Thanks! I think it's important to note that to my knowledge, no lies were told.
Those in organizations who delved into the details found that yes, it's a supercomputer. It's a really obsolete one. But it is more capable than the PCs. More importantly, it showed that the university was very resourceful, and imagine what it could do if it got real money! In addition, having a good university next door was attractive, but only if there was a plausible path to get there.
But that was a complicated story to tell, so this whole thing provided a simpler story: "They have a supercomputer". All big organizations have bureaucratic inertia, and this simpler story was useful for people who didn't want to go into the details but might veto something.
My wife calls this "theater", and that's a good word. In this case, it was theater that helped counter bureaucratic inertia.
GMU took the few resources it had, and did a lot with them. People saw that, gave them real resources, and GMU quick grew into a powerhouse. I think that's an interesting story, and the 6600 played a part in it.
To be fair a 6600 was a great choice too to have students learn on at the time. It's basically a Cray-0, and would be representative of the architecture of supercomputers up through the mid/late nineties.
Hell, at the time, given the choice between a Cray and two 6600s, for students I'd lean two 6600s.
