This guy implemented his own Cray-1A, the coolest supercomputer ever made

Posted by on October 16, 2014 Leave a comment (11) Go to comments
If anyone out there has access to any software that ran on the Cray-1A, contact this person.  Apparently, SGI destroyed their software archives and this is the one thing you can't find on the internet.

» Homebrew Cray-1A
As part two (see previous attempt) of my ongoing series in ‘computational necromancy,’ I’ve spent the last year and a half or so constructing my own 1/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1. This project falls purely into the “because I can!” category – I was poking around the …


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11 Comments.

  1. Mike Wissinger October 16, 2014 at 10:57 am

    The St. Louis Science Center used to have one on display in a gallery.  I don't know if their collection includes any software or documentation, or even if they still have the Cray itself.

    Reply
  4. Wolfgang Stief (stiefkind) October 17, 2014 at 12:25 am

    We have several Cray computers at Cray-Cyber.org. Our oldest Cray machine is a (running) 4 CPU Y-MP EL, which still is 15 years newer than a Cray-1. There is no software for Cray-1 in our archives.

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  5. Ralph H. October 17, 2014 at 1:12 am

    i know the "Deutsche Museum" has (had?) a Cray-1, but i do not know if they have any software for it or only the computer.

    Also we could try to ask here http://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations (not much hope, but reddit did surprise me a few times)

    Reply
  6. Wolfgang Stief (stiefkind) October 17, 2014 at 2:09 am

    Deutsches Museum in Munich still has a Cray-1 in their exhibition, yes. But it's not in a bootable condition as far as I know. They focus on technical milestones, not on running setups, though.

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  7. Ralph H. October 17, 2014 at 2:41 am

    +Wolfgang Stief i know. and i do not blame them for that, the expertise to keep all that stuff in running condition is quite high as you perhaps 😉 know.

    no, what i meant is more, they have a huge storage with stuff, and perhaps they were given some software with that computer. (and do not know how hard it is to get it and how precious it is)

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  8. Hans Franke October 17, 2014 at 2:52 am

    +Ralph H. One should try at least 🙁

    And no, AFAIK, they don't.

    Check here:
    https://archive.org/details/Cos1.17DiskImageForCray-1x-mp

    But that's rather late. Then again, COS was a simple OS. The original Cray-1 didn't even bother to have storageof it's own. AFAIR its boot came frome an IBM /370. All Jobs came from this machine and all results where delivered there. While there was a scheduler, a Job usually got 100% machine time. And Applications worked on an (almost) bare metal. So if he was able to design the hardware, he should be able to code some assemble – or adept an Fortran compiler, FWIW.

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  9. Ralph H. October 17, 2014 at 3:24 am

    +Hans Franke
    i think trying to keep it in a running order might break more if you do not know what you are doing than to store it correctly. but i am not sure, i do not know how to do either 😉

    i think they already have an os: https://gigaom.com/2014/01/14/the-search-for-the-lost-cray-supercomputer-os/

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  10. Wolfgang Stief (stiefkind) October 17, 2014 at 3:37 am

    BTW: anybody aware of a Theory of Operations and some sort of architecture guide for a Cray-1 CPU? The more detailed, the better.

    Reply
  11. Hans Franke October 17, 2014 at 4:32 am

    Wenn der die Kiste nachgebaut hat, muesste er dann nicht die noetigen Unterlagen haben?

    Reply

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