VCF Southeast Photos, Now Thinking Machines

[Ethan O'Toole]

> 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.  That 
> particular machine only has card cages in 2 of the hyper-cubes.  The other 6 
> are empty.  I'm not sure a machine with max 64K processors was ever actually 
> sold to a real customer.

Years ago in my SGI collecting days the Connection Machine 5 was high on 
my list. I never found one, and that seems good since the one at the NSA 
museum is huge. I don't even know if it would fit into a normal dock 
height Penske truck.

Any idea how many are out there in the collector sphere?

I know the NSA museum has CM-5
I know the Mountain View museum has a CM-2
Apparently the GA Museum has a CM-2

I saw a CM-5 system that ... was very small footprint on a work trip to a 
datacenter. It didn't have the LED panels visible through the front or 
anything, and it was pretty small. Like maybe just a fraction of a system 
in a box doing some processing. They talked as if it was running jobs of 
some sort but it might end up at auction (I didn't persue since it didn't 
really look like a CM2/CM5.)

I had a MASPAR MP-2 at one point but sold it to someone in Florida to free 
up some space.

Very cool to see some of these being preserved.

--
: Ethan O'Toole