OT: Vintage Computers - IBM 360 Tape Drives, 1968

[Blacklord]

These memory storage devices were one of the peripherals developed by IBM to service its System/360 family of machines, which was the first ever to allow users to enlarge or shrink their stable of machinery without having to purchase new software.

[airship]

I learned to program on a dual IBM/360 at Iowa State University. They were in a sterile, white room with a glass observation window just like a hospital delivery room. You could go watch the technicians scurrying around in their white lab coats servicing the thing.

There was a code you could send that would make the line printers go into an infinite loop on linefeed, and they were so fast that the paper would shoot in a big arc clear across the room! We were given notification that anyone who purposely sent that code to the printers would be expelled without recourse.

In FORTRAN 101 we would hand in our listings to be keypunched and processed. We got a grand total of 2 seconds of CPU time for the semester. Our assignments were so simple that if a single job ever took more than .5 seconds, the system was set to abort.

We took buckets full of the keypunch chits and would scatter them all over the dorm rooms of anyone we didn't like, or someone we were initiating. If you had these dumped into your dresser drawers or stuffed into your pants pockets, you'd never get them all out.

[swordfish1030]

WOW.... they actually had electricity when you where in college.. Hmmmm

[airship]

Yeah. We just got it. Before that, if we wanted electricity we had to stand out in a thunderstorm with a lightning rod...and we LIKED it!

[Golan Klinger]

A lightning rod? Bloody luxury.

[airship]

LOL!!!  Of course, I didn't mention the part about how me dad used to beat me with it first, and then lick it clean with me tongue.

[swordfish1030]

was that before or after God created dust?

[hydrophilic]

They sure are... colorful, but they don't look right with the tape missing.

I'd like to see a picture of the printers shooting paper across the room!  Sounds like a deleted scene from Maximum Overdrive.

[airship]

They were wide-format band printers.

Band printers can print up to approximately 2,000 lpm and can exist in very harsh industrial environments, although they are mostly used in datacenters.

Note the sound-proofed enclosure. They needed them.

[zeke1312]

Check this out if you want to see 1st and 2nd generation computers and early personal computers:

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/brochure/museum.html

[zeke1312]

http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/0000WELCOME.htm

OK. Look at this information. Read carefully....blows your mind

You wanted info on computers?