Old Tech thread

[Ursa major]

I got my last job partly because I knew Fortran. The company was replacing an old Fortran-based system and having someone who could read the existing code and its data structures was useful in the migration process.

So you were employed for translation work then...?

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[Vince W]

So you were employed for translation work then...?

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That joke was so bad I almost reported it!

 

[mosaix]

That joke was so bad I almost reported it!

Think I might.

 

[Narkalui]

This was our first computer:

by the way, thanks for this thread Danny, only found it the other week and it's been very enlightening!

 

[Pyan]

It was a happier age, when this was all the housewife had to worry about... "femineered" indeed,

 

[Starbeast]

I miss those old computers where you had to build them inside the room. When I was a kid, the dog and I used to sleep on top of the warm device. You get used to the humming sound it made.

 

[Danny McG]

When I was a kid, the dog and I used to sleep on top of the warm device. You get used to the humming sound it made

Why did your dog make a humming sound?

 

[Biskit]

Why did your dog make a humming sound?

I thought it was because only cats know how to purr.

 

[Bick]

This is what I wrote my PhD on:

It did everything I do these days pretty much, perfectly well from memory.
I was 'lucky' in a sense, it was only a few years prior to my year that students were typing them...

 

[Biskit]

This is what I wrote my PhD on:

View attachment 72168

It did everything I do these days pretty much, perfectly well from memory.
I was 'lucky' in a sense, it was only a few years prior to my year that students were typing them...

I used one of these for my PhD...

with external 51/4 drive and a word processor I wrote myself.
(When not being a word processor, my BBC micro also doubled up as a terminal to the university mainframe.)

 

[reiver33]

The first server I built for the NHS was a 486/100 with 16 meg of memory, and over-specified for its intended purpose (end of financial year budget splurge)

 

[Pyan]

I'm always astonished at the way the price of memory has fallen - this one would hold about the equivalent of two photos...

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And that's for a refurbished one - a brand new disk would set you back $4,495, in 1980 dollars. That's about $15,775 today (£12,000!)

 

[Ursa major]

The first "Winchester" hard disk drive I saw reviewed in PCW magazine had a whopping 3Mbytes of data, cost (I think) at least a couple of grand (in pounds) and was described as sounding like a jet engine.

 

[farntfar]

The above mentioned 5440s were removeable hard drives, very similar to (and slightly later than) the 2311s that I used when I first started in computing.

The disks, like a stack of overlarge LPs were screwed into a drive the size of a washing machine, which we had 4 of in the computer room. Each disk could hold just over 7 meg of data and you would normally have to change the disks several times in the course of a fairly simple process. (A payroll for instance).
This was not because 7M was not enough for the data involved in a payroll (and the programs), but rather because you never wanted to be accessing more than one file (employee master; Addresses; Bank master, Rates etc) at a time on any disk, because the movement of the read/write heads took too long. You could hear the heads move from one file to another (Clunk, pause,Clunk).
Here is a 2311 with its disk loaded.

 

[Vince W]

Hmmm. This thread is getting somewhat competitive...

 

[farntfar]

I'm sorry, Vince, if you thought my post about 2311s was written competitively, following Pyan's entry on 5440s. I was actually trying to add a bit of context. Py's picture didn't seem to me to really show the physical size of the disks in those days, nor the limitations of their use, which I thought was important.
The difference between the 2 models of disk is far less important than their similarity. The head contention (spreading files over disks) issue I also thought might interest people. It was a large factor in system design at the time.

 

[CupofJoe]

At work we had a 20 Mb "Winchester" Hard Drive that was on a network of BBC Micro B+. It sounded like it belong in Blade Runner somewhere when it powered up. It was also the size of small filing cabinet. I wasn't allowed to turn it on unassisted for about 6 months after I started work... Until they were sure I wouldn't kill it.

 

[Ursa major]

Until they were sure I wouldn't kill it.

They were obviously spying on you, checking to make sure that you never communed with butterflies....

 

[Vince W]

I'm sorry, Vince, if you thought my post about 2311s was written competitively, following Pyan's entry on 5440s. I was actually trying to add a bit of context. Py's picture didn't seem to me to really show the physical size of the disks in those days, nor the limitations of their use, which I thought was important.
The difference between the 2 models of disk is far less important than their similarity. The head contention (spreading files over disks) issue I also thought might interest people. It was a large factor in system design at the time.

I don't really, I find this sort of thread fascinating myself.

 

[CupofJoe]

They were obviously spying on you, checking to make sure that you never communed with butterflies....

Well... A couple of years later, I did manage to kill a VAX mini... So maybe they had a reason.