The dinosaurs are not dead (yet)

[ubuysa]

On 7th April 1964 IBM unveiled the System 360, the first upgradeable general purpose computer. I never actually worked on a S/360, I started with it's successor the System 370, I also worked on ICL mainframes and the first of these (ICL 1900) was also unveiled 50 years ago this year. The S/360 architecture was so successful that programs written for the S/360 can be run unchanged on the very latest z/OS based IBM mainframes.

See http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26886579.

Few people realise that mainframes are still with us, and always have been. The reports of the demise of the computing dinosaur are more than a little previous. All banks, airlines, insurance companies, petrochemical companies, even the Met Office, are still using mainframes at the core of their information systems. What's changed is that instead of being the only computer in a company, the mainframe is now the core of the distributed computer system, typically accessing databases measured in exabytes and doing so with sub-second response time.

We mainframe dinosaurs are not dead, we're just waiting.......... :devil:

 

[dogbot]

Ah! The good old days.

It was 1975 before I started computing following a crash course in Fortran. We had started using an HP 1000 computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-1000/RTE which, although used locally, was a minframe inasmuch as all the boards plugged into a common rail bus. Ours had about a dozen A/D converter boards for real time data aquisition from typically motion sensors, accellerometers and pressure transducers.

Fortunately the days of using a teletype to produce reams of punched paper tape to feed into the computer were coming to an end. Even so, there was no operating system as we know it, and programs for different tests needed to be individually compiled.

Later I had a DEC PDP 11/23 to play with. It was a lot smaller but it did have discs the size of dinner plates. But that is another story.

 

[ubuysa]

Ah! The good old days.

It was 1975 before I started computing following a crash course in Fortran. We had started using an HP 1000 computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-1000/RTE which, although used locally, was a minframe inasmuch as all the boards plugged into a common rail bus. Ours had about a dozen A/D converter boards for real time data aquisition from typically motion sensors, accellerometers and pressure transducers.

Fortunately the days of using a teletype to produce reams of punched paper tape to feed into the computer were coming to an end. Even so, there was no operating system as we know it, and programs for different tests needed to be individually compiled.

Later I had a DEC PDP 11/23 to play with. It was a lot smaller but it did have discs the size of dinner plates. But that is another story.

Oh the PDP11, yup I played with one of those too!

 

[dogbot]

The HP 1000 only had 16 KB (yes, Kilobytes) of memory. Amazing how little was needed for numbercrunching without the bloatware associated with an OS, graphics and security.

 

[ubuysa]

The HP 1000 only had 16 KB (yes, Kilobytes) of memory. Amazing how little was needed for numbercrunching without the bloatware associated with an OS, graphics and security.

I know. That first IBM S/370 I worked on (a uniprocessor) was an IBM3081, it had 512MB of RAM and yet we supported up to 3,000 concurrent users accessing a small clutch of databases and all with a sub-second response time per user. The hard drives (and there were many!) were the size of dinner plates with 8 platters per spindle and a total capacity of 47Kbytes per volume.

We certainly seemed to do more with less in those days. I put it down to the quality of the people supporting them.

 

[Androcles]

A guy who I used to rent a room from worked on one of the earliest built computers in the UK, when he passed away he had no family so I kind of adopted everything he owned, I'm pretty sure I still have some really old pictures of him changing valves and stuff, if I can find them i'll scan them and post them here for anyone interested.

 

[dogbot]

Of course before computers our test results were written on spreadsheet style 'run' sheets and analysed by filling in the remaining columns using a sliderule. I bought a relatively expensive Aristo NR. 0968 sliderule which was intended to last me a lifetime. Well, I still have it, so I guess it must have done.

Naturally, most computer techs at that time were unemployed. :yes:

 

[ubuysa]

This is similar to one of the first stored-program control devices I ever worked on when I worked for the GPO as an apprentice. It's a magnetic drum register translator. The little square looking things that the guy in the background is about to plug into are the logic gates, all valves (and soldered in too). The whole panel slides out so that you can replace these valves if (actually, when) necessary. Of course the power-shock unplugging and plugging it back in again invariably blew a couple of other valves in the panel as well! The magnetic drum storage device itself is under the cover the same guy has his left hand on. The tester with the neon tubes is checking dialling code translations, to check the logic gates themselves we used an oscilloscope. There is a second mag drum R/T behind them. Happy days.