Article and videos about Cray-1 computer

[Carl Raymond]

I came across this from EDN the other day about the Cray-1 supercomputer from 1976: http://www.edn.com/design/power-management/4412360/1/Cray--1-super-computer--The-power-supply

On the second page, there's a couple of videos of talks by Seymour Cray from the 1970's and 1980's.  This was really fascinating.  It used a crazy amount of power (5.2v at 770 amps).  There's hundreds of circuit boards hand-wired together with thousands of wires by people small enough to fit inside the center.

Carl

[Tim D. Childs]

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Very cool.

I used to work on stuff like this. The CDC 6000's we had were built in a
similar (but more linear) fashion (not surprising since Seymour worked for CDC
before going out on his own). The main console displays had vacuum tubes in
them and, as I was the resident tube guy, I got to maintain them. Ahh, the
"good" old days. ;)

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[Terence Conklin]

On 5/9/2013 2:52 PM, Tim D. Childs wrote:

 The main console displays had vacuum tubes in them and, as I was the resident tube guy, I got to maintain them.  Ahh, the "good" old days.  ;)

Clearly you lived in the golden age, as we re-embrace tube audio...
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/aopenax4btube/
and Arduino tube shields...
http://nutsvolts.texterity.com/nutsvolts/201304/?pg=30#pg30

No doubt the program results looked "warmer" back then with a tube display.   ;-)    I distinctly remember sweating to the glow of my rack of Heathkit equipment in my ham shack back in the day.  And that was in a basement!

Now if I had only had a couple of 20-ton compressors  :-O, well, I would have been on the air constantly.

 
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