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To: Dr. Sivana

I got you beat. When I started out, we were using IBM 2311 disk drives, a washing-machine-sized unit with 7 1/2 meg capacity.


16 posted on 01/13/2012 9:24:14 AM PST by PapaBear3625 (During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.)
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To: PapaBear3625

“I got you beat. When I started out, we were using IBM 2311 disk drives, a washing-machine-sized unit with 7 1/2 meg capacity.”

Anyone remember 8-inch floppies with 128Kb of memory?

Anyone remember when 128Kb seemed like a lot?


17 posted on 01/13/2012 9:28:18 AM PST by No Truce With Kings (Ten years on FreeRepublic and counting.)
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To: PapaBear3625

Got me beat ,, I used to be a storage admin ,, had a boatload of 3330-1 and 3330-2’s AND a 3850 mass storage system ,, thought I was in heaven when 3350’s came out in quantity... unfortunately when IBM had a minor 3380 problem and shut down production for a while we had to buy those hideous StorageTEK 3350 copies that had head crashes after 3 months of use..


20 posted on 01/13/2012 9:57:09 AM PST by Neidermeyer
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To: PapaBear3625
I got you beat. When I started out, we were using IBM 2311 disk drives, a washing-machine-sized unit with 7 1/2 meg capacity.

I can't top that. I only go back to PDP8, paper tape, core memory, and Priam 14" drives.
21 posted on 01/13/2012 10:01:24 AM PST by Dr. Sivana (May Mitt Romney be the Mo Udall of 2012.)
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To: PapaBear3625

Our PDP-8 was equipped with a fixed-head (head-per-track) disk with 32K word (48K byte) capacity. At least it was fast, because of no head positioning time, just rotational latency. It filled 10.5” of vertical rack space.

“Files” were just address ranges of words on the disk, which we kept track of manually.

We also bought an expansion box of magnetic core memory, expanding the computer from its native 4K words all the way up to 12K words! It cost us $7000.


24 posted on 01/13/2012 10:14:19 AM PST by Erasmus (Rage, rage, against the dying of the light. Or, get out your 50mm/1.2.)
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