Free Thinking Machines CM-5

From: Bob Shannon <bshannon_at_tiac.net>
Date: Mon Jul 2 18:41:10 2001

No sir, I only worked on the original CM-1 prototypes.

I was a junior engineer for TMI long long ago, and designed some (minor)
parts of the CM-1's such as the system staus panels, power supply margining
scheme, and a clock distribution ECO that de-skewed the early hardware.

TMI was a very odd place to work.

The mechanical engineer for the Connection Machines was a really brilliant
engineer. I can't place his name at the moment, but I do recall him telling
me
that very early in his carreer, he had gotten to do some mechanical design for

the electronics modules that went to the moon on the Apollo missions.

William Donzelli wrote:

> > What a shame.
>
> This rack was never a real machine, as far as I can tell. It does not have
> a tag or serial number on it, and since the movie was being filmed pretty
> much after Thinking Machines sank, it was probably just an extra rack. The
> blinkenlights panels (yes, they really blink, in one of seven ways) were
> mounted in a rather non-standard way, complete with black construction
> paper for light shields. The rack has a power supply for the eight panels,
> but never had anything else installed (backplanes, more supplies, cables,
> etc.).
>
> So it is really not a shame. In fact, its rebirth as 10,000 Cambell's
> soup cans will be fairly painless, as four of the panels will be used to
> populate the network cabinet of a real CM-5.
>
> Did you ever work on CM-5s? The damn things have the most complex set of
> skins ever devised (purely form over function), and frankly, I am stuck.
>
> William Donzelli
> aw288_at_osfn.org
Received on Mon Jul 02 2001 - 18:41:10 BST