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Homebrew Cray-1A

107 points| nilicule | 11 years ago |chrisfenton.com | reply

22 comments

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[+] fentonc|11 years ago|reply
Chris Fenton here - someone did actually send me an 80MB 'disk pack' with software, and I was able to modify a super old disk drive to actually read it:

http://www.chrisfenton.com/cray-1-digital-archeology/

And thanks to some awesome help from others, I was able to actually recover a copy of COS (Cray OS):

http://www.chrisfenton.com/cos-recovery/

Andras Tantos and I have been collaborating on this together for a while now, and he actually has a downloadable Cray X-MP datacenter simulator he wrote, where you can run the COS image I found:

http://www.modularcircuits.com/blog/articles/the-cray-files/

[+] timdiggerm|11 years ago|reply
Maybe you should link these pages together better
[+] Animats|11 years ago|reply
Now if only someone can get this guy some Cray-I software. Even the Computer Museum, which has an actual Cray-I they use as a piece of furniture, apparently doesn't have any.

The Cray-I is a rather simple machine at the logic level. There are 64 of some registers, but they're all the same. The instruction set is small.

[+] totalforge|11 years ago|reply
To be fair, booting the Cray would require a good sized power substation. The power bill would be... impressive.
[+] timdiggerm|11 years ago|reply
I wonder if anyone's asked the National Cryptologic Museum/NSA
[+] readerrrr|11 years ago|reply
How did they code it, in assembly?
[+] krylon|11 years ago|reply
This is so awesome.

But what I'd really like is that to-scale case and put a small PC in it. Even if one does not care at all about its historic significance, the Cray-1 was one of the most visually appealing computers I have ever seen. Having a miniature version of it sitting on my desk would be extremely cool.

[+] VLM|11 years ago|reply
Well, just saying:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:26671

On a slightly larger scale, I will, eventually, in my infinite space time, have a full size wooden cray I in my rec room as a sitting couch. I have the carpentry skill and tools and structural experience to pull this off. For many years I have periodically worked on dimensioned drawings. My strategy revolves around making eleven identical 22.5 degree segments with a framework and panels mounted in slots and two "about half" segments and then bolting the column detail from one to the internal framework of the other. This makes it very easy to build and very easy to move (well, sure, 13 total segments and maybe 10 bolts each means a lot of wrench time when you move it, but no segment is individually too big for a person to move.)

To warn other people, this is a typical "large machine in a giant data center looks small, but it looks huge in a normal size house" kind of problem. Its about six and a half feet tall and about eight and a half feet across so its a rather substantial investment in space. Then again you can use the enclosed volume for storage. Essentially you have eleven small full height coat closets and under seat storage also.

I have a basement rec room / craft room / lab that runs the length of my house so it will be more or less in proportion other than height.

[+] jhallenworld|11 years ago|reply
Please upload any working cray image to bitsavers.org.

I wrote an emulator for a Motorola Exorciser (6800 development system: http://exorsim.sourceforge.net/ ), and am totally in debt to whoever uploaded the MDOS disk images.

[+] pmiller2|11 years ago|reply
I'm wondering about the relative performance between this and the real Cray-1A. Surely, this thing beats it on a FLOPS/Watt basis, at least. :)
[+] martin1b|11 years ago|reply
Anxious to see how this turns out. Very interesting!
[+] eaxitect|11 years ago|reply
I really like the idea and implementation.
[+] JetSpiegel|11 years ago|reply
But can it run Crysis?

Or even Doom?