Supercomputing Nostalgia

A dear friend recently forwarded me an article in PCWorld/MSN on the going rate for nostalgic pieces of computer history [this person does indeed still own one of the machines on the list]. In flipping through the top 19 most valued pieces of all time, I had to shed a bit of a tear for number seven. According to the article, an original Cray Research Cray-1 supercomputer is currently worth “tens of thousands of dollars”. Now, this is quite a departure from the original five million dollar price tag, but it makes me wonder how my garage stock of computer garbage is worth!?

The Cray-1 was the fastest computer in the world in the mid-to-late 70s in terms of massive vector calculations–it was at least double or more the speed of its predecessors,” says Digibarn’s Bruce Damer, who calls it “the gold standard of computer designs.”

Does anyone need a math-coprocessor from an 80386? Read the full article and check the list here