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1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
- SteveJS 2y agoPointed a friend toward this. He thought it was cool, but said he’d never wear a Cray wristwatch because he heard they run fast.
- AdamN 2y agoBest statement ever, "... using it should be as incomprehensible as my motivation for creating it in the first place!"
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- jcun4128 2y agoThe round displays are so cool Uses an FPGA lol damn that's hardcore
- Neywiny 2y agoFPGAs were an odd experience of learning for me. I started thinking they were hard to program. Then once I got halfway decent at simple things, I realized just how powerful they can be. So many things just run faster if not instantaneously if you optimize for FPGA. It's incredible. And with modern cheapy low end boards, I hope they get more popular in projects.
- jcun4128 2y agoIt is on my list of things to learn/have one (Orange Crab). I just haven't had a specific use yet. I know they use them for video out/camera for example. One day... so many things to learn/need time.
- Neywiny 2y agoThe orange crab looks nifty. My recommendation is to start very very simple. I'm not sure how this board integrates with the tools with their DFU mode and all that, but hopefully it allows the same quick iteration as JTAG. I think the next time if any you feel like using a microcontroller, try using the FPGA instead.
- jcun4128 2y agoThanks. I listen to EmbeddedFM and I always hear about JTAG but have not used one. Interesting thought about subsituting an FPGA for a microcontroller. Guess you would have to know how to use one in order to do something trivial like blink/move a servo.
- Foobar8568 2y agoFPGA is the only thing where I haven't seen any progress in my understanding after trying to get anywhere for hours and hours.
- Neywiny 2y agoI get that. I think it took me a full semester in uni, and a summer internship, and maybe a few more months after that. It's hard to really break through. But once I did, it got a lot easier.
- fentonc 2y agoFPGAs are particularly amazing for this sort of project where you would otherwise need a custom ASIC that could never be even remotely economical to build (see my 16-core Z80 laptop as another excellent example: http://www.chrisfenton.com/the-zedripper-part-1/ http://www.chrisfenton.com/the-zedripper-part-1/). It lets you play 'fantasy computer architect.'
- m463 2y ago> [a picture of a cray c90 computer] > A 25:1 Replica of my wristwatch :)
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- gaudystead 2y agoI don't have anything to say, technical-wise, but this is absurd and I love it.
- theideaofcoffee 2y agoWill a future design include the external heat exchanger unit? Maybe belt attached? The SSD on the other wrist, perhaps? :) I love to see these projects keeping the legacy of these old, great machines alive, if not running some fraction of unicos, at least aesthetically.
- dvh 2y agoNo upholstery?!
- jerlam 2y agoI thought this was funny until the last picture, then I thought it was great.
- andrelaszlo 2y agoHaha yeah, the "A 25:1 Replica of my wristwatch" image caption cracked me up.
- eichin 2y agoreminds me of the thing in model railroading, where actual IRL rail equipment is referred to as "prototype" for the model
- jandrese 2y ago> The display shows a free-running simulation of Jupiter and 63 of its moons. For convenience, I just plot the X/Y coordinates of each moon in the ecliptic plane. The ephemerides come from the HORIZONS server that NASA operates, at a specified date and time. The J90 just dumps a new frame whenever the Teensy has pulled the previous one, so with a teensy (ha!) bit of calibration on the micro controller side, it would be pretty easy to have the frames dumped in ‘real time’, which, knowing the starting time and date, would allow you to not-at-all-easily infer the current time by looking at the positions of Jupiter’s moons. Someone finally came up with a time system more difficult for people to use than Star Trek's stardates.
- Someone 2y ago> Someone finally came up with a time system more difficult for people to use than Star Trek's stardates I think that’s a reference to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude#Satellites_of_Jupiter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude#Satelli... or a (late) attempt to win a longitude reward (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards)
- eschneider 2y agoI dunno. For certain astronomy geeks, it's a completely intuitive clock.
- richie-guix 2y ago[dead]
- gravescale 2y ago> But what is a Nixie Watch? How does it function? These are some questions worth exploring with this distinct and idiosyncratic wristwatch. So—let’s continue! > .... > Without getting into the weeds too much, the watch harvests electricity from said battery; deploys that electricity through currents; then the currents are switched off-and-on at exact times via a circuit board—which governs the electrical currents. While this certainly isn't "in the weeds", it does rather feel that this is not even within visual range of any plant at all. At the risk of eating the Onion, though it's not inaccurate, it doesn't seem like a very useful description, to anyone, even if the reader has never encountered electricity. The juxtaposition of that sentence with the earlier airily unelaborated-upon "a Nixie tube is a cold cathode tube" is pure art.
- demondemidi 2y agoHis writing style cracks me up. What about battery life though?
- fentonc 2y agoIt's . . . not great.
- nabla9 2y agoThis would be a great prop for time travel scifi movie. Protagonist travels to 1991 and tries to convince scientist to help him. When asked for a proof, shows Gray C90 Wristwatch. "Our real computers are different, but I show you this because it does not pollute the timeline."
- ngcc_hk 2y agoIt still did just you being there and a small computer not tons weight. No news so far of alien visit or time traveller … but it might be hard if they tried to avoid us … except for selling something like enterprise Vulcan did to help education fund which is more physical and hence possible.
- iancmceachern 2y agoThis is refreshing. A premise for a time travel movie that is both accurate in terms of its portrait of computers, and it doesn't present basic time travel "oopsies" .
- fentonc 2y agoI'm definitely packing this with me if I ever time travel.
- julianeon 2y agoMy premise for a time travel movie is very simple. 1. Buy a book on probability. Work through the practice exercises. 2. Time travel back to a time before the laws of probability were invented or taken seriously. Pre-1600's would be a good guess. 3. Become a gambler. 4. With the riches that will soon be pouring into your pockets, acquire resources and transform history.
- maxwell 2y agoSet where? Gambling was criminalized in the UK in 1541 and Europe's first legal gambling house didn't open until 1638. Maybe they learn roulette strategy and show up right after Pascal invented the roulette wheel while he was trying to produce a perpetual motion machine (which could play a role in the time machine's tech itself too, which could resemble a "grande roue," visually akin to a g-force centrifuge or particle accelerator).
- ad-astra 2y agoAbsolutely amazing work!
- resource_waste 2y agoI am personally asking, because after decades of tech hobbies, I have a bit of a self awareness to 'fun': I wonder what the fun part was, to them. There is something rewarding about learning. There is something rewarding about completing things. There is something rewarding about showing other people. I have the issue that everything I make should be practical. Either net me profit so I can make lots of money. Or useful to society so I can reduce the world's pain and increase pleasure, maybe this is a selfish way to fame. I still get all 3 of those rewards I previously mentioned, but there is something different going on when I'm doing something for profit/others. Its a different feeling, not better/worse, just different. Better in some ways, worse in others.
- fentonc 2y agoAuthor here! Most of my projects are kind of like this penny arcade comic (https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/06/13/the-hippothalamus https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/06/13/the-hippothala...) - I saw where something was not, and said "No. This will not do." It's 2024 and a supercomputer wrist watch is possible, so now it exists =)
- mkhnews 2y agoliquid cooled ?
- fsckboy 2y agomaybe if the designer was not resistant to proofing it
- swayvil 2y agoThat's so dang cool.
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- surfingdino 2y agoDoes it run vim? :-)
- superposeur 2y agoI love to imagine this kind of thing dug up by an alien civilization. That it displays the moons of Jupiter will be a fun puzzle and a source of wonder. “Obviously”, they will say, “these people must have worshipped Jupiter as a god and used the position of its moons to keep time.” But the pieces of the puzzle will never quite fit. Who knows, maybe the Antikythera mechanism or the pyramids were a similarly ludicrous prank?
- ASalazarMX 2y agoAlien researcher: In fact, the dull-gray color is an artifact of aging. Ancient hoomans decorated their ritualistic jewelry with shiny black, and metallic reds and blues. Here is a reconstruction of how it would have looked in their prime: shows colorful C90 watch render, fist risen up to the sky, other hoomans kneeling around the Cray high priest
- gravescale 2y ago"Some people (X'Grn'k et al) say it was a device used for humorous purposes. However, we consider that the presence of sacred etched silicon devices rules this hypothethis out. While crudely worked in that time, and despite the abundance of raw material on the planet, such silicon was in short supply and was central to the nascent Guptian Church movement. In addition, records suggest that the "geo"politics of the time, somewhere between 1980 and 2050, had silicon artisanry in constant high military demand (see the F'llr'wq Metaversity analysis on use of Phonic Screen Devices in Central-West Asian planet-surface warfare between 1945 and 2045), and if not inducted into the Guptian priesthood, a silicon carver could expect a so-called 99-6 life, a 105-Earth-hour cycle with 99 hours in a warfab and 6 hours to rest (J'Hrar et al). Furthermore, per a recent discovery of a transaction record thought likely to be payment for living volume at the Western-American coastal enclave, the artisan class appears to have little in the way of disposable resourcing. Thus, we consider it unlikely that an artisan of that period could have spared or even been allowed the resources or time for such levity."
- fentonc 2y agoI am now adding "Silicon Carver" to my resume.
- makapuf 2y agoLove the project, writing style and what is was made of (fpga, round lcd, Jupiter moons sim... so cool). But now I'm frustrated I can't see the display animation.
- fentonc 2y agoIt updates in pretty close to realtime (ie the simulator timestep is extremely close to the actual wall clock time required to compute the next timestep), so “animation” isn’t really the right word. If you let it go for a few hours it leaves fun star trails though!
- Erikun 2y ago” But how do you tell the time? With great difficulty.”
- DaoVeles 2y agoSo pointless it had to be done. Bravo!
- khazhoux 2y ago[flagged]
- fckgw 2y agoWhy do anything?
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- swerling 2y agoThanks for the smile OP. How soon until the 1/25-scale cray C90 gets as many MIPS as the original? Seems like the one he built is within shouting distance.
- burningChrome 2y agoMy Dad was at the forefront of the computer revolution. He talked about sharing time with Seymour Cray at his computer lab at the University of Minnesota. He said whenever Cray would show up on campus, it was like Mick Jagger or some other rock star type. People would flock to be around him and ask him questions. He then worked alongside Cray and sold many of his computers when they were both at Control Data. He has a ton of stories of how he would go into huge companies like 3M and tell them everything they knew about data storage was about to change. He said their jaws would drop when he gave them numbers on how much they were going to save by using the new Cray computers. Its very cool and nostalgic to hear people doing these projects and keeping the early days of the computer revolution alive.
- rhelz 2y agoHow many tens of thousands of computer architects... how many millions of creative ideas.... ..and how Few people actually came up with anything which really moved the needle.
- hypercube33 2y agoI really feel like Cray was a larger than life person with any of the stories I've read. It really makes me wonder why no one has made a docudrama movie about him...hmm
- pklausler 2y agoI had the opportunity to work for Seymour Cray when he split off Cray Computer Corp. from Cray Research in ‘89 and a bunch of us moved to Colorado Springs. He was a fairly quiet and intense guy, always focused on whatever the “pacing item” of the project happened to be that day.
- daniel_iversen 2y agoI honesty dream of having a real old Cray 1 as a couch :-) - those designs were just something we don’t see today, huh!?
- bvan 2y agoBrilliant.
- throwaway112996 2y agoVery ugly obviously
- TomMasz 2y agoThe lead photo doesn't give you a good impression of the size of the thing, he saves that for the end.