CR/LF for the new generation

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 9:17 am

Funny... years ago went to a demo of a new DG machine (all purple/blue and wire wrapped, if anyone recalls) and one of the disk drives tried to do the same thing. The salesman very nonchalantly stood in front of it to keep it from wandering off. Took me a minute to realise what was going on.

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 9:22 am

I never got a chance to witness those machines

Heard about them from my univ. professors.

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 9:32 am

DSGuru2B - Those beasts are dinosaurs compared to what is available today. It is similar to marveling at the old steam powered factory machines - there is a certain nostalgia associated with the old heavy iron, but you wouldn't want to revert to having to actually use them.

I know I still have an IBM Selectric somewhere in storage and one of my ex-colleagues in Germany has a whole barn filled with one or more working models of all PR1ME computers. I'm sure his electric bill is pretty high when he fires up an old P750! I think my washing machine has more computing capacity than that model does

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 9:40 am

Wow. It would have certainly been a kick for their users and some memory to share with us new kids on the block.

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 1:27 pm

I used to run a Prime 250 with 2MB memory. On eight nineteen-inch rack-mounted boards (0.25MB each).

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 1:56 pm

I never got to witness or use any of those so I have no idea what your talking about Ray.

I am at the disposal of my imagination.

I_Server_Whale · Post by **I_Server_Whale** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 2:13 pm

DSguru2B wrote:I have no idea what your talking about Ray.

Me neither. Google didn't help me out either.
What is a Prime 250 with 2MB memory

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 2:37 pm

Ah... those were the days!

The first machine I worked on as a professional used CDC 'Hawk' drives, from what I recalled. One fixed platter and one removable platter about the size of a pizza and in a 'cartridge' about two or three inches thick. The fixed platter stored our O/S and the removable platter had our code on it, one per application. Customer data was stored on 8 inch floppies. Total capacity of each hard drive platter?

5 megabytes.

I don't recall how much RAM the machine had, but I'm sure it wasn't much.

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 2:40 pm

Some memory huh craig. You guys sound like my college professors. Even they used to talk about those days with so much intensity.

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:27 pm

The early Prime machines' disk drives came in 80MB (five 14 inch platters), 300MB (nineteen 14 inch platters) and 600MB (sealed). You had to undertake weight training before you could change packs in the 300MB drives. And on the very rare occasions they crashed, the noise was spectacular!!

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:36 pm

I was thinking the same. Not only the IT folks had to be smart but physically fit as well.

I_Server_Whale · Post by **I_Server_Whale** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:52 pm

ray.wurlod wrote:And on the very rare occasions they crashed, the noise was spectacular!!

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 4:26 pm

Ray still has the scar from that time when... well, never mind. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Dealt with 200MB and 300MB packs, too. Heavy, noisy and God Forbid you dropped one.

I_Server_Whale · Post by **I_Server_Whale** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 4:31 pm

chulett wrote:Heavy, noisy and

...expensive as well, I guess.

aartlett · Post by **aartlett** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 4:42 pm

<< Getting out of the wheel chair and waving the walker around >>

Okay you users of modern equipment. My first professional gig was on a GE 225. 4 banks of 4K Core RAM. Core ram for you newbies (say post '75 IT working life) was magnets wrapped in gold wire. Fast but big. They were non-volatile so you could turn the power off and on and start from where you were up to.

Disks ... didn't need no steenking disks ... tape drives only.

Next machine was a Honeywell H6000, that had 4M RAM and very heavy removable disks (I dropped one once ... my bad).