Old Tech thread

[mosaix]

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.

The NCR Century range (1960's) had a drive with twelve heads per surface (on a single arm) so the head movement was much reduced. The one thing that only came to light after a couple of years was that the drive was subject to twelve times more head crashes than a normal drive. It was very fast though.

NCR also had a device called CRAM. Strips of magnetic tape were stored on mylar cards (256 or 512 cards to a deck). The removable deck was held vertically over a drum and each card could be addressed individualy and released to drop and wrap around the drum and then be accessed by a set of heads. Sounds complex? Sounds too complex? It was. A common fear amongst operators was a 'double drop'. The term speaks for itself.

The CRAM drive is on the left in the picture and you can see the cradle that held the cards and was used to mount the deck in the unit.

 

[farntfar]

There was a guy who used to work for IBM from some time in the 60s onwards and then when he was getting on a bit, and probably a bit out of touch, he moved into after-dinner speaking for techie type conferences and seminars.
He did a great talk and slide show about equipment of yesteryear, that I saw a couple of times in the early 90s.
The main thrust of his talk was how much computers had advanced and could do amazing things, but were now (then) just dull black boxes, and how much more fun they were when you could hear the heads move and see the tapes wind and unwind etc. You could even see the instruction bytes flash up on 16 LEDs on the front of the machine as they were processed. (as you could with the 360 that I started on in 1980).
He was hilarious. He'll be long dead now I expect, but wouldn't be able to even compare today's machines with his early days.

 

[Biskit]

You could even see the instruction bytes flash up on 16 LEDs on the front of the machine as they were processed. (as you could with the 360 that I started on in 1980).

There was a defunct early PDP(?) "mainframe" (the only hardware I saw was like a tall filing cabinet in size) in the physics department where you had to set the initial starting state with the switches on the front, and beware of overly tight code loops that might overheat the magnetic core memory. Supposedly, the beast was still functional but I never saw it running, and there probably weren't that many people around who knew how to turn it on.

 

[Ambrose]

Oh dear! I can recall when the only random access portable data store was a book.

 

[Biskit]

Oh dear! I can recall when the only random access portable data store was a book.

Bring back papyrus.

 

[farntfar]

Aye. You tell that to the youth of today, and they'll not believe you.

 

[Dave]

I still have a Slide Rule somewhere. I got it at school. I think we were the last year to get taught to use one.

 

[farntfar]

I've got one too. But I can't remember the password.

 

[reiver33]

1980’s financial systems using COBOL - no mouse, no graphics, no colour, just numbers on a screen, plus the odd reverse screen flashing alert.

But, man, did it HAVE to be quick, and accurate.

I was working on ICL mainframes and McDonald-Douglas ‘midi’ systems.

In the early 80’s, Lothian council’s payroll backup of last resort was held on magnetic drum.

 

[mosaix]

This thread has brought back an incident from my youth that still makes me giggle.

I move from NCR to Honeywell in the late 60s. They had a system called the Honeywell 200 series. The system at Honeywell's office in Manchester didn't have a console but a set of buttons and lights on a panel that stood up from the processor.

The machine operated in octal (don't ask) and the lights displayed the state of the system and the buttons allowed entry of commands - again in octal.

Beneath the main set of lights and buttons were two additional pairs of buttons, Halt and Central Clear (basically a system reset) and Power On and Power off.

I was in the machine room late one night waiting for a collegue, Henry, to finish testing a program so we could go off down the pub.

The processor was against one wall with a 600 line a minute printer next to it. On the opposite wall was a set of six mag tape drives. Henry was looking at the tape drives and it was obvious he had a program run-away. Without turning he put one finger on Central Clear and the other on Halt. Except he didn't - he had one finger on Power Off and the other on Power On.

Now the buttons were of such a design that it wasn't absolutely obvious that they had been fully depressed so we had the habit of pressing them several times - just to make sure.

The Power On and Off were for the entire system including printers and tape drives. After a couple of seconds of Henry pressing them we ended up with the system on and the tape drives rotating in various directions. However the big problem was the printer - it was emptying the entire contents of a box of continuous paper onto the floor of the computer room - took about ten seconds.

The room was a shambles. We turned the machine off (it sounded sick) and tried to return the paper to the box - impossible. It was a mountain.

To cut a long story short we manhandled it out of the building and heaved it over a hedge opposite into small park - it was there for weeks.

A few weeks later Henry and I were sharing a table with a computer engineer in the canteen.

"Tell me," said Henry to the engineer, "what would happen if you pressed Power and and Power off, together, several times?"

The engineer paused with fork half to mouth. "It was you!"

 

[reiver33]

Octal? Don’t talk to me about octal - hex, that’s the way ahead!

 

[Dave]

I've got one too. But I can't remember the password.

I've found it. It's still in the packet with the instructions. Boots 10' Standard Slide Rule. I'd take a photo but I'm going to watch Task Master.

 

[Vince W]

I've found it. It's still in the packet with the instructions. Boots 10' Standard Slide Rule. I'd take a photo but I'm going to watch Task Master.

As a kid I said I wanted to be an engineer, for the next two years all I got for gifts were slide rules and socks! What does that say about people's perceptions of engineers?

 

[reiver33]

As a kid I said I wanted to be an engineer, for the next two years all I got for gifts were slide rules and socks! What does that say about people's perceptions of engineers?

Engineers stuff balled-up socks down their pants and use the variable scaling on the slide rule to enhance the 'measured' effect even further...

 

[Dave]

all I got for gifts were slide rules and socks!

I wondered what type of engineer they expected you to become?

Sock Machine Museum Sock Knitting Machine Information, Sales, Patterns and Museum

Sock machine information, Sock knitting machines for sale, Sock machine knitting, Circular sock machines & more!

oldtymestockings.com

I actually have distant cousins who first introduced frame-work knitting machines into Scotland and owned a Borders company. You wouldn't have heard of them, but you might have heard of their rivals, Pringles.

 

[Ursa major]

You wouldn't have heard of them, but you might have heard of their rivals, Pringles.

I've never eaten any Pringles.

Do they smell of socks (old or otherwise)...?

 

[Vertigo]

I remember a particular hard disk drive we got in the early eighties. We hadn't been able to use the new fangled Winchester drives on our offshore survey boats because the movement of the boats would cause instant head crashes so we still had to use the big tape drives. Then one day this guy came in to demonstrate this new 5M hard drive. It was about the size of a modern desktop pc and I remember us watching with jaws thoroughly dropped as he picked it up (carefully) and moved it (gently) whilst it was being accessed and it didn't crash. We were gobsmacked and it duly went to sea, though we still didn't dare use it when the weather got a bit rough!

 

[farntfar]

The IBM 360 was known to overheat (although I never saw ours do so) and consequently had a big red emergency toggle in the top right corner which you could pull to cut the power instantly if it ever started to do so. Unfortunately, if you did, or if you powered off any other way for that matter, it took a day and a half to ipl (reboot), so it wasn't a good idea to try.
Now this toggle screwed onto a shaft which went inside the machine, and after explaining all that to new employees, it was a rite of entry to get them to unscrew the toggle and then screw it back on without cutting the power.
Actually, you had to really yank it to power off, so there really wasn't much danger, but of course as a newbie, you didn't know that.
It felt like you were defusing a bomb.

 

[mosaix]

I remember a particular hard disk drive we got in the early eighties. We hadn't been able to use the new fangled Winchester drives on our offshore survey boats because the movement of the boats would cause instant head crashes so we still had to use the big tape drives. Then one day this guy came in to demonstrate this new 5M hard drive. It was about the size of a modern desktop pc and I remember us watching with jaws thoroughly dropped as he picked it up (carefully) and moved it (gently) whilst it was being accessed and it didn't crash. We were gobsmacked and it duly went to sea, though we still didn't dare use it when the weather got a bit rough!

In the late 80s we were looking for a hand-held that we could program and sell to our customers for their reps to take orders in shops (before the internet) and transmit the orders back to our back-office system over land lines.

The machine had to be fairly rugged. For one demonstration we had the rep threw the thing across the room so it bounced off the floor. It was still working. It was waterproof down to about 5 metres and guaranteed not to emit sparks (so they could be used on oil rigs etc.). Don't think it had any type of disc - just enough memory to store a couple of orders until the next transmission.

 

[mosaix]

Anyone remember the line printers that played tunes? Programmers printed and fed paper so that the sound of the printing and paper movement sounded like a tune. I remember an IBM 1401 playing the theme-tune from the William Tell TV series.