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1956 IBM hard drive
On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 10:04:05 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote:
For such a mechanical contraption, they were amazing. http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...544&q=mod-tage That certainly brings back some memories. You can almost smell that oil they all used. It had a peculiar pungent odor. I think they were amazing *because* they were a mechanical contraption, somewhere near the apex of the complex electro-mechanical era. You could actually look at them and get a sense of how they worked (or not), and the number of precisely synchronized moving parts was astounding. |
1956 IBM hard drive
"Calif Bill" wrote in message ... wrote in message ... On Tue, 4 Dec 2007 08:29:22 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote: http://www.neatorama.com/images/2006...puter-1956.jpg In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive(HDD). The HDD weighed over a ton and stored 5MB of data. That's not a typo ..... 5MB of data. Eisboch We still had a 305 running at the Bureau of Standards in Germantown Md when I started with IBM in 1966. I remember at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco in 1966 where they added another disk to the IBM drum memory each day. Difference from the modern disk drive is they had fixed heads, not a moving arm. no disks on a drum. bada boom. there were fixed head disks, moving head disks, drums. And data cells and tapes |
1956 IBM hard drive
wrote in message ... On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 22:58:48 -0600, "Del Cecchi" wrote: I remember at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco in 1966 where they added another disk to the IBM drum memory each day. Difference from the modern disk drive is they had fixed heads, not a moving arm. no disks on a drum. bada boom. there were fixed head disks, moving head disks, drums. And data cells and tapes He is probably talking about a 2305. Everyone called it a drum but it was really a fixed head disk drive yup. |
1956 IBM hard drive
wrote in message ... On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 22:58:48 -0600, "Del Cecchi" wrote: I remember at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco in 1966 where they added another disk to the IBM drum memory each day. Difference from the modern disk drive is they had fixed heads, not a moving arm. no disks on a drum. bada boom. there were fixed head disks, moving head disks, drums. And data cells and tapes He is probably talking about a 2305. Everyone called it a drum but it was really a fixed head disk drive Highschool buddy retired as a regional specialist for IBM. He said they went to the Smithsonian Tech Museum and almost all the machines there he worked on. Figured out he was old. From the O24/026 on up. |
1956 IBM hard drive
wrote in message ... On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:35:26 -0500, Wayne.B wrote: I finally nailed it in Decatur Alabama. It was software. Bug in the print spooler. A 167 year old girl who worked there gave me the clue I needed Who gave her the clue, Ben Franklin? :-) Eisboch |
1956 IBM hard drive
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1956 IBM hard drive
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1956 IBM hard drive
wrote in message ... On Fri, 7 Dec 2007 02:36:12 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote: spooler. A 167 year old girl who worked there gave me the clue I needed Who gave her the clue, Ben Franklin? :-) Sorry that was supposed to be 16-17. I figured that. I was just trying to be funny. Eisboch |
1956 IBM hard drive
wrote in message ... On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:01:46 -0500, Wayne.B wrote: On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 02:01:34 -0500, wrote: I really liked the cash register business the best, just because it got me out and around dealing with real people (not the dweebs you deal with in glass house computer rooms). Careful now. :-) I know, I used to be one of those dweebs. ;-) I always had the argument with the other "big system" CEs who thought cash registers were beneath them. I had to point out that when they were at a Wendys they should look around. There is nobody there working less than them and they are all working for a lot less money. "Just to your damn job and be happy about it". They didn't have to work in a resident territory. They could move to Tampa and be in the computer room all day. I was also happy to point out that if this stuff is so far beneath them, why is it kicking their ass? Spend a weekend in an ATM vault with a security guard, the bank rep, 10 pieces of test equipmemt and the Telco guy, trying to fix a communication problem and you figure out this little stuff isn't that easy after all. BTW I think the most impressive mechanical machine is a 3890 check sorter. We had 3 of them at C&S (and the other three or four names the place had) That was where the sheriff is now on 6 mile. That sucker ran about 2600 six inch checks a minute, sorted into one of 30 (up to 36) poclets and along the way it rolled an endorsement on the back, took pictures of both sides and ****ed a number on the back with an ink jet printer. They used a 360 model 25 for the controller (later replaced with a PS/2 mod 80) My favorite box was a 3800 laser printer. We only had 3 in Ft Myers but in DC there were almost 100. the better sorter for handling the checks was the NCR 407. The better reader was the IBM. B of A used the IBM's for the online reading and the NCR sorters for the offline reading. Loved the 3800 style printer. First engineering job after I finished college was with Itel, and were were building an interface to a Siemens ND2 printer to make it look like the 3800. I did the disassembly of the IBM channel diagnostics to figure what we needed to send back to the mainframe when diags were run. Lots of undocumented channel commands. We used a DEC PDP-34 as the channel controller. Fun job. Just before they laid of 2300 of us when the residual values of the 360 crashed with the release of the H series systems, I was about 50% through writing a program to take a plotter input tape and convert it to print on the 3800. The plotter table took 2 days to draw a plot that I could print in about 30 seconds. |
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