[rescue] Cray J90s

[Zach Malone]

Hello again,
    I sent off the last message right before recieving your long one on
vectorized processing.  I understand now, so essentially you are SOL in
terms of getting such a machine, no matter what the price, unless you get
lucky and get one that has not been wiped, or know the appropriate people.
Of the machines you find used, either Cray resells those machines later,
dumps them somewhere, or they were not under service contracts.  If most of
them are not set up properly upon resale, I am assuming that they are
machines that were not under service contracts, and that were improperly
disassembled.  Thanks a bunch for the info, I am completely unfamiliar with
this area of computing, though it is quite interesting.
    Zach Malone
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com>
To: <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 7:02 PM
Subject: Re: [rescue] Cray J90s


> On June 11, Zach Malone wrote:
> >     Glad to hear the Crays have a bunch of things going for them, I knew
the
> > bandwidth would shred a PC based system, but I have never heard of
vector
> > based computing before.  Could you elaborate?  Thanks a ton.  Is there a
>
>   See my last big email where I attempt to explain just that.
>
> > license agreement prohibiting users from publishing the boot guide?  Or
is
> > it just so scarce that its neigh impossible to find?
>
>   I'm not sure if it's a legal thing or not.  Here's what happens.
> 99% of Cray installations have service contracts...that's only natural
> for such an expensive & complex machine, right?  Well, one of Cray's
> final responsibilities as listed most (all?) of their service
> contracts is the "deinstallation" of a machine when it is to be taken
> out of use.  They come to your facility, turn it off, lock all the
> drive heads (if applicable), disassemble everything, pack it all up on
> its pallets, and seal everything up.  When "de-installed" in this
> manner, a machine is pretty easily eligible to be covered by another
> Cray maintenance contract later on, if the seals on the packing
> materials are still intact...because they know that their own people
> were the last people to touch the hardware, and presumably left it in
> a known-operational state.  It's all good up to this point.
>
>   Now for the bad part.  While they're packing up the hardware, they
> wipe the OS from the disks, grab your OS load tapes, and grab every
> nice silver/gray Cray 3-ring binder they can find...and take it with
> them.
>
>   Try calling them up and asking them.  The first words you'll hear are
> "what serial number please?"  And when you give it to them, they'll
> ask you if you're such-and-such and the CIA or wherever your Cray came
> from, and when you say no, they'll tell you to pound sand.  And guess
> what?  Then they know who you are, that you have one of their
> machines, and that you likely have an [unlicensed/illegal/hugely
> expensive] OS load for your machine.
>
>   Some machines never get de-installed by Cray personnel...those are
> the lucky ones.
>
>                -Dave McGuire
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