[ML-General] BBS The Documentary

[david]

About 10 years ago, I bought a Cray YMP (the "Baby Cray") because it was 
a supercomputer of it's day.  8 processors (wow!) and 2 gig of memory 
(unheard of).  Brought it home and had to run a separate 220v line to 
the computer room and change out the power connector on the Cray to 
match what was commercially available around here.  When I fired it up 
(and fire is the correct term,) the OS and all compilers and libraries 
were intact!  Woohoo.
I could live with the quite loud fan noise, but within minutes I 
realized I had a new whole-house heating system!  So, I could only turn 
it on for specific experiments and tinkering and couldn't run it for 
more than 30 minutes at a time.  Bah humbug.  So I sold it in a few 
months.  <sigh>
Cray had *awesome* compilers, especially with the automagic 
multiprocessor load spreading.  I bet SGI bought the Cray company just 
for those compiler technologies.

David Merchant


On 03/20/2015 05:35 PM, WebDawg wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 3:17 PM, david <ainut at knology.net 
> <mailto:ainut at knology.net>> wrote:
>
>     Boy, does that bring back memories!  I jumped into the home
>     computer world in 1977 and instantly became evangelistic for the
>     concept, for home and businesses.  Sold my first commercial
>     program in 1978.  Not even floppies were available for the Apple
>     II at that time.
>
>     I still look back in wonder at WHY in the world did I pay $1,998
>     for a 5 meg hard drive in 1981 or so, for an IBM PC.  But that is
>     how I now make my living.  In '77, $1,698 for an Apple II with a
>     whopping 48K (yes, kilobytes) of memory; did not include monitor
>     or tape drive, and floppies were not available.  That was just for
>     the system.  It only did 40 characters per line back then because
>     it was built to use normal TV's for monitors.  It was so funny
>     watching the UPS guy's eyes get bigger and bigger as I counted out
>     the cash to give him when the Apple was delivered!  Back then,
>     $1700 was like a quarter of some people's annual salary.  I was
>     hooked and hooked bad.  :)  I bet I spent I spent more on computer
>     books, magazines, and software than I did for the hardware per
>     year. :)
>
>     It also ruined my body but now we know more about the ergonomics. 
>     <sigh>  I remember reading a multi-page article about ergo in 1978
>     or so and thought yeah, these guys have great ideas.  I adopted
>     most of them, but remember, that was way before mice were used.
>
>     David Merchant
>
>
> Interesting words.
>
>
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