RE: IBM Maintenance alternatives -- MIDRANGE-L

I discovered my high school's IBM 1620 in 1968. When I was a senior in '69,
they added some such disk, a chain printer, and 60 Kb core memory console.
I think they got the optional hardware multiply circuitry that year too.

I used to stay there late each night 'till the janitor would kick me out,
doing things like programming the hydraulic head actuators in a pattern,
or printing all the characters in the order they appear on the print chain,
or making a tune on a radio placed near the incandescent front panel lamps,
or scanning the school's platter raw records for a girl's name and phone no.

Major bummer was when a card jam would hurt the brushes on the card reader.
Then there's nothing to you could do but mope around until the CE came out.
I used to want to be such a one. Wore a tie to career day at an IBM office.
Worried because I don't sing, when everyone stood and sang a company song.

BTW, I'm lurking to learn more about twinax and ipds, but I'm in no hurry.

Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
Senior Software Engineer
QualityLogic, Inc.
5401 Tech Circle
Moorpark, CA 93021
Phone 805 531 9030 ext. 30
GScheper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Derham [mailto:derhamj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 4:15 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: IBM Maintenance alternatives


Sure do remember them, especially on the IBM 1130 which was relatively
smashing calculating machine which you could program in Fortran. Jack Derham

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James H H Lampert
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 11:32 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: IBM Maintenance alternatives

I just remembered something I hadn't thought of yesterday:

While I was a University student, my old high school bought a third-hand IBM
mainframe, as an on-site student timeshare system. A 4341.

Even though it was an IBM system, when a power failure caused the disk drive
(a 3330, or some such; I remember quite well what the thing looked
like) to jam in "emergency head retract," the tech who came out un-jam the
drive was from CDC.

Anybody remember removable pack hard drives? The kind where you screwed in a
pack cover, lifted the pack out, and put it on a sort of plate? One of those
pack covers might make a cute cake cover for a computer geek.  ;-)

--
JHHL


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