Mainframes are to decks what pocket calculators are to decks. Well, almost, at least. Mainframes are at any rate beasties with heaps of memory, and system resources measured in Gigas instead of in Megas. Of course, the big beasties cost more than the small beasties, but even a small beastie is better than no beastie if you want a hot code-burner to write all those little innocent utils on.
The average mainframe is about the size of a large table (1m x 1m x 2m), and needs a stable power supply - and lots of power, too. It might even be connected to the water mains to enable cooling. It'll have none of those blinking lights that are so popular in trids, but might have a small holographic projector on top (that'll show a graphical representation of the system load, of course, as sysadmins are keen to keep up the trid appearance of things), and will probably have a display with a couple of indicator lights - such as, if the power is on, and if any of a number of sub circuits check out correctly (green is nice and red isn't, here as well as other places). Oh, and it'll weigh about 100kg or so - but can of course usually be broken down in any number of smaller
Oh, and if you insist on putting your mainframe on the Matrix, then you'll probably want to install at least some protection of all those valuable data you presumably have there. So that'll be discussed later on.
Rating: Cost:
1-3 100k per point
4-6 200k per point
7-9 500k per point
10+ 1 000k per point
Mainframe Programming Suite: 300 000
System Memory: 500Mp per rating point, upgradable to max 1000Mp
per rating point, for 5 nuyen per Mp.
System Storage: 5000Mp per rating point, upgradable to max 10 000Mp
per rating point, for .5 nuyen per Mp.
Other Resources: A number of terminals equal to the rating of the
system for no extra charge. 200 nuyen per terminal if the terminal
is to be ASIST-equipped.
Mainframe task bonus is 4, 5 if a programming suite is installed.
Then, there's this color thingy, and what it means for your mainframe:
Color System Load Cost
Programming Suite -1 300 000
Blue -1 100 000
Green -3 3 000 000
Orange -6 6 000 000
Red -10 15 000 000
UV Ghost knows ?
Okay. This means that the load of the security system itself (Blue and so on)
reduces the effective rating of the mainframe. And yes, you have to install
at least a Blue system before you can even think about joining up to the
Matrix. And this is of course the price for a system without any ice at all.
If you decide to do the nifty trick of VMs (Virtual Machines to all you lingodorks), you'll have to have a rating on the box at least equal to the load you give it. I mean, if you have a Red 14 (rating 24 painframe) system, you can run up to 14 points of VM on it - say, two Green 4's in parallel, or perhaps a nested Orange 3 - Blue 4 architecture. Catch the paydata?
Oh, and don't worry much about the "painframe" reference. If you've got a mainframe loaded with ice, you've got a "painframe". Or "glacier" in the old lingo, but what with all the dark grey ice around it ain't cool at all any more, but rather worlds of pain.
Anyways, if you just want a hot code-burner, you'll probably not worry much about connecting your torch to the Matrix. So let's do an example.
Sleazy Mike (now there's a handle sure to conjure up some interesting images) wants to have a little think tank to help him write some wizzer software. Now, he decides to buy himself a rating 7 mainframe, at 500k per point for a net total of 3.5M nuyen. Hey, that's a lot of nuyen, Sleazeman. Whaddya do, rip off Renraku? Anyways, he then decides to install a programming suite to really, really rip code with the best, and ends up with a rating 6 mainframe for 3.8M nuyen. Provided his deckmeister or fixer doesn't take too much of a percentage out of his hide for moving that much cash.
So when he's in there writing code on that little wizzer box, he can write software up to rating 6, with a task bonus of +5. That's hot, Sleazeman. But you'd better not think about connecting it up to the Grid, 'cuz you can't load it much with a security system - and we all know how mean a Green-3 host is - which is to say, about on the level with the average lap-dog. Not much, is the message I'm trying to get across. Not to mention that it'll cost Sleazeman 3M cool ones to load it with Green, too.
In one word, don't. If you insist, well... still don't. But here's some hints on how to handle that.
Mainframes are massively parallel little beasties, which means they have a truckload of processors inside their pointy little minds. Or boxes, at any rate. So the first thing you need, is to get your grubby little hands on a truckload of chips.
The number of processors you need, is the cube of the rating you want, which means that the progression is something like:
Rating # no. of processors 1 1 x 1 x 1 = 1 2 2 x 2 x 2 = 8 3 3 x 3 x 3 = 27 4 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 5 5 x 5 x 5 = 125 6 6 x 6 x 6 = 216 7 7 x 7 x 7 = 343 8 8 x 8 x 8 = 512 9 9 x 9 x 9 = 729 10 10 x 10 x 10 = 1000 11 11 x 11 x 11 = 1331 12 12 x 12 x 12 = 1728So, as you can see, there's roughly a drekload of processors needed to make a mainframe of a decent size. Now, considering that you're something of a DIY (Do It Yourself) man, you'll probably want to burn the processors yourself. Well, it's easier than writing an MPCP - but not much.
The MCP (Mainframe Control Protocol) has a multiplier of 6. Buying those processors means forking out the nuyen necessary for the OCC to burn 'em on, and then burning that many chips. That's the bad news. The good news is, you either use the rating the mainframe's going to have, or 5, whichever is more. And if you frag it up, well then, you'll have cooked 2d6*5 percent of the chips before you find out the batch is bad (yes, you cook 'em all in one go).
Okay, Mr. DIY has decided that he'll build the main processing matrix of a, say, rating 6 mainframe (cheeky bastard).
First he writes a rating 6 MCP, which is a Computer Programming test vs. TN 6, and 432 working days. Renting a mainframe with a programming suite (bit of irony, that), he is finished 24 days (3 successes on the computer programming 6 test, 5 in task bonus gives (432/3)/(1+5)=24) later with the MCP program.
Then comes the really fun part. As in, not. Breaking out his trusty Hitachi RM-AX (top of the line is the only way to go), he prepares to cook the processors he needs. Although he's cooking a rating 6 MCP, his TN is 5. The cook time is as for the MPCP - rating x 3 days, where the rating he uses is 5 - remember, either the rating of the mainframe or 5, whichever is lower. So he has 5x3x216=3240 workdays to take down.
Now, luckily the RM-AX has a task bonus of 2, and he rolls 5 successes on his Computer B/R skill test (Karma is a wonderful, wonderful thing), which means that his batch of processors will be ready in (3240/5)/(1+2)=216 days. Also, the cost of this will be 216 x 20 nuyen for one chip (OCC enough for the code of one MCP), and 216 chips to make up the processing matrix, for the grand total of 933 120 nuyen.
Well, the only other system resource you have to worry about now, is really the system memory and system storage on the mainframe. As with any other mainframe, the max memory you can cram into your new codetorch is 1000Mp per rating point, and the max storage you can cram into the box is 10 000Mp per rating point, at 5 nuyen per Mp for memory and .5 nuyen per Mp for storage.
Continuing the example above, Mr. DIY decides to put in 500Mp memory per rating point and 5000Mp storage per rating point, just to compare it with an "off the shelf" mainframe. This figures in at 500Mp x 6 = 3000Mp memory, and 30 000Mp storage, for a total of 15 000 nuyen + 15 000 nuyen = 30 000 nuyen. Adding the 933 120 nuyen for the processing matrix gives a total of 963 120 nuyen for a rating 6 mainframe. Oh yeah, and 240 days of hard work.
The cost of other system resources, such as terminals and printers, is negligible compared to the cost of the processing matrix and memory. If someone insists on installing a truckload of terminals and printers, figure that a terminal to the mainframe costs 300 nuyen (500 nuyen with ASIST), a very high quality color printer costs 100 nuyen, and that a mainframe can handle a number of terminals equal to the square of the mainframe's rating (36 for a rating 6 mainframe).
Oh, and in case you wondered: No, you can't use terminals as ultra-cheap decks and hack around in the Matrix. You see, the terminals supplied with the mainframe aren't stand-alone computers. They're little more than a vid- screen and a keyboard (and perhaps some ASIST circuitry), and as such aren't worth a damn in the Matrix. But you can of course jack in your own deck to your very own mainframe, and hack from there. Trouble is, even though you own the mainframe, it doesn't get any better at hiding its jackpoint location, even though it does deny any trace IC your own jackpoint location. So you can use it as a decoy - but that sort of thing quickly becomes very, very expensive. Especially if you load it with security software worth a damn.
I thought that header would get your attention. Even though mainframes make lousy decks (you can't hack from them worth any damn because of the huge datatrails they leave), they can do something no deck no matter how slick, can do. Load ice.
Ice (or "intrusion countermeasures", if you're a pedantic stuck-up conehead) are nasty programs running on dedicated circuitry, doubly dedicated in that they're dedicated to make any decker's life a digital hell. At least if the mainframe contains any interesting data.
Ice is installed on ROMs, and as such can't be permanently damaged (usually, at least), even though they can be crashed and suppressed. Even though ice is installed on separate circuitry, a mainframe can take only so much of it before system load is radically fragged. And, of course, there's no reason to mount much ice on low systems, as even a Blue-14 system sucks in handling ice.
A mainframe can handle an amount of ice equal to its rating times 4 if it is blue, times 8 if it is green, times 12 if it is orange, and times 16 if it is red. This is its net rating, not its gross rating, i.e. the rating adjusted for the security system it runs. So a Red-11 host can run 176 points of ice, while a blue-11 host can run 44 points of ice.
White IC counts as its rating in points, grey IC counts as double its rating in points, and black IC as triple its rating in points.
Party ice counts an extra point per ice it contains (party ice with one rating 7, one rating 8 and one rating 9 ice counts as 27 points), and each option on any type of ice counts as a point (party ice that's shifting, and with for instance killer 6 tar baby 4 probe 2 counts as 16 points). This means that a Black IC 10 with Armor counts as 33 points ([10+1]x3) of ice.
White IC Multiplier Acid Binder Data Bomb Jammer Killer Marker Probe Scramble Exploding Poison Tar Baby Gray IC Acid-rip Bind-rip Blaster Dataworm Deathworm Jam-rip Mark-rip Sparky Tapeworm Tar Pit Trace Black IC Lethal Non-lethal Psychotropic Cyberphobia Judas Matrix Maniac PCPIC
Updates to come real soon... Promise!