the cm5 was really a unix system. there were a few solaris machines stuffed in to act as front ends (compile and launch jobs). since I'm here, the lights on th

the cm5 was really a unix system. there were a few solaris machines stuffed in to act as front ends (compile and launch jobs). since I'm here, the lights on the 5 weren't interesting - there was just a controller that ran some standard patterns. the earlier machines had an led hooked up to each of the 16 core chips and you could indeed tell what was running by the patterns - I don't recall what signal they were wired to, it most likely had something to do with the network (?).