[rescue] J90 on epay

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 06:46:44AM -0500, Robert F. Schaefer wrote:
> Just saw this.  At first I thought it was the same one that had been
> mentioned a while back, but I guess it's not.  The seller claims that the
> scusi on either spark 5 or cray might be bad.

It is my understanding that 16 proc J90s are rather rare.  That said,
the paper work indicates that this is only an 8 proc machine, so I'm not
sure why they are saying it is J916/16-2048, which makes it sound like a
16 proc model.

First, I believe that Cray scsi boards in the J90 are some sort of
normal off the self VME SCSI board.  Dave McGuire would know more about
this.  However, my understanding is that the first cabinet, the one with
the grey stripe, is the one with the major Cray mojo in it.  The second
cabinet consists of disks and one or more VME cages.  The VME cages have
things like HIPPI cards, and SPARC based IO processors (reportedly off
the shelf parts, all), and reportedly the only thing special in the VME
cages are the cards that connect the VME cages to the backplanes that
interconnects the two cabinets.

Also, the Sparc 5 machine, requires no special hardware, so if there is
anything broken on it, no big deal.

If I were seriously thinking about buying this, I'd get someone to go
with me who actually knew what they were doing, and get him to look over
it.  A lot of people say they are selling complete Crays

Also, getting an OS and compilers for the cray is going to be a major
PIA, if it isn't somehow installed already.

Again, Dave McGuire is the guy to talk to about specifics, if ones
serious about getting such a machine.