The Connection Machine CM-1 "Feynman" T-shirt
tamikothiel.com72 points by tosh 4 days ago
72 points by tosh 4 days ago
Nice, ordered.
For fans of computing history and/or Feynman, this article about his time with, and contributions to, Thinking Machines and the Connection Machine is a great read!
https://longnow.org/ideas/richard-feynman-and-the-connection...
I ordered one of these a while back. Be warned that it will shrink if put in the dryer.
I thought of N-Cube machines when I saw it, CM didn't even occur to me.
Bought one but it was too big... into the drawer of commemorative t's it goes
Thanks for this post.
What were the LED's indicating?
Replying to myself here - I decided to just actually go read wikipedia about this. Here's the answer:
<quote>
By default, when a processor is executing an instruction, its LED is on. In a SIMD program, the goal is to have as many processors as possible working the program at the same time – indicated by having all LEDs being steady on. Those unfamiliar with the use of the LEDs wanted to see the LEDs blink – or even spell out messages to visitors. The result is that finished programs often have superfluous operations to blink the LEDs.
</quote>
Depended on what was running.
As a developer you had explicit access to them, so you could use them for debugging. A lot of times, they were just running an RNG to look cool though.
There is no documentation of what the LEDs were _actually_ doing. There are descriptions, like 'Random and Pleasing is an LFSR', but no actual information that maps to actual pixel coordinates spaced in time. Nearly zero code.
I'm saying this because I need this information, and the fastest way to get information is to state that it's impossible or doesn't exist.
The Connection Machine series (which was featured in Jurassic Park) have the most beautiful LED panels.
Reposting some links from a recent Jurassic Park thread -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4kBRC2co7Y&t=65s (Jurassic Park)
The LED panel is gorgeous:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Ko4qBkEcBM (render)
A lot of people have replicated or restored these:
Worked on the CM-1 and CM2. I felt they were awful buggy. At one point they asked if they could use my code to run as a diagnostic, it would break the log() function on occasion.
The Cray fluorinert fountains were way cooler :)
only europe and the us. but im in japan :(