicomputer used by HSBC Bank Malaysia Bhd many years ago sometime between 1980 to 1985. When I joined Philips Data Systems in October 1980 as a Computer Technician, this machine/minicomputer was already there in one of the HSBC Branches in Malaysia. I still remember, in that same year, following my boss Mr. R. Jayagopal (back then he was the Section Head of Philips Data Systems Malaysia) to HSBC Johore Branch to trouble-shoot this HSBC minicomputer. My boss R. Jayagopal drove (.....using the old road....at that time the North-South Expressway was not available yet) all the way from PHILIPS Headquarters Jalan 222 in Petaling Jaya to HSBC Johore Bahru Branch and I was beside him in the car. During the journey I decided to offer my help to drive the car so that he can get some rest, but my boss doesn't feel comfortable so he drive all the way until we reach our destination.

Inside this PHILIPS PTS 6810/11 minicomputer includes a few controller cards. Among them are CHLT (Channel Unit for Local Terminal) card, CHLC (Channel Unit for Line Control) card, CHCR (Channel Unit for Cassette Recorder) card. The CHLT card have 8 ports whereby each port is connected to a PHILIPS TTP 6222 Teller Terminal Printer through a PHILIPS SUML 6314. The CHCR card connects to the Cassette Drive module. The CHLC card connects to the modem. Loading the HSBC programs using the Cassette Drive was a bit slow and it took quite a while  to complete.

The PHILIPS PTS 6812 and PHILIPS PTS 6813 minicomputer were the new models replacing the PHILIPS PTS 6810 and PHILIPS PTS 6811 minicomputer.


If I am not mistaken, the white-color machine pictured above is the PHILIPS TTP 6222 dot-matrix printer. HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad use this PHILIPS TTP 6222 printer for passbook printing. Sitting next to the TTP 6222 printer on the left handside is the PHILIPS keyboard. The OEM for this PHILIPS keyboard is Honeywell. I still remember doing component level repair for this PHILIPS keyboard by replacing the faulty keyswitches. This is another picture of the PHILIPS PTS 6000 keyboard obtain from the web.


Reply to Comments_Unknown


Yes , you are correct . The first picture is not the real picture or the exact photo of the PHILIPS PTS 6810 or the PHILIPS PTS 6811 computer hardware . I have been searching in the Internet for the exact photo of the PHILIPS PTS 6810 and the PHILIPS 6811 but I couldn’t find it at that time . The closest photo that I have found on the Internet which had a slight resemblance to the PHILIPS PTS 6810 or the PHILIPS PTS 6811 is the one that you are seeing right now .
I worked as a Technician with Philips Data Systems in Malaysia from October 1980 to December 1991 and I have install and maintain and troubleshoot a variety of computer hardware from Philips Data Systems , among them is the PHILIPS PTS 6810 and the PHILIPS PTS 6811 . It is a great honour and pleasure to hear someone out there in Sweden is reading my blog and the person reading my blog also happen to be a Technician from Philips Data Systems in Sweden . Do you , by any chance , can get me an exact photo of the PHILIPS PTS 6810 or the PHILIPS PTS 6811 , so that I can replaced it on the first picture ?
Oh ya , if I happen to be in Sweden , I would love to meet you in person . Seems like we have something in common . As of today , Wednesday 21st. February 2018 , I am a retired Technician and I am not working anymore but I still like to play around with computer hardware and computer
software . Once again , thank you very much for visiting my blog and have a nice day .

I am,
Yours very truly,
Norizan bin Hassan .



Reply to Comments_[P.P.]

Hi !  Thank you very much for visiting my blog . I hope I have the chance/opportunity to vist the Technical Museum in Stockholm someday . Have a nice day !

I am,
Yours very truly,
Norizan bin Hassan