The only time I've ever seen a Cray in person was in a barn, behind a friend's house.
At my first startup, there was an older engineer named Spence, who had a hobby trading used scientific equipment. His motto was, "He who dies with the most stuff wins". In the barn behind his house was a huge assortment of used equipment, including a Cray, a 9 million volt VandeGraaff, multiple CNC lathes, and a veritable sea of printers & monitors. His Cray was in bad shape and didn't run. The boards looked really interesting. He had hopes of getting it working again, but sadly, he got hit with a double whammy of cancer and divorce, and had to sell his barn and everything in it.
Working with Spence was a trip. I remember once when we were working on a vacuum problem and someone said, "Man, I wish we had a vacuum gauge that would measure down to 10^-9 torr". Spence reached into his pocket and pulled out a vacuum gauge, and said, "You mean like this?". We were never sure if he somehow anticipated what we would need, or if he was just the kind of guy who walked around with vacuum gauges in his pockets.
At my first startup, there was an older engineer named Spence, who had a hobby trading used scientific equipment. His motto was, "He who dies with the most stuff wins". In the barn behind his house was a huge assortment of used equipment, including a Cray, a 9 million volt VandeGraaff, multiple CNC lathes, and a veritable sea of printers & monitors. His Cray was in bad shape and didn't run. The boards looked really interesting. He had hopes of getting it working again, but sadly, he got hit with a double whammy of cancer and divorce, and had to sell his barn and everything in it.
Working with Spence was a trip. I remember once when we were working on a vacuum problem and someone said, "Man, I wish we had a vacuum gauge that would measure down to 10^-9 torr". Spence reached into his pocket and pulled out a vacuum gauge, and said, "You mean like this?". We were never sure if he somehow anticipated what we would need, or if he was just the kind of guy who walked around with vacuum gauges in his pockets.