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Post by dgriffin on Apr 28, 2011 22:29:05 GMT -5
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Post by Ralph on Apr 29, 2011 0:54:22 GMT -5
Takes you back don't it?
And now I'm walking around with a virtually indestructible 32GB encrypted flash drive I paid $65.00 for.
Makes you wonder what's down the road in another 10 years.
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Post by clarencebunsen on Apr 29, 2011 5:30:12 GMT -5
At least we no longer have to spend our Saturday mornings doing file management, deleting files we didn't need, transferring necessary files to flopy disks.
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Post by JGRobinson on Apr 29, 2011 6:14:29 GMT -5
Praise cheep data storage! I remember when we paid almost 20K for 5 gig of storage to edit video, took up a whole shelf, noisy and hot as hell and hard to use. Back then, even at less than 480I, we could do about 15 minutes at a time!
My watch has more RAM than my first Computer, my phone has a bigger processor, my 8" touch panel remote control has better imagery and rendering (and color), My thumb drive has all the storage capabilities of my first 3 computers combined, even my refrigerator has an LCD Display.
They are perfecting Organic Cellular Storage that will revolutionize the Data Storage Market, Like OLED's are doing in the display market. This stuff can be embedded in just about anything, flex membranes are the greatest promise for indestructible storage and retrieval.
They are doing the same with Batteries and Photovoltaic Cells, non volatile, completely automated manufacturing, very inexpensive to produce once they are ready for prime-time. Think about the laptop of the future, a sheet of plastic film that weighs about 8 ounces and is virtually indestructible, roll it up and throw it in your backpack, almost no precious metals, few petroleum products and very little packaging needed!
Now your entire automobile can be one big paint on PV cell, its batteries are a box of plastic ribbons weighing 1/10th that of Lead Acid or lithium, 100% coverage via 20G wireless Secure Green Tooth Networks, Auto Pilot is a real possibility with low consumption Terabyte processors and Ram the size of a pocket watch and all the weight saved from these inventions will triple our NRG savings!
Its not all that scary, I'm looking forward to it.
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Post by dgriffin on Apr 29, 2011 8:20:28 GMT -5
I believe the first "computer" I ever saw was an IBM 1401 at NY Telephone's "Toll Mechanization" unit which was housed in a low brick building on Arnold Ave in Utica between Sunset Ave and Genesee St. It was 1962 and I was a college student hired to run wires and relays around the inside of accounting machines (IBM 407) so they would interface with the optical scanners then being implemented to read paperwork sent back by customers when paying their bills. In that same large room with the 407's was the 1401. Why did NY Tel need a computer to just add up toll charges? The didn't need the computing power at all. They wanted the 600 line per minute 1403 printer (that only ran with the computer) to more quickly print out customer bills. I remember the lost look on the faces of the two NY Tel guys who for years had wired the accounting machine boards (an early form of "programming") and now were tasked to write Autocoder instructions to feed the beast. On Fridays they'd take an extra long lunch hour at the Uptown Grille.
Only a few years later I was an instructor on the large raised floor Lab in Endicott where we trained field engineers to assess systems using specialized diagnostic software. I thought I was an expert, but was too dumb at the time to realize how little I knew. I guess that was true for all of us early in our careers.
On that floor, I remember, were the Big Kahunas of the computing world at the time, the IBM 360 Model 50! 64,000 thousand bytes of main memory! A football field of 2401 tape drives and also disk drives, the kind with replaceable disks, the big multi platter jobs you could pull your back out while placing them in their drive or yanking them out. (Remember "I/O Operators?"
Chosen for their youth and stamina, they stood in football stadium sized computer rooms near a typewriter terminal and followed printed instructions from the JCL (Job Control Language) program to change tapes, disks, load paper, etc.) I wish I could remember how many bytes were recorded on one of those multiplatters or a typical reel of tape. I do remember an entire night shift of operations in New York City at an advertising agency (B&B) where the operators did nothing but load tapes while the computer stepped through a lengthy and complicated operation to sequence hundreds of tapes into a set of sequenced transactions. This was done so the day shift could run the Accounts Payable work in one day. And also for example so that Mel Blanc got a single royalty check for a few hundred bucks rather than 150 checks for three dollars and 34 cents each for use of Bugs Bunny's voice.
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Post by clarencebunsen on Apr 29, 2011 10:56:38 GMT -5
The max capacity of 2400 feet of 9 track half inch tape recorded in a GCR format (6250 BPI) was 170 Megabytes. With typical block sizes expect about 2/3 of that for actual capacity. Using older NRZI (1600BPI) or PE (3200BPI) capacity was considerably less.
I know of some of those refrigerator sized drives which were still in use as polishing machines as late as 2002.
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Post by JGRobinson on Apr 29, 2011 13:16:00 GMT -5
Monster Plate Drives, Tons of Mag Tape and punch cards were all high tech when I was a kid!
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Post by dgriffin on Apr 29, 2011 14:53:45 GMT -5
CB, do you remember the size of the DASD drives? Can't remember their model numbers. I remember 3380 and 3390, but the earlier ones from San Jose were 2301's, I think.
So a reel of tape was about 170 MB. I would have guess under 100. Of course, that's why they were favored for large jobs. 170 MB is a lot of data in the old scheme of things. It's equivalent to over a hundred boxes of cards, figuring 2,000 cards per box and 80 bytes per card, even though it's unlikely 80 columns would contain 80 useful bytes of data.
Toll Mech on Arnold Ave. was an interesting operation, aside from the fact that all the employees but the management were young women. When I wasn't crawling around practically inside a 407 wiring up relays I was taking keypunch calls. This was a great opportunity because any girl beginning work in the building started as a keypunch operator and so when adjusting keypunches I was among the youngest women in the building, closer to my age of 19. However, I was a gentleman and kept my bullshit within bounds. Mostly. Hahahaha!
Of course we all wore white shirts and suits back then, but not quite. Recognizing college kids had limited resources, the company allowed us students to get by with a light colored shirt, tie and a dark sport coat.
When a neighbor who knew I was in college saw me leave in the morning in my shirt and tie, he said he thought I was in embalming school, where at the time that was the student dress. I don't think there was such a place in Utica. Perhaps he thought I was commuting to Syracuse.
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Post by JGRobinson on Apr 29, 2011 15:31:24 GMT -5
A buddy of mine is a Copier Technician, he still has to wear a white shirt and tie every day. I don't know how but he keeps them clean til the end of the day; toner, grease and grime somehow is repelled magically. Luckily, Ive been a Blue Jeans kinda Technician my whole career. Occasionally I have to do sales calls and shows, then they get pants and a dress shirt at best!
170 Meg wont store a basic application now a days. The graphics and GUI's are pretty intense. Application serving has become all the rage, Google Apps are a perfect example of them. Little or no Software on the PC, The tool is delivered every time you open a doc.
I dont like Google docs or most of their tools, Ive been spoiled by Microsoft Office and Adobe, I want the whole application, not a cheesy scaled down version. You get what you pay for, if you pay nothing, you should expect even less in return.
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Post by clarencebunsen on May 1, 2011 6:18:30 GMT -5
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Post by dgriffin on May 1, 2011 6:47:20 GMT -5
Yes, I remember the drum storage drive. GE had one in Utica. The "data processing room" that contained it was darkened and they lit the room from behind the drum unit, giving the 2301 the look of a huge brain from a sci-fi movie. The 2301 was hooked to a 7070 or 7090 system, a large capacity computer that was originally developed for the Air Force's SAGE project, I believe. GE used it in their Radio Receiver Division in Utica before it went overseas. An engineer there told me that every time the marketers designed a new table radio enclosure to meet the latest decorator trends, GE had to re-calculate all of the heat factors in the tube radios. None of the radio engineering per se had changed since Colonel Armstrong (Edwin) invented the superhet receiver, but each new plastic design required moving components around to distribute the heat more evenly. Here's the kind of DASD I was thinking of. The photo here is of a drive connected with IBM's System/3.  |
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