[HN Gopher] 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
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1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
Author : akkartik
Score : 207 points
Date : 2024-06-19 16:40 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chrisfenton.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chrisfenton.com)
| jcun4128 wrote:
| The round displays are so cool
|
| Uses an FPGA lol damn that's hardcore
| m463 wrote:
| > [a picture of a cray c90 computer]
|
| > A 25:1 Replica of my wristwatch
|
| :)
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| Will 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.
| gaudystead wrote:
| I don't have anything to say, technical-wise, but this is absurd
| and I love it.
| dvh wrote:
| No upholstery?!
| jerlam wrote:
| I thought this was funny until the last picture, then I thought
| it was great.
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| Haha yeah, the "A 25:1 Replica of my wristwatch" image caption
| cracked me up.
| jandrese wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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#Satelli...
| or a (late) attempt to win a longitude reward
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards)
| eschneider wrote:
| I dunno. For certain astronomy geeks, it's a completely
| intuitive clock.
| richie-guix wrote:
| > Someone finally came up with a time system more difficult for
| people to use than Star Trek's stardates.
|
| Woz had that figured out ages ago.
|
| https://www.timesticking.com/steve-wozniaks-nixie-watch/
| demondemidi wrote:
| His writing style cracks me up. What about battery life though?
| fentonc wrote:
| It's . . . not great.
| nabla9 wrote:
| This 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."
| iancmceachern wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| I'm definitely packing this with me if I ever time travel.
| ad-astra wrote:
| Absolutely amazing work!
| resource_waste wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Author here! Most of my projects are kind of like this penny
| arcade comic (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 wrote:
| liquid cooled ?
| swayvil wrote:
| That's so dang cool.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Does it run vim? :-)
| superposeur wrote:
| I 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?
| gravescale wrote:
| "Some people (X'Grn'k et al) say it was a device used for
| humorous purposes. However, we considering the presence of
| sacred silicon devices rules this hypothethis out. while
| crudely etched at in that time, silicon was in short supply and
| was central to the both the nascent Guptian movement. In
| addition, records suggest that the geopolitics 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 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 107-Earth-hour cycle with 99 hours in a warfab and 6
| hours to rest (J'Hrar et al). Thus, we consider it unlikely
| that an artisan of that period could have spared or been
| allowed the resources or time for such levity."
| makapuf wrote:
| Love 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 wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| " But how do you tell the time?
|
| With great difficulty."
| DaoVeles wrote:
| So pointless it had to be done. Bravo!
| swerling wrote:
| Thanks 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 wrote:
| My 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.
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