eculbert wrote: > I used to 'fry and cry', er, work at Honeywell > computers as a test tech. I remember working the > 'refurb' area where there were these about 15 inch > square 4K memory boards that those 350's fed way back > when. > > The company tried to 'fully load' a 8000 full scale > unit and had litterly hundreds of those big units and > the newer ones hooked up and never got the cpu more > than about 50 percent loaded. There was controllers > also that took up some room, System controller units, > i/o units...basically the perverbial 'room full' Oh, > yeah, those tape controllers, big as 25 foot home > refrigerators or even bigger and the 'tape room' > needed to store them! > > maintaince was constantly repairing broken floor tiles > from the heavy duty rollers they were mounted on as > we moved them throughout the plant. > > the cabinet that was the memory module was about 1/2 > as wide and almost as deep as a refrig in the kitchen. > The CPU was double wide! > > When the 'virtual memory unit' finally got 'approved/ > in about 82/3, there was a mad house of bringing the > 'modern' units back through the plant and a side note > follows. We used 'spare' field service techs to help > out as there was about 500 units plus current build to > cycle through the plant. Overtime city!! Big > paychecks!! > > One of the Field Service Tech's that was helping from > back east somewhere made a comment about one customers > memory module. Seems that the plant that it was in was > 'remodeled' and walls moved etc. They finally had a > power failure that the 'no break' failed to pick up > and keep the system running. It would NOT reboot > smoothly. Kept giving 'memory not found' errors. He > finally chased cables till one disappeared into a wall > not to reappear anywhere he could find!! Someone had > walled the memory unit into a 'cubby' hole that had NO > DOORS into it. They had to bust the walls and go > UPSTAIRS to the very small room it was in. The > remodeling had been in place for over 3 years!! > > Theret was a 'flooding year ' back east that year or > the year before and some of the stories about units > being flooded in basements (typical place for the old > large systems) and just drying them out and working > with anywhere from no to small failures were common. > > > --- Mark Jarvis > wrote: > > >> Found on slashdot: >> >> Hardware: The 305 RAMAC — First Commercial Hard >> Drive >> Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 10, >> @03:15PM >> from the looking-back-for-perspective dept. >> Data Storage >> Captain DaFt writes "Snopes.com has an article that >> gives an interesting >> look back at the first commercial hard drive, the >> IBM 350. Twice as big >> as a refrigerator and weighing in at a ton, it >> packed a whopping 4.4MB! >> Compare that to the 1-4GB sticks that most of us >> have on our keychains >> today." >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - >> PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail >> settings: >> >> > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > > > > Ed/ke7feg > > Did I mention, 2/23/07 the FCC dropped all cw (ADA Morse code) testing for any class of license as a ham? Just pass the written and "U's a ham"!! Many sites test online, but you have to go for the real test. $14 for as high as you can climb in one session. > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. > http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > Many people think the space program didn't pay for itself. But it provided the impetus for modern computing. One could carry a Babbage Difference Engine on a ship of war, and an IBM 350 on a very large plane. But the space program's need for smaller, lighter, and sturdier made the computers we enjoy today possible. Bob Eaton --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss