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I'm doing some research on the CDC 7600 supercomputer. I'm trying to find at least a general guess on the overall weight of the machine, preferably including the necessary cooling equipment. I know it wasn't a very popular machine and specs on the 6600 are easier to find, but the differences between the 6600 and 7600 are sufficient that the weight would be different.

Thanks for anything you can find!

MarkLMarkL
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  • Hard to answer, as this can vary by like doubel depending on what machine fiting, what PS and what cooling is used. – Raffzahn Jul 25 '18 at 09:38
  • I recall a discussion in the late 70s. A colleague was wondering about the residual value of an old 360 style mainframes. My reply was "it depends how much it weighs" implying that its value was only as scrap. In reality the question and the answer were both wrong as most of those machines were leased and had no residual value whatsoever. – Peter Camilleri Jul 25 '18 at 19:33

1 Answers1

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It depends on the configuration, but here are some specs:

  • Console: 390 lb
  • MCU Disk units: 480 lb
  • MCU Card reader: 1020 lb
  • Central computer: 8800 lb

etc...

NOTE: the documents below are for the Cyber-76, which was the new branding of the 7600. The 6600 became a Cyber-74, and the 6400 became the Cyber-73.

As far as I know, this was a rebranding effort and the new series, after these models, had a '1' at the beginning, so they moved to Cyber-170, 180 and 200; the new series used ICs instead of discrete transistors.

There are a lot of parts, even a dew point recorder!

The machine came with a whole manual about how to set up the room that will take it. It covers space, power, temperature, humidity, cooling, etc.

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I put the whole installation manual on my google drive. It's quite large (about 145mb of scans).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jI2XJzr4ROOtWDPIRJ4vK0JtUkjV5xWb

Thomas
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