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by rbanffy 2716 days ago
Now I imagined replacing the glass panes with transparent LCDs or LED displays that would give an idea of system status at a glance.

These machines are, like the supercomputers I mentioned, meant to be displayed as a status symbol.
1 comments
mschaef 2716 days ago
> replacing the glass panes with transparent LCDs or LED displays

I guess the CM-1/2/200 machines are the quintessential example of this. The Cray-2's cooling system isn't an active display, but it gets style points too (IMHO).

(But...I've worked in a few places that used glass windows (or other glass surfaces) as whiteboards... That's really what I was thinking of. :-) )

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rbanffy 2716 days ago
The Cray-2 had some indicator lights on the top of each lobe. I'm not sure how helpful they were to gain an understanding of what the computer was doing. I can't tell how much work my home cluster is doing by looking at the ethernet switch LEDs.

The LCD would nicely replicate the window-as-whiteboard experience though, at the sacrifice of some readability, because the object behind the glass is so interesting.

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