Customer System books

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From about 1987 to 1997, it was traditional that Cray Research would ship a customer system book showing images from the factory of how the system was built. Included in the book, were pictures of the staff and machines that built the customers machine. A couple of examples of the system book have been captured here. Sonja Gardener and Wendy Leismo created and dispatched many of the customer books.

YMP2E Customer book:

Names on pictures added by Sonja

Cray-2 Customer book 

 

Found as a listing on Ebay (august 2004) the following text was included :

GENUINE CRAY RESEARCH/CRAY 2 SIGNED BOOK FOR CUSTOMER

    • This book is a Cray Collector’s Dream!  We’ve shown many photos to give as much detail as we can.
    • This is a customer appreciation book and was given to the Customer upon the purchase of the CRAY-2.
    • There were about 28 CRAY-2 Computers sold, and this one was installed in Dhahran,Saudi Arabia at ARAMCO in early 1990.
    • This is Signed by Don Whiting the Head of Manufacturing along with 55 CRAY RESEARCH employees!
    • It is a book showing the various steps in making of a Cray 2, including the people who made it!  Then each person who was involved in a particular phase of construction signed the page below the photo showing their work – all signatures in this book are real – it is not photo-copied.
    • The front page shows it was Presented to Aramco – Model Number: Cray 2/2-256  – Serial Number 2101.    The pages are of a very heavy cardstock with satin finish.
  • The book has a Real leather cover (Stamped: Hagel – Top Grain Cowhide) over a heavy duty “notebook” style binding – and the pages are all nice and clean, with no tears, etc. It is in excellent condition. 
  • The leather cover has the Cray 2 embossed into the leather on the cover, along with the words CRAY 2 and some other computer related designs on it as well – which are also on the 1st page of the book where it says who it was presented to.  There is some light outside wear to the leather cover, after all, the customer may have spent hours admiring this. 
  • Some of the people who signed this book (as best we can tell from the signatures) are:  Karen Kramschuster, Chris Jacobson, Brenda K Miles, Deborah Clare (all from the Receiving inspection page); Jim Culver, Tom Liddell (Manufacturing Machine Shop); Doris Bowe, Gary Miller (Inventory); Wanda Eakins, Jason Webber (Printed Circuit Board House); Rosie O’Connell, Violet Spear, Karen Hobart (CRAY-2 Module Assembly); Stan DeMotts, Pam Radke (Module Test and Repair); Steven Soden, Gary L. Simmons, Rick Nyhus (CRAY-2 Mechanical Assembly); Lois Stolp, Diane Harper, Barb Close (CRAY-2 Wiring); Deborah Culbert, Kathryn Thornton, Debra Semanko (Cables); Elaine Berg, James Begley, Stephanie Anderson, Rebecca Drum (S. W. A. T. aka Special Work Assignment Team); Stephen Greene, Kenneth Dahlke, Scott Willkorn (Shipping) – there are many more – but we’re not able to read the signatures for certain.  (See Photos – see if you recognize your signature there!)
YMP8 Customer Book Pages

Thanks to Gwen Whittaker for these pages.

** Editors note – This customer book appears and was reported as from SN1096. However this is a YMP8 with a model D IOS. The break point between Model D and Model E was around 1050. The list of other YMP8D machines has a gap between SN1045 and SN1048 so I am going out on a limb here and suggesting that this maybe the book for SN1046. A script 4 could be miss read as 9 or this could be a machine that was out of sequence.

From the Serial number pages …
Model D (SN1001-1052, 1054, 1056, 1058-1060)
Model E (SN1053, 1055, 1057, 1061-1065)

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