mo@seismo.UUCP (03/01/87)
I must admit being rather amused by all the people who think 1130's are "ol' time stuff". Yes, I used an 1130 in college, but long before that, I use an IBM 1620, the precursor to the 1130, and in many ways, one of the most interesting machines ever built. It was the numerical analyst's dream because it did decimal arithmetic in arbitrarily-large precision. It was also a great machine for business computing, again because of the decimal arithmetic. It wasn't fast, but the machine I got to use was a Cadillac: 1620 Model I (or "Cadet", if you are of that era) 40K digits of storage! 1622 read/punch 1443 120-column bufferd line printer 2 1311 disk drives running Monitor IID Talk about the Cat's Pajamas!! It originally had a plotter on it, but when the machine was given to the local VoTech school by its previous owner, the Tech school didn't see any need for a plotter (Blast!). The 1620 was replaced with a 360/50, just to equal the throughput! The 1620 did have a sibling - the 1710 process control machine, which had interrupts and wonderful stuff like that. I/O on the 1620 was buffered but synchronous (disk stuff could be started and then later tested for completion, if memory serves me right). These days, I suspect a half-witted 68K could emulate a 1620 at about 10 times its old speed, but it wouldn't keep you warm in winter like the 20,000 BTUs/hour pouring out of the 1620 could. So, where are all the 709 hackers out there? Bendix G15's running the precursor to BASIC? Maybe we need comp.nostalga. -Mike O'Dell
johnl@ima.UUCP (03/05/87)
In article <43116@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> mo@seismo.CSS.GOV (Mike O'Dell) writes: >I must admit being rather amused by all the people who think 1130's >are "ol' time stuff". ... > > 1620 Model I (or "Cadet", if you are of that era) Aw, shucks, the 1620's not so old. I learned to program on a Packard-Bell 250. We had to re-tune the delay lines for summer or winter because the propagation speed of the mercury changed. And who can forget the Flexowriter which knocked over your coffee cup as the carriage returned. I hear that Packard-Bell has gotten back into the computer business with PC clones. Maybe I'll get one for old times' sake. John Levine PS: If you know what Cadet stood for, don't post it. -- John R. Levine, Javelin Software Corp., Cambridge MA +1 617 494 1400 { ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something Where is Richard Nixon now that we need him?
ejnorman@uwmacc.UUCP (03/05/87)
In article <499@ima.UUCP> johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) writes: > In article <43116@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> mo@seismo.CSS.GOV (Mike O'Dell) writes: > Aw, shucks, the 1620's not so old. I learned to program on a Packard-Bell Just out of curiosity, anyone out there ever programmed an NCR 304? It's what I was raised and weaned on. Eric Norman Internet: ejnorman@unix.macc.wisc.edu UUCP: ...{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!ejnorman Life: Detroit!Alexandria!Omaha!Indianapolis!Madison!Hyde "Naw they ain't; I just happen to be in front." -- Kris Kristofferson in "Convoy" --
anderson@uwmacc.UUCP (03/05/87)
In article <1197@uwmacc.UUCP>, ejnorman@uwmacc.UUCP (Eric Norman) writes: ] In article <499@ima.UUCP> johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) writes: ] > In article <43116@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> mo@seismo.CSS.GOV (Mike O'Dell) writes: ] ] > Aw, shucks, the 1620's not so old. I learned to program on a Packard-Bell ] ] Just out of curiosity, anyone out there ever programmed an NCR 304] ] It's what I was raised and weaned on. OK, I've been staying out of this for *ever* so long, but if you can top this, you're *really* VERY old! My first machine was Illiac I at Urbana, 1955, next IBM 704 in Madison 1956 (Eric is my colleague and though he's old, I'm older (even)). [NB: I assume it's electronic computers we're talking about, but I did have some earlier experiences with Marchants, Fridens, and Monroe calculators, kerchunk, kerchunk!] -- ==ARPA:==============anderson@unix.macc.wisc.edu===Jess Anderson====== | UUCP: {harvard,seismo,rutgers, (avoid ihnp4!) 1210 W. Dayton | | akgua,allegra,usbvax}!uwvax!uwmacc!anderson Madison, WI 53706 | ==BITNET:======================anderson@wiscmacc===608/263-6988=======
larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) (03/07/87)
In article <1197@uwmacc.UUCP>, ejnorman@uwmacc.UUCP (Eric Norman) writes: > > Just out of curiosity, anyone out there ever programmed an NCR 304? > It's what I was raised and weaned on. Not a 304, but I did have a brief experience with an NCR Century in 1976. From what I understand, the Century was just as UN-state-of-the-art in 1976 as the 304 was in its own prime 10 years earlier. I designed a custom microprocessor-based system for a department store chain that interfaced a Kimball ticket reader to a mag tape drive which wrote a tape that could be read on the Century. The Kimball ticket reader was originally designed to use an IBM 523 summary punch to create cards that could be read by the Century - a costly and inefficient process indeed! Kimball tickets were a weird multi-part tag with an x-y array of punched holes, used primarily in retail stores for inventory control/sales reporting; they are now obsolete. The Century (which had a whole 32 K core) was programmed in a weird language catted NEAT-3. It was necessary for the Century application program to perform some bit manipulation and combinatorial logic on the raw data read from the mag tape. This type of programming was totally beyond the comprehension of the store's programmers (what's a "shift_"?; "modulo", that's an Italian word, isn't it? :-( ), and NEAT-3 lacked any suitable instructions for bitwise operations. While I wasn't supposed to do any of the Century programming, in frustration I had to write the interface program in NEAT-3. As a person whose programming experience was scientific and not business, working with the Century and NEAT-3 was _torture_; what should have been 20 lines of assembly language code took 200 lines in NEAT-3! This Century and NEAT-3 experience was so horrible that it left me with a serious prejudice against NCR, which was fortunately overcome 2 years ago when I discovered the NCR Tower. <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York <> UUCP: {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rocksanne|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry <> VOICE: 716/688-1231 {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/ <> FAX: 716/741-9635 {G1,G2,G3 modes} "Have you hugged your cat today?"
terry@cdx39.UUCP (Terry Platt x7360) (03/10/87)
We had the same model IBM 1620 when I was going to high school as Mike O'Dell had. By the way, for those who don't know, CADET stands for "Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try": the add and multiply tables were stored in unprotected, normal speed (20 usec) core; the most common bug would result in wiping out all memory, and your ability to add. But having a writable add table meant you could add and multiply in bases other than 10. The console terminal (modified typewriter) on our machine was not overlapped: if you held onto the carriage when it tried to carriage-return, the whole machine would stop.
dv@well.UUCP (David W. Vezie) (03/10/87)
Just think. Some day you'll say "I remember when I actually
worked on <insert your CURRENT machine>. Boy, was that a dinosaur!"
---
David W. Vezie
{dual|hplabs}!well!dv - Whole Earth 'Lectronics Link, Sausalito, CA
terrorist, cryptography, DES, drugs, cipher, secret, decode, NSA, CIA, NRO