[rescue] If the price wouldnt be that high... Cray CS6400's

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 09:33:11AM -0500, Todd Killingsworth wrote:
> Potential group buy by rescue members?
> If price is still high, could wait and approach him after a no-bid auction.
> 
> Note: none of the machines have memory, and I've seem to remember some
> messages here stating UNICOS is unobtanium.

Generally speaking, UNICOS isn't unobtanium.  You can just call Cray and
buy it, with compilers, for about $20k, to my understanding.

However, I believe the CS6400s use a bastardized form of SunOS, not
Unicos, since these machines are sparc based massively parallel rather
than SMP Vector machines (like the J90s).  I don't know how obtainable
this is, since SGI sold this machine to Sun when SGI bought Cray (what
did SGI want with a Sparc based SunOS machine?).

OK, there is one major big deal that I don't see addressed in the
listing.  These Crays need a front end computer to operate, and this
front end computer connects to the cray by a proprietary sbus card and
cable, and reportedly these cards are unobtainium.

I seem to recall that there is one person on the list who has one of
these machines working.

Also, search the list archives.  These machines have been discussed
several times before.