I paid quite a bit more for mine... but this one does
appear to be the genuine Apple article...looks like it's
been in storage a while as the unicos tape shown is v6.x
and the latest available for the EL is 8.x or 9.x - add another
8k$ to license it since Cray-->SGI-->Tera don't have
"hobbyist use" licensing programmes.
Its strange that this machine has a nice VME cage with two
IOPs but is running a cylinder short on the vector cpu cards.
More typical is the 4 vpu card system rather than this 3 one has.
The half gig of memory is on heavily packed boards loaded
with ZIP package dram - likely 256k by 4 or 1 chips with lots
of nasty flying lead series terminating 33 ohm resistors on all
signals - maybe added as an afterthought to improve signal integrity.
I expect it will sell for more than the typical J90s people
used to ask 10k$ only a few months back but recently have
only been fetching <$US5k. ELs tend to be more rare and
certainly are nicer to look at than J90s - though they also
have their beauty in the wavy rack doors. Even rarer is the
EL-92, I know of only one person owning one of these diminutive
Crays.
The German machine has been pulled from both US and DE ebays-
after running for a second time after the high bidder reneged.
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPICommand=ViewItem&item=12612
28599
You can see in the pics, the large boards lying on "antistatic"
newspaper after the machine was dismantled/defiled.. The large
ceramic chips are the custom LSI-LOGIC VPU ASICS and memory
(ECC of course, 64 bit word) controllers on the ZIP filled cards.
The CPU clock rate is only 33Mhz but still manages 133Mflops
per processor card. These CMOS machines were derived from
the SuperTek XMS S-2 (Cray bought Supertek when they went under).
Most interesting is that Cray signed a sales/service distribution deal
with of all companies -DEC- but but later cancelled when they couldn't
sell enough units. The YMP-EL gave rise to EL-98, 94 and 92 models
and was the basis for the J90, J90se (100Mhz clock) and SV1(300Mhz)
systems. Later, Cray would use the DEC Alpha 21044 in the T3D & T3E
massively parallel systems - the start of the end for vector
supercomputers.
Though ELs were always considered "baby Crays" - entry level machines
for educational use or for code development (code compat with YMP
"production machines") they are the only series, along with J90s that a
typical (rich) hobbyist could reasonably acquired and run (_at_6KW/hr).
Cray actually referred to them as "Vector Superminis" rather than true
Supers.
(One advantage of J90s is that they can be upgraded to SV1s at extreme
cost. Moving from 100Mhz to 300Mhz and faster dram yields 1.2Gflops/cpu.
and 4.8Gflops from their "multistreaming" CPUs.)
Here's the relevant faq for those interested.
http://ds.dial.pipex.com/town/park/abm64/CrayWWWStuff/Cfaqp1.html
Regards,
Heinz
>Jeff Hellige wrote:
>
> The Cray EL-98 located in Boston reached it's reserve today.
> It's now reserve-free at $4000. With 6 days left on the auction, it
> should be interesting to see just what it goes for.
Received on Mon Aug 06 2001 - 17:36:23 BST