5 Feb
2007
5 Feb
'07
12:24 a.m.
Bob Shannon wrote:
I worked for Thinking Machines Inc.
I had the oppertunity to design the system status and margining panel for
the CM1.
I had to work with an artist, Tamiko was her name if I recall correctly.
Tamiko has some web pages and articles about the TMI/CM experience at:
http://www.mission-base.com/tamiko/cm/cm-text.htm
(Came across the pages a couple years ago, but don't remember why, might have
been mentioned previously on the list.)
I had to get the 'look' of the status
LED's just 'right', diffused through
some machined
plastic parts. The color, brightness, etc, all were top priority design
issues that the
artist had final say over.
I think I wound up using some fancy LED's from HP that were very new at the
time
Ultrabright green, shining up from behind the machined plastic bits. A bit
of a counter
point to the rows and rows of red leds.
Now that was (and is) an artsy machine.
Some of TMC's artistic work on the CM1 was driven by looking at photos of
some
of the cray machines, like the one with the waterfall cooling system, and
the projected
logo floating in the coolant.
Clearly Cray won that contest.