Some days I miss the Big Iron.....
Jan. 10th, 2008 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1My alma mater had a CDC Cyber mainframe computer from at least 1981 (when I started there) to 1986, when it was replaced with an IBM mainframe. I was loosely affiliated with the College of Mathematical Sciences, which was a unit of the university that had a lot of aspiring computer geeks like me. I wonder where they are now.
In 1985, there was a group of us that used the Cyber's messaging system (written in APL) to communicate with each other. We had "handles" -- mine was Cerebus, after the aardvark of comic book fame -- that we used on the system instead of our real names. Those were fun times. I wonder where they are now.
The Cyber was a great vector processor -- it excelled at mathematical calculations, which was required by the science and engineering communities of the university. Even though the OS was a little cryptic, it wasn't as cryptic as Unix.
I haven't seen any stats, but I'm guessing today's desktop computers are more powerful than some of the top-of-the-line Cray supercomputers of years ago. And they don't require liquid cooling.
Other than museums, are there any Cyber machines still around? Or have they all been scrapped?
If you went to college and was a computer geek like me, what machines did you have at your school? Did you spend any time on them? Any amusing stories?
In 1985, there was a group of us that used the Cyber's messaging system (written in APL) to communicate with each other. We had "handles" -- mine was Cerebus, after the aardvark of comic book fame -- that we used on the system instead of our real names. Those were fun times. I wonder where they are now.
The Cyber was a great vector processor -- it excelled at mathematical calculations, which was required by the science and engineering communities of the university. Even though the OS was a little cryptic, it wasn't as cryptic as Unix.
I haven't seen any stats, but I'm guessing today's desktop computers are more powerful than some of the top-of-the-line Cray supercomputers of years ago. And they don't require liquid cooling.
Other than museums, are there any Cyber machines still around? Or have they all been scrapped?
If you went to college and was a computer geek like me, what machines did you have at your school? Did you spend any time on them? Any amusing stories?
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College story
Date: 2008-01-10 09:21 pm (UTC)Our computer room had dumb terminals with paper, not even a video monitor.
One night I was trying to get a small program right and was having no luck. I got frustrated and typed in the word "dumb". The computer read it as dump and started printing out tons of paper at the terminal I was working at. The computer room monitor had to run over and turn off my terminal.
I gave up on my little program and left it for another night.
KG
Re: College story
Date: 2008-01-11 09:24 pm (UTC)A friend of mine was in a similar situation. Except that he typed "crash and burn". Sure enough, the computer did (crash, that is).