VCF Southeast Photos

[William Donzelli]

> It's a CM-2.  The problem with most CM-2s - aside not working in 2019 -
> is most were never fully populated with card cages in all 8 hyper-cubes.

Most were 16K machines, I think.

> The CM-2 in the photo has faux LED panels installed with LEDs spacing
> that exactly matches the real CPU card stacks.  Each of the 4096 LEDs
> are individually PWM'd and addressable.  The blinky pattern is generated
> by a ESP32 which can also be WiFi and BT controlled.  Only pulls about
> 100 Watts with that pattern running.

CM-5 panels are their own things, and can be powered up without any
processors. They have a bunch of preset modes, two of which dance the
LEDs in a psuedorandom way to impress people when the machine is not
doing anything.

> The machine in the original Jurassic Park was a 're-arranged' CM-5.

It was not even a real machine! Just panels bolted onto unused frames
(no serial numbers), with some power supplies bolted inside. If you
look at the film closely, you will also see that the panels are a bit
"dim". Every other row or so was masked with black gaffers tape.
Apparently there is such a thing as too many blinkenlights.

One of the Jurassic Park CM-5 frames holds Dave Fischer's stuff at
cca.org. It used to be mine, but I had no use for the thing.

--
Will