I put a bid into buying the remains of TMC (Connection Machine Service, Inc.), but only won a small portion. I remember seeing "the pile" - maybe 50 CM-5 cabinets, a few CM-2s, and lots of junk. I did get a CM-5, plus one of the units used in Jurrassic Park (there were two - the other went out west, I think for "Jurrasic Park: the Ride"). I needed the panels, so I parted the thing out. I have the panels (some are available - contact me off list), and the frame went to one of the RCS guys. If you look at the movie, sharp eyes will notice that the lights are not right! The props people mounted the panels on the side of the frames, not the ends as they should be. They also put them in sideways. To top it off, most of the LEDs are actually blacked out with gaffers tape - apparently too many blinkenlights! The frames were never supercomputers - they were never populated, and never received serials. No power supplies, no cables, no backplanes, no nothing! They were simply surplus frames left over after CM-5 (all CM, actually) production stopped. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

Is it me or does it look a lot like the "thinking machine" systems builds/mock-ups for that ****-head James Cameron's Terminator series? I know! We should sue on behalf of The Connection Machine Group and start it up again. Hell, even a machine that could decide humans aren't worth it and wipe most of us out, is better than Bush =) -John Boffemmyer IV At 01:25 PM 5/22/2004, you wrote: ---------------------------------------- Founder, Lead Writer, Tech Analyst and Web Designer Boff-Net Technologies http://boff-net.dhs.org/index.html ---------------------------------------

Oops Jurassic Park is on NBC right now.

Having done some work for NASA (including being at Ames) in the late 80's, I can state that the time did (on rare occasion) get fairly "wild".

On Sat, May 22, 2004 at 10:39:18PM -0700, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: I was not referring to the CHM... I was in the machine room at NASA Ames in the early 90s, on a private tour with an aquaintance who worked there (we'd both just been to a VR conference in San Jose). The machine was plugged in, live, and in use. -ethan P.S. - it was also the day I first used this thing I'd only heard of before, called "The World Wide Web", via a very early release of Mosaic. -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 23-May-2004 07:10 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -78.5 F (-61.4 C) Windchill -113.5 F (-80.90 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 8.80 kts Grid 073 Barometer 671.8 mb (10937. ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

On Sun, 23 May 2004, David V. Corbin wrote: Post some pictures, man! -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Sat, May 22, 2004 at 06:08:19PM -0700, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: In its "native habitat"? Surely that's in the wild (as compared to "on TV") I thought the question meant "seen one up close and in person" as opposed to "seen one on the cart on the way to the melter"... -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 23-May-2004 03:50 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -76 F (-60.0 C) Windchill -114.9 F (-81.7 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 11.7 kts Grid 066 Barometer 671.6 mb (10945. ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html