From digg.com check out the pics from a Cray museum:

[www.digibarn.com]

Very cool.

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3GHz - The clock is STILL ticking Steve.

Yup, very cool.

I wonder if the look of the web site is intentionally retro as well.

Or what Bill Gates looked like, from that site. This was an insert in a Mac ad.

One tends to forget they were all just basically kids who got lucky. This was barely yesterday:

Are those wires behind the glass in those pics.

What happens if you have a bad wire? Can you imagine trouble shooting that and tracing back the problem?

The reason it was made semi-circular is that they were so concerned with the delay through the wires that they wanted to make them as short as possible between the components that were slightly away from each other.

Remember that one foot of wire is about a nanosecond.

Did not know that about the wires. Very cool.

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3GHz - The clock is STILL ticking Steve.

Looks like a giant refrigerator with some processors in between.

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OWC Larry
Other World Computing
[www.macsales.com]

Where's the laptop model :-?

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Must be where a lot of movies got the idea of what the inside of a super computer should look like.

Star Wars
I, Robot
etc...

If you're ever around DC, take a quick ride up to Ft Meade & visit the NSA's National Cryptologic Museum. Several modern Crays, one a cutaway, on display. Also several German Enigma machines [www.nsa.gov] and other wild crypto devices are displayed. Museum info & a pic of the cutaway [www.nsa.gov]

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I used to do a lot of computational work and I remember when being able to use the Cray meant a huge deal to us. Dumb terminals connected to what we had on site for coding, then submitting the job to the cray across the country for execution. Come back the next morning to see the results and getting really pissed when a FORTRAN error prevented compilation and having to wait another day for the results. Those were not the days.

Where's the laptop model :-?


How big is your lap?

I think that's the Paul Bunyon model they're showing.

Wasn't there an anecdote about Apple buying a Cray supercomputer, then calling up Seymour Cray to tell him that they were using the new Cray to design the next Apple computer. Cray comes back saying '-that's funny, I'm using an Apple to design the next Cray'

Ahh, that is definitely bringing back memories.

Back about 10 years ago, a local company in my home town (DeKalb, IL) got a contract from Cray for "reclaiming" components from systems that were being taken out of service. Cray didn't sell systems a vast majority of the time as I understand, they would lease them to you, with employees as well.

So... this place was basically a huge computer chop shop; from giant hulking beast IBM systems (the real "big blue" machines that were 5 tons, to oh, the odd Lisa (yes, there were a few macs now and again!). 100,000 square foot warehouse, old Wurlitzer piano factory warehouse. I was in heaven anytime I got to peruse the pallets of parts there. :>)

The Crays were a late addition; I think he stripped probably 10 or so. Gold, and LOTS of it in those machines, this place/guy had a fantastic place for tearing a machine down from start to finish. Only problem was, the Cray employees were there from the beginning to the end to see specific components destroyed, melted down, stripped, and torn from stem to stern. AND... they didn't want anyone there other than employees that they had cleared, and done a background check on. Yes, I am serious - they were like that. They brought the machine in, 18 wheeler full of it, moved it in, and stayed till the end.

So... The owner was telling me all about this cool stuff he was stripping out of the Crays, but I could never see them. About 8 or 9 machines into this (about a year - year and a half), he calls me one Friday afternoon about 430 and says "Hey kid, the suits left to go to the bar - get your ass over here and check this Cray (think it was a Y-MP) out that they brought in yesterday". So...

I really wish I had brought a camera. Talk about a cool machine -I recall it was blue. This one came from an Air Force base somewhere in Missouri, as I recall. Dunno what it was doing, but I'm sure it was well used. :>) They had stripped all of the cards out of it but for one of the banks - they weighed A TON! They were melting them down, and then shearing them in half after all components were taken off. He told me how much gold was in each card - I cannot recall but it was certainly not chump change, especially in today's market. :>)

Aluminum towers were sheared into sections, and the only things they could just dispose of were the fake leather seats/chairs and the plexiglass tower fronts. I still have one of those. Was about 8' long, I actually cut some for a project or two (had an amplifier rack in my S-10 Blazer a long time ago that was used as a mount, plexy looked awesome that way!) They took all the labels, badges, etc. off of them - darn...

I recall a couple years ago seeing Cray parts on eBay, like the memory cards set in a block of lucite. That, would have been a cool paperweight (a big honkin' one though).

:>)

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Good Luck!
Jamie Dresser
Other World Computing