29 Jun
2001
29 Jun
'01
3:41 a.m.
Well, one cabinet of a CM-5. Stripped, too. Basically, it is somewhat like
three standard 19" racks welded together. About 7 feet tall. Heavy as sin.
No skins. Interesting provenence - it was one of the two machines used in
Jurrasic Park. The blinkenlights panels will be removed to populate (and
the extras to pay for) another CM-5.
Located in either Providence, RI (if you pick it up *really* soon), or
Carmel, NY.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
29 Jun
29 Jun
1:24 p.m.
What a shame.
I worked on the CM-1. Now that was a machine, custom processors, etc!
The later machines were just boxes full of sparks, errr, SPARCs...
William Donzelli wrote:
Well, one cabinet of a CM-5. Stripped, too. Basically,
it is somewhat like
three standard 19" racks welded together. About 7 feet tall. Heavy as sin.
No skins. Interesting provenence - it was one of the two machines used in
Jurrasic Park. The blinkenlights panels will be removed to populate (and
the extras to pay for) another CM-5.
Located in either Providence, RI (if you pick it up *really* soon), or
Carmel, NY.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
1 Jul
1 Jul
4:42 p.m.
What a shame.
This rack was never a real machine, as far as I can tell. It does not have
a tag or serial number on it, and since the movie was being filmed pretty
much after Thinking Machines sank, it was probably just an extra rack. The
blinkenlights panels (yes, they really blink, in one of seven ways) were
mounted in a rather non-standard way, complete with black construction
paper for light shields. The rack has a power supply for the eight panels,
but never had anything else installed (backplanes, more supplies, cables,
etc.).
So it is really not a shame. In fact, its rebirth as 10,000 Cambell's
soup cans will be fairly painless, as four of the panels will be used to
populate the network cabinet of a real CM-5.
Did you ever work on CM-5s? The damn things have the most complex set of
skins ever devised (purely form over function), and frankly, I am stuck.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
2 Jul
2 Jul
11:41 a.m.
No sir, I only worked on the original CM-1 prototypes.
I was a junior engineer for TMI long long ago, and designed some (minor)
parts of the CM-1's such as the system staus panels, power supply margining
scheme, and a clock distribution ECO that de-skewed the early hardware.
TMI was a very odd place to work.
The mechanical engineer for the Connection Machines was a really brilliant
engineer. I can't place his name at the moment, but I do recall him telling
me
that very early in his carreer, he had gotten to do some mechanical design for
the electronics modules that went to the moon on the Apollo missions.
William Donzelli wrote:
What a shame.
This rack was never a real machine, as far as I can tell. It does not have
a tag or serial number on it, and since the movie was being filmed pretty
much after Thinking Machines sank, it was probably just an extra rack. The
blinkenlights panels (yes, they really blink, in one of seven ways) were
mounted in a rather non-standard way, complete with black construction
paper for light shields. The rack has a power supply for the eight panels,
but never had anything else installed (backplanes, more supplies, cables,
etc.).
So it is really not a shame. In fact, its rebirth as 10,000 Cambell's
soup cans will be fairly painless, as four of the panels will be used to
populate the network cabinet of a real CM-5.
Did you ever work on CM-5s? The damn things have the most complex set of
skins ever devised (purely form over function), and frankly, I am stuck.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
8574
days inactive
8577
days old
3 comments
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