If these kinds of machines interest you I highly recommend the book "The Supermen" by Charles Murray. It has all the details you would ever want on Seymour Cray and others in the business.
I was working at a geophysical company in the 80's and we lusted after a Cray-1. Best we could afford where array processors (CSPI) connected to VAX systems.
The thing about the middle of Illinois is they consider Chicago to be a separate state and East St Louis to be Missouri’s problem. “Oh you’re from Chicago” is a common reply any time you found out you’re from an exurb. Often said with just a hint of dismissal. That’s not the real Illinois. Nobody talks about Rock Island and Moline (the Illinois half of the Quad Cities) this way, for instance.
Carbondale is slightly better, but I think it’s a notorious party school for very good reasons. Small town Midwest has a saying that “there’s nothing to do here except drink, fuck, and knock over mailboxes”. Most Iowa this is especially true, but Carbondale also gave me that vibe. Also that’s a fucking long drive. St Louis too. Nobody appreciates that Illinois is half as tall as California (not that anyone appreciates how long a trip up and down CA is either).
Indiana is seriously considering annexing much of central/southern Illinois. It’s amazing just how aggressively divisive politics have become in the last 20 years.
I had one of those, dunno what happened to it...fun story, I was living in Boston at the time, and there was too much line noise on the phone system for 300 baud, but 110 baud worked like a charm.
Just saying.
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