• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
  • From now on we will require that a prefix is set for any items in the sales area. We have created regions and locations for this. We also require that you select a delivery option before posting your listing. This will hopefully help us streamline the things that get listed for sales here and help local people better advertise their items, especially for local only sales. New sales rules are also coming, so stay tuned.

For Sale: Cray T94 Super Computer [$9,650]

olePigeon said:
Very, very cool.
Click to expand...
Does this thing come with coolant?

340 VDC @ 100A would make a nice little PS project to go along with that. If you've already got 200A service to your house you're half way there, but I have a feeling this would cost a lot more than 10K before you could see anything on a monitor.
 
This guy has been offered a couple times before. I am pretty sure last time the seller said all the guts had been sold. Basically a block of aluminum covered by cool looking covers. This auction looks suspicious too. It's the same exact pictures but, the description is all different and I think the price is much higher than the original. I'm not 100% on that though. There was some talk about the original auction on cctalk.
 
Honestly I would sooner build a cluster a newer motherboards under a skin that looked like a retro Cray then buy a cray itself (assuming I had the cash). There are some things I would get out of curiosity (only reason I got a Microvax for instance was to check one out), but the price would have to be super cheap unless I had a use for it.

Those things seemed tempermental and expensive to run when new, some things are too much of a pain and expensive to get working second hand.
 
Unknown_K said:
Honestly I would sooner build a cluster a newer motherboards under a skin that looked like a retro Cray then buy a cray itself (assuming I had the cash).
Click to expand...

I am not sure you could run an older one even if you did want to. Even if it was 100% operational, and you could manage the power requirements, you might not be able to find any software or anyone with the knowledge to power it up. They didn't sell many of these things so the set of people that knew intimate details about them was really really small and everything was a closely guarded trade secret. It's why we don't have Cray emulators out there.

That reminds me. Last time this machine was talked about someone mentioned the power. Look at the plate in the ebay auction. 340vdc at 100a.
 
I also seemed to remember that these things were not the sort of thing you could easily do board-level repairs on. Special jigs, tools and probably unobtainium components.

Nice museum piece, though.
 
mc68010 said:
That reminds me. Last time this machine was talked about someone mentioned the power. Look at the plate in the ebay auction. 340vdc at 100a.
Click to expand...
Yes, I mentioned it up above. :) That's 34KW, but is no doubt a max rating and it won't need quite that draw. You could probably get away with 4 gauge wire and a 100 amp breaker in a normal house with 220VAC, and the inspector might even pass it. That assumes that you have modern 200Amp service. (200 x 80% x 220 = 35KW) Unfortunately, many new, and most older houses only have 100A service.

In any case, I bet mc68010 is right, and this thing is a complete ripoff.
 
I'd pay $1000 for one of the coolest case mods in history. I sent an offer. :D

It's a damn shame it's just a shell. God damn gold farmers can go to hell. :(
 
Last edited:
Well, I can't even give stuff away, but the local scrapper just paid me a couple of hundred for some old laptops and a couple of boxes of cd drives. You do the math.
 
So maybe he got a few thousand for it? Versus probably tens if not hundreds of thousands to a computing museum or collector? It's not just the value, but its historical significance. Not too many of those older Cray super computers left.
 
Confusing. I guess his offer is set to accept 3000? The post is still for the $9000. Hopefully it'll go somewhere nice but agreed collectors likely have smaller budgets than that, although I suppose someone might be able to save it. Not sure what a newer Cray is really worth though. It's still likely in deflation mode.
 
I don't know what the scrap value of this is, especially considering that the high value parts are probably long gone, but I'd think that the right price would be in the low to mid hundreds. Thousands is just ridiculous.
 
At this point you assume there is no PSU components or boards which leaves the plastic skins, the midplanes and the solid steel/aluminum block that everything sat in.
 
I had e-mailed the seller and asked what was missing, he didn't know and said that it will probably never run again.

Its such a unique piece of computer history it would be a nice piece to have.

It would be neat if you could build a modern supercomputer with in that case.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top