Comment by physix

That brings back memories!

I wrote Monte-Carlo simulations to calculate the thermodynamics of oxygen ordering in a high temperature superconductor way back in 1993.

Calculating thermodynamic fluctuations on a 256x256 lattice took all night. And that, even though it ran on an HP 9000/750 with a 66 MHz PA-7000 (PA-RISC 1.1) 32-bit CPU.

While waiting, I used to look at weather satellite images downloaded from CERN using NCSA Mosaic. It was impressive. All the information available at your fingertips by using arrow keys and pressing return on underlined text to navigate to the next page! Emmm, link.