mrb@psuecla.BITNET (01/30/87)
IMM STOP, RESET, PROGRAM LOAD (but don't have any console switches on, or it won't work) It was fun to read all the IBM 1130 recollections. We had an 1130 with 8K of core, a 1442 card read/punch, an 1132 printer (later upgraded to a 1403), a Calcomp plotter (or plodder, as it seemed), and the bisync communications adapter. It was frequently used as a remote workstation to Univac 1108s or CDC 6400/6600s, along with an IBM 360/370 every once in a while. When they changed over to the 1403 printer, IBM had to add a "channel adapter" to interconnect it. It was a HUGE cabinet which sat in the next room...we knocked a hole through the wall in order to feed the cabling to it. In re- trospect, it must have made the 1403 think a 360 was talking to it (just a guess). In fact, it was bigger than the printer. What a kluge. It seems like everyone whoever used the 1130 remains somewhat enamored of it; it also seems to be the "first" computer for lots of people. They must have sold billions of them to high schools & colleges, even though IBM never wanted to own up to such a success story. Maybe it did too much for the money (at that time). In fact, they never did come up with a reasonable migration path for 1130 users. In 1974, they tries to sell us on a 370/115, and it did not even drive a plotter (well, maybe off-line, but you had to buy a tape drive and other messy complications). General Automation was the company that made the 1130 clone....I never saw one in real life but they sure did try hard to sell them. By the way, there was no problem changing back to the card reader/printer as system input/output after you had switched it to the console. Seems to me that //CEND would do the trick, althoug the manuals are long since devoured by mildew and other dampness-loving basement organisms. The library here still has a couple 1130 books (the one by Joan K. Hughes was my favorite) and maybe I'll look it up. Did any one ever see a real live IBM 1800, which was an 1130 with data acqui- sition facilities? Looking forward to more stories...... MRB @ PSU
artm@phred.UUCP (02/01/87)
I actually did see an 1800 once. Although the CPU architecture (and the
actual circuitry) was apparently indeed a superset of the 1130, the outward
appearance was completely different--a very large cabinet with a control
panel in the middle, with a separate console selectric. It ran an OS that
was sort of the great granddaddy of all the minicomputer real-time, multi-
tasking operating systems that followed.
I worked with two 1130s at the University of Washington. One was the one
on which the original Conversational Conputer Statistical System was deveolped
that became all the rage with medical researchers. It allowed you to sit at
the console and "browse" through a database looking for trends, without really
having to fully understand what you were doing. This machine had a big
expansion cabinet that included 16K (I think) of additional core and two
more disk drives, in addition to the interface for a 1403 printer. The
1403 was almost legendary for its ruggedness and performance (it would
be considered a fairly fast printer even today) but it was also one of the
noisiest machines ever devised by humankind, and slowly destroyed the hearing
(and the nerves) of anyone working in the same room.
I've always wondered what indeed happened to all the 1130s. When the
organization I worked for decided to purchase a minicomputer (we had been
leasing a small 1130 for about $1K/month) Big Blue issued a proposal which
in addition to some sort of credit for five years or so of rental, involved
our paying an additional $55,000 to purchase the machine plus buying a System
7 for another $25K or so to do data acquisition. This was in 1972, and
needless to say we bought something else.
When the 1130 was being disconnected and crated up, I asked one of the IBM
service folks where it was going. He said that it was likely that it would
be hacked up and repackaged without the disk drive as some sort of accounting
machine, probably to then be leased to a small bank to squeeze out a few more
bucks before it was scrapped.
Like many others I've always felt a sort of affection for the old thing. It
was indeed one of the first "approachable" computers that could actually so
something. Its minimalist architecture forced you to make the best use of
what was there, and many of us retain some of the efficient (if slightly
idiosyncratic) programming habits we originally picked up from working
with it. If I found one running around the streets I'd be sorely tempted
to give it a good home. Probably right next to my 1949 Dodge pickup....
.........................................................................
Art Marriott
Physio-Control
tikal!phred!artm
.........................................................................
The older I get, the more I understand nostalgia.petel@teksce.UUCP (02/02/87)
In article <504@PSUECLA>, mrb@psuecla.BITNET writes: > > Did any one ever see a real live IBM 1800, which was an 1130 with data acqui- > sition facilities? > Yep, I even know where 2 are still running a *small* petrochemical plant, one is an online backup for the other, As of about 6 months ago, the second 1800 had only been needed less than a dozen times. Tandom eat your hart out :-). Pete Lancashire
emc@unicus.UUCP (Eric M. Carroll) (02/03/87)
I can't resist...
Back in the 1130's dying days (late 70s), I encountered one at Thornlea
SS outside of Toronto. The school board had several for student and
administrative use. They were a fun machine. I believe their sucess was
due to the fact that they were indestructable - minimal air conditioning, no
fancy machine room. My father's company attempted to run a subsidiary in the
60's with 1130s as phototypesetters. They went bankrupt. Anyway, around
82 I visited IBM's main Toronto assembly line. They built System/3 and
terminals, I believe. Lo and behold, at every assembly station, there was
an 1130! Apparently, they had quite a few 1130s all assigned to dedicated
hardware debuggers/quality control duties. The assembly line person would
build the System/3, then attach it to an 1130 for its checkout. Sorta sad
to see them all underused like that.
In 83, I heard that the York Region Board of Education had sold one of
its 1130s, with line printer, hard disk, 8k, and the fast card reader with
mark sense abilities, for a sum of $25. No joke. The Commodore 4032 PETs
they had been buying since they came out had 32k core and twice the disk
capacity, at a fraction of the size and price. Ah well. It sure would make
a nice basement play-toy, though...
Eric Carroll
Unicus Corporation,
Toronto Ont.
{utzoo!utcs!yetti, seismo!mnetor}!unicus!emc
maybe soon: emc@unicus.com (Any ARPA sites with x.25 out there?)cdshaw@alberta.UUCP (02/04/87)
artm@phred.UUCP (Art "Faster! Faster!" Marriott) writes: >...in addition to the interface for a 1403 printer. The >1403 was almost legendary for its ruggedness and performance (it would >be considered a fairly fast printer even today) but it was also one of the >noisiest machines ever devised by humankind, and slowly destroyed the hearing >(and the nerves) of anyone working in the same room. Waterloo used to have a 1401/1403 setup, bought mainly because "It had a really nice printer". Actually there seems to be two models of 1403, one noisy and one soundproofed. The soundproofed one is useless if you want to do self-service printing, though. I say "is" as opposed to "was" because until (maybe) 6 months ago, Waterloo still had all impact-printing done on its 4-5 1403's. The undergraduate self-serve printer has (I think) been in use continuously since 1963. And yes, it is a fast band printer. -- Chris Shaw cdshaw@alberta University of Alberta CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !
kludge@gitpyr.UUCP (02/06/87)
In article <210@pembina.alberta.UUCP> cdshaw@pembina.UUCP (Chris Shaw) writes: >months ago, Waterloo still had all impact-printing done on its 4-5 1403's. > At William and Mary, there is a 1403 printer. It was installed with the 1130. It was kept for the /360 upgrade, for the 370/168, for the NAS 370-compatible running now. The cabinet is huge and grey, and there is a big shiny spot on the side where all the paint has worn away, from the generation or so of undergraduates waiting for their printout to appear. I'm impressed. -- Scott Dorsey Kaptain_Kludge ICS Programming Lab (Where old terminals go to die), Rich 110, Georgia Institute of Technology, Box 36681, Atlanta, Georgia 30332 ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!kludge
len@geac.UUCP (Leonard Vanek) (02/06/87)
In article <229@teksce.SCE.TEK.COM> petel@teksce.UUCP (Pete Lancashire) writes: > >In article <504@PSUECLA>, mrb@psuecla.BITNET writes: >> >> Did any one ever see a real live IBM 1800, which was an 1130 with data acqui- >> sition facilities? >> >Yep, I even know where 2 are still running a *small* >petrochemical plant, one is an online backup for the other, >As of about 6 months ago, the second 1800 had only been >needed less than a dozen times. Tandom eat your hart out :-). > To the best of my knowledge eight 1800s are still being used to control the Units 1 through 4 of the Pickering Nuclear Power station outside of Toronto. At least, the plant was original built with two 1800s running each reactor (one as backup). I cannot see Ontario Hydro replacing a proven control system unless they had problems with the computers. The plant has had some bad publicity with failures of its tubing and fueling machine, but I have never heard anything about the control computers. Len
larry@kitty.UUCP (02/06/87)
In article <504@PSUECLA>, mrb@psuecla.BITNET writes: > It was fun to read all the IBM 1130 recollections. We had an 1130 with 8K > of core, a 1442 card read/punch, an 1132 printer (later upgraded to a 1403) > ... My first "hands-on" computer experience was on an IBM 1401 in 1965. The 1401 was a decimal machine, and the concept of hexadecimal notation was totally foreign to me at the time. I knew about octal machines, but only in theory. This particular 1401 had 16K of core, a 1402 card reader-punch, a 1403 printer, 4 dual-density tape drives (I believe 255 and 550 BPI), and 2 RAMAC's - which was IBM's jargon for multi-platter disk drives (these may have been IBM's first disk drives of that type). This was a batch machine, and there was, of course, no OS. I ran Fortran with a tape compiler which required 2 compiler tapes and 2 scratch tapes, and seemed to take at least 20 minutes for even the _simplest_ Fortran program to compile. I rather quickly learned what "efficiency" in coding meant since the compiled program could easily exceed the 16K core if I were not careful. Unfortunately, this Fortran compiler had no drivers to handle the RAMAC disks, so I was forced to learn Autocoder to access them on a machine language basis. I could never get machine language routines for disk handling to properly work from a Fortran program, so I was forced to divide my application programs between Fortran and Autocoder. I once did a little "unauthorized" modification to the 1401 hardware; I provided an external interface to the console test switches in an effort to create a serial data port that could read the tty current loop output of a data logger. Unfortunately, about 10 minutes before I was ready to run a test of the hardware with an Autocoder program, I got caught by an unsympathetic IBM CE who promptly called his supervisor. I guess IBM got a little bent out of shape because this 1401 was a leased machine. After then getting reamed out by my superiors, I was forced to abandon my "effort". To this day I wonder if it would have worked... In 1968, the 1401 was replaced by a 360/10 - which spent much of the first year of its life running in 1401-emulation mode because everyone had difficulty in understanding the assembly language, 360 architecture, and 360 DOS after having spent so much time with a 1401! <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York <> UUCP: {allegra|boulder|decvax|nike|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?"