[gdubs]

It was indeed a Thinking Machines CM-5 — Nedry actually mentioned them in his line about how Hammond wouldn't be able to find anyone "anybody who can network 8 connection machines".

An actual assembled CM-5 actually cost closer to a million dollars.

But, from what I remember the one in the control room is a shell. In the CM-1 and CM-2, the LEDs were actual status indicators on the processors, which Tamiko Theil and the other designers had the engineers move to be at the edge of the boards, so that they'd shine through the case. Super cool.

But by the CM-5, they were run off a simple microcontroller.

They went bust not long after this movie.

I made a YouTube video on the history of the Connection Machine – it was a lot of work, and if you're interested in this sort of thing I think you'll enjoy it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaNuVR75cwY

[sosuke]

I had no idea Thinking Machine was a brand! I just thought they were "thinking machine super computers" another way of saying "artificial intelligence super computers" or "machine learning" (dunno if ML was around then :shrug:)

[pdpi]

Then you're going to love learning that Feynman worked on them, specifically the inter-processor routing.

https://longnow.org/ideas/richard-feynman-and-the-connection...

[Sharlin]

It’s a real classic. An amazing article super worth reading (and re-reading if it’s been a while) and almost infinitely quotable.

[magesh_magi1]

What a gem of an article. I don't know physics, I use computer for my work and nothing beyond, but reading about the mindset of an actual scientist is really interesting.

[ngcc_hk]

Strange words in my head pop up 3 times

Yes to it is unix Wow for the sync What !!! For this

Have to stop reading to avoid brain go crazy

[pnw]

Great video. I visited Brewster Kahle at Thinking Machines back when I was in college and that visit ended up being one of the major influences in my career. The CM was way ahead of it's time.

Thinking Machines also pioneered WAIS which was a precursor to modern search engines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Information_Server

[gdubs]

Thank you! My biggest regret in the video is I didn't get to touch on Brewster Kahle's involvement – especially given what he's gone on to do with Internet Archive. Would love to do a followup.

Re: Search Engines, I think I mention this in the video but apparently Sergey Brin was part of the Connection Machine user community, and had that experience on his resume. (A copy of that is still floating around.)

[pnw]

I think Brewster is one of those photos in your video. I met him because I set up the first WAIS server in Australia and he was kind enough to offer a tour when I mentioned I was visiting Boston. Good times.

[Arn_Thor]

Also, the indoor park "tour" voiceover refers to "Thinking Machine supercomputers", which I never figured were a brand name until today!

[Kye]

Do you think it's coincidence the chip for Skynet looks so much like the Connection Machine?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UZeHJyiMG8

[gdubs]

Probably not! I'd imagine that whoever did production design for the movie would have visited some of the labs of the time, or talked to people involved in AI – and the CM-1 / CM-2 were very much at the forefront of that type of computing back then.

But that's such a great find – I've seen T2 many times, but that visual of the black hypercube-looking design really is strikingly similar!

[joshu]

Thinking Machines: "We are building a machine that will be proud of us."

[Mistletoe]

It’s so lame they changed the LEDs to meaning nothing.

[pivo]

I'd heard from my wife who worked at TMs that they did this so engineers would stop "wasting" time programming animations on those lights.

[ma2t]

On the upside, this means you can run the LED boards without the rest of the CM-5. Have one panel that still works.

[geerlingguy]

I'd love to be able to add 1U or 2U of blinkenlights to my rack, even if the pattern was completely random.

[moffkalast]

The funniest part about this thing is that it seems to have had roughly the same performance of a modern day CM5 (the Raspberry kind).