Yesterday's supercomputer

[DoctorDoom]

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/CompTech/Cray1.jpg" align="left" hspace="8" border="1" />The Cray-1 is to supercomputers what Sigmund Freud is to psychiatrists. That is to say: it's likely the only one of the bunch that you've heard about, and you can feign cleverness just by dropping the name.

So let's take a whack at this computer legend.

Cray 1

Released: 1976
Price: ~$5m-$9m
OS: Cray Operating System, UNICOS
Processor: 80 MHz
Memory: 8MB max main memory

[snip]

The Cray-1 was a 64-bit system running at 80MHz. The system performed at 160 MIPS (that's 80HMz x 2 instructions). Addressing was 24-bit with a maximum of 1 megaword (8MB) of main memory. It's composed of 24 chassis with 16 dedicated to memory. It weighed approximately 5.5 tons and ran on 115 kilowatts. Storage and cooling bumped the power to an immense 250 kW while running.

The Cray-1 is composed of two 5-layer 6" x 8" circuit boards per module. Between the two boards is a copper plate that conducts heat from the boards to the freon refrigeration system below. More on that very soon.<br clear-"all">Remembering the Cray-1 (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/05/tob_cray1/)

Compare the specs with even the cheapest Wal-Mart package puter and you'll appreciate just how far computer technology has advanced in three decades.

[BarryC]

Yeah, I've heard just how crude the computers were that Mission Control used when we sent men to the moon on July 20, 1969. Wow.
Somewhere my dad still has an old Atari Computer. I can't remember the model designation at the moment, but the main disc was actually dual floppies!

[BabyBeastie]

it's even in the shape of a letter "c." lol

nevermind a pc, my old palm 3c has just as much memory. lol

[Elgalad]

Hey Doc, remember yesterday's PC? :D

This was my first..

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/2637/400sysfc4.jpg

Trying to remember here.. I worked an entire summer for neighbor farmers, loading hay and cutting pigs (please don't ask).. saved up about $600 and blew the whole thing one afternoon up at the shopping mall in the 'big city'. I think this was around 1980, and I was in 9th grade.

My parents thought I was nuts to spend that much on a 'game'. They heard the word 'atari' and immediately thought of the old console game. I wore out the membrane keyboard (those were fun.. not. :sad:) and had to get it replaced, which cost quite a bit since there weren't a whole lot of computer shops back then. I upgraded it a few years later to an atari 1200.

Here are a few stats in case anyone's interested..

Atari 400 (the CHEAPER model ~ the 800 was a lot more) retailed for around $550 and came out in 1979. It used a chip called an MOS 6502 which ran at a blazing 1.8 MHz speed.

RAM: came with 8k, but you could upgrade it. I got mine all the way up to 16k, woohoo! (48k was the max)

Display: 24 x 40 text (this was all ASCII, there was only one font and size)
320 x 192 (the screen was blue, text was white)
160 x 96 with 128 colors.

Microsoft wasn't around back then, at least not in anything like its current incarnation, and every Computer manufacturer (it was mostly just Atari, Commodore, TRS-80, and Apple back then for home computers) had their own Operating System. Atari's used one called "TOS" and it was very similar to the first Windows. They probably copied it from Apple or maybe Apple copied some of it from them, I don't know.. but it used a graphic desktop rather than ASCII commands like DOS did.

It had 2 internal slots for expansion, I think this was for the RAM upgrades and 1 cartridge slot that you can see on the picture for ROM cartridges (mostly games). There were 4 jacks for joysticks and other I/O controllers and one video output ~ a b/n type connector that you had to connect through an adaptor box onto your television's antenna input.

I think Atari (and other companies) sold monitors back then, but the technology was new and they only had b/w versions. It was easier (and a lot cheaper) just to use one's tv.

Memory storage was all external. You couldn't write onto the ROM cartridges so you had to use a mono type recorder. This was frustrating as hell because there was a little meter on the thing and it didn't turn on and shut off via the computer, only through hitting the 'play' and 'stop' buttons. So to Load a program from a cassette, you had to queue it up and then spend.. oh, 20 minutes maybe, loading a software package. You could write to a cassette, but the odds of retrieving your data were pretty slim :rolleyes:.

Later they added floppy drives, 5.25" and 3.5" (I think?) these were a Lot more reliable and fast, but they went out of alignment all the time.


I can't believe how far we've come in the last 25 years.

Nor can I imagine what computers (supercomputers and PCs) will look like 25 years from now.. but I expect they'll make what we have now look like that old AT400.


-Elgalad

[DesertFox]

My first puter was a Kaypro, which I bought because a friend had one and that was the only name I new. This was 1986. Cost $2k with printer. Needed it for my Master's thesis. Slower'n you cain't even imagine, but still faster than retyping everything.

[DoctorDoom]

This was my first "computer". It was essentially a game machine. programmed by plug-in cartidges. Some games used the keyboard. I connect it on occasion for nostalgia.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/CompTech/Odyssey2.jpg

This was my first actual computer. It still works flawlessly.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/CompTech/Timex-Sinclair_1000.jpg

It came with 2K of memory. The block on the back is a 16K expander.

From that I went to the Commodore 64 and then to the 128, used mostly with the PaperClip III word processor, a remarkably sophisticated program for the time.

The first PC was an HP 8260 with Windows 95, a 266 MHz P2, and a whopping 4 GB hard drive. Eventually it was obsoleted by software that needed more, and my present box was built in 2002. And it was out of date by the time I put it online. Such is the world of computers.

[BarryC]

In the late 1980s we had a game on the Atari computer. The game was called Atom Smasher. I know because I took a picture of the game on the monitor screen after I got to an all-time high score. The picture was taken around January or February of 1989. The number on the monitor is Atari SC1224. I still can't remember the computer model number.
My mom used to play Atom Smasher for literally hours on end, every day. I played a lot, but not as much as my mom did. She used to set and break records all the time.
When I get my computer back I can scan the photo.
I can't remember if the computer is still in the house or not. I do know that my dad always said the disk is dual floppies.
Barry
P.S.- I love old technology, especially when it still works. That reminds me. When I took typing in high school (two years), we learned on antique typewriters, because the school couldn't afford new ones. Most of them were Underwoods. I had a portable electric at home that my dad bought for me from the church secretary. Maybe I should pull it out and try to use it sometime.

[2thePoint]

I went to computer school in the late 1970s, when we had 80-column punched cards (anybody else remember keypunch machines?). You typed your program onto these cards and then fed them to a mini-computer, usually an IBM System/3 or Series/1. And all it could do was print out a report on a "line" or "chain" printer.

It wasn't until I went back to school to study electronics that anybody heard of a home computer or some academic thing called "the internet". They had some very early PCs ("Juniors" I think). One of our electronics projects was to design hardware that would interface between the PC and a CMC machine, so you could download a machine-code program into a PROM, which was a big deal then because it was the only way to store a program for the CMC. Wowie.

At home, we got an Atari 2600 and bought a boatload of cartridges, mostly from Activision. We also had the original PONG game in a big, red, plastic console. My brother might still have that, I'm not sure. My big claim to fame was being the first in our family to beat the chess program. Level 1. Ha!

[DoctorDoom]

... (anybody else remember keypunch machines?)Yep. And punched tape. And ASR-33 Teletype terminals for time sharing.

[Elgalad]

We had a teletype terminal at my high school that was connected to the local College through a phone modem. The modem had rubber suction cup thingies for the phone. And I remember the punchtape to load programs too. :D Though I think most of our stuff was on punch cards instead.

When we got our first CRT, you had to sign up a week in advance for a half hour slot to use it. Everyone wanted to play ASCII games on it. Trying to remember some of them.. There was an adventure game, and a star trek game, a few others.

The math teacher had no idea how to teach any of us how to program, so we just taught ourselves BASIC.

A truly dedicated nerd back then, would come into school an hour early so that he could sneak in time on the CRT terminal. I got away with that for a month before the others figured it out, heh.

Don't miss the computer bronze age, not one bit.


-Elgalad

[BarryC]

My dad got into computers as soon as he got out of the Air Force, 1961 or 1962. He's been working in the computer field ever since. Previous to 1985 when we all still lived in North Jersey he had a Monrobot XI system in the house that came from one of his accounts. The thing was made circa 1959. There was a time when he had two of those in the house. When I was a kid there were always little plastic boxes of paper tape around the house, tons of them. But he used to dump them in the woodstove out in the garage and burn them up. In retrospect he says he should never have done such a thing.

When I was still going to public school (K thru 5), each day one student had the priviledge of taking the daily attendance records over to the principal's office. This consisted of a large brown expandable envelope, the kind that ties closed with an attached string, filled with 80-column punch cards.

I remember that tests and quizzes were run off on a mimeograph machine. Our church also had one for running off the church bulletins every week. The one that the church had, you had to turn it round and round by hand. The one at the public school I went to, went round and round by itself.

[Rhino]

... (anybody else remember keypunch machines?)Yep. And punched tape. And ASR-33 Teletype terminals for time sharing.Remember them well, and not fondly.

[DoctorDoom]

My worst experience was with an antique numerical-control machine that used tubes (transistors with filaments) and stepper switches for data storage. The main stepper went bad and I got to replace it, 300 plug-on wires, all the same color and none of them identified. It took a couple of hours of one-at-a-time transferring, but it was completed with only two wires swapped—they came off of the defective switch together.

And then there was the Iron Butterfly, a punch-card controlled, pneumatically operated wire wrapping machine by Gardner-Denver (http://www.tutorgig.com/ed/Wire_wrap). That one used IBM wire-contact control relays, and some of the circuit timing depended on the operating delay of the relays. When the wires weakened, the machine malfunctioned. It was unloved.