Subj : Email Clients... To : Peter Knapper From : George Vandervort Date : Wed Jul 27 2005 09:57 pm Hello Peter! Wednesday July 27 2005 23:26, Peter Knapper wrote to Rich Wonneberger: PK> Hi Rich, PK> RW>> Did it come on 9 track tape, punch card, or paper tape?? PK> PK> Punched Tape..........;-) And don't laugh, but I was working with PK> punched paper tape on my very first day at work. It was one of these - PK> PK> http://www.beagle-ears.com/lars/engineer/comphist/c20-1684/fig089.jp PK> g PK> RW>> (Was there anything else back in 65??) PK> PK> Look out... I am about to drift down memory lane here... In fact that PK> site - Hmmm... My earliest dealing with a Computer was in 1965 with punched paper tape on a SperryUnivac MainFram that was a dead ringer for one of those Black&white sifi movies.. Lucky for me the Univerity upgraded the Student computer to a PDP-11 with 80 collum IBM Punch cards, and Teletype terminals.. the next year... PK> PK> http://www.beagle-ears.com/lars/engineer/comphist/c20-1684/ PK> PK> contains an amazing collection of info and pictures relating to the PK> EXACT hardware that I cut my computing teeth on. I later worked on a PK> 360/30, 360/65, 370/145, 370/165 (later upgraded to a 370/169 using PK> 3rd party memory expansion), then a 3033, 3031, etc, and then I forget PK> all the other models. PK> PK> My very first computer that I ever saw and touched was an IBM System PK> 360 Model 40 CPU, with 128KB RAM, 1 x 2501 Card Reader, 1 x 2671 PK> Punched Paper Tape Reader, 2 x 1403 Printers, 1 x 1419 Magnetic PK> Character Reader (for reading the MICR codeline on bank cheques), 9 x PK> 2314 Disk drives, 3 x 2401 Magnetic Tape Units, 1 x 1052 Selectric PK> Typewriter Console, 1 x 2701 Communications Controller (driving 1 x PK> 40.8Kbps Data Circuit to Auckland that in 1971 was the fastest data PK> circuit in the southern hemisphere), 12 x 2740 Remote Terminals, and a PK> 7770 Audio Reponse unit. The later Communications related items were PK> ground breaking stuff in their time... PK> PK> Ahh yes, those really were the days of understanding how computers PK> worked, you could actually SEE the electrons running around. And yes, PK> I really did use and know what all the lights and switches did on the PK> front panel of the computer, binary coding for entering patches PK> directly into the processor memory at run time. All good real hand-on PK> stuff... PK> PK> The CPU used REAL CORE memory, and its Microcode was stored in TROS PK> (Transformer Read-Only Storage) tapes. Effectively the TROS held the PK> machine instructions of the computer (this was before microcode) and PK> was built as a stack of layers of plastic strips with copper runs that PK> had holes punched in the copper all arranged in a block around a PK> ferite core forming a huge sort of transformer. This manually PK> asssembled block was about 18 x 3 x 2 inches and weighed about 20-30 PK> lbs. I remember our IBM engineer stripping the TROS stack down once PK> and replacing one of the layers of plastic, its copper strip had "heat PK> fractured" and was causing CPU Checks (a forced H/W halt condition) PK> about 45 minutes after the weekly power up on Monday morning. PK> PK> Ahhh yes, those were the days of real computing.........;-) PK> PK> Cheers..............pk. PK> PK> PK> -+- Maximus/2 3.01 PK> + Origin: Another Good Point About OS/2 (3:772/1.10) Regards, George Vandervort InterNet EMail: georgev@austin.rr.com Tech Support: http://home.austin.rr.com/llr/tech.html 'Using yesterday's software to create tomorrow's problems today' ....Very funny Scotty... Now beam down my clothes! .... the Beatles said it best, Obla-Dee, Obla-Daa, Life Goes On... --- FMail/Win32 1.60 * Origin: 1:382/8 (FidoNet 1:382/8) .