21 Jan
2017
21 Jan
'17
5:27 p.m.
BRL got the last 7600 ever built. After a fiasco one night when they left me to turn on
the “network” (in CDC terms that just means the dumb terminals connected to it), they
didn’t much let me near it again.
When they were planning to decommission it in anticipation of the Cray 2 I ordered
(nothing like putting your signature on a $25MM procurement), I snuck in and put a
“surplus property tag” on the corner of the 7600.
They weren’t amused.
Amazingly, CDC makes some of the prettiest computers built. When I worked for one of
their subsidiaries I was always mesmerized looking in the glass windows at the main
machine room.