IBM's 'dinosaur' turns 40

San Francisco Chronicle | April 5, 2004 | Benjamin Pimentel

[NCjim]

Known as drab-looking machines that sit in huge air-conditioned rooms, the IBM mainframe computer has been called the dinosaur of the technology world.

About a decade ago, pundits predicted it would soon become extinct.

But the machine, which companies all over the world have used to manage payroll and monitor expense accounts, and which enabled scientists to send the first men to the moon, is celebrating its 40th birthday this week.

[Bobibutu]

Mgd - Osborne! You wanted a portable ... They were a big hit when they first came out then .... poof.

[capitan_refugio]

My first experience with a mainframe was a Honeywell too! MULTICS operating system. Circa 1980.

[Bobibutu]

IBM = I've Been Moved

[txhurl]

Standard response from CEs: 'it's ya'lls SPAGHETTI CODE that has y'all down.'

Nine times out of ten, you were right :)

[Bobibutu]

Yeah - $1.75 million per megabyte.

Hey - it was built by hand back then - each donut and the 5 wires that went thru it's hole to the next one.

[capitan_refugio]

You cleaned tape heads with Freon?!

[Bobibutu]

Thank you and we'll give you the one out of 10 :-) you guys worked your brains out - but you made our lives hell ;-)

[Bobibutu]

Plug boards went out with the 407 - thank God - crankata wheep - cranka- ta - wheep - 360/50's RULEed - at least back in my day -60's

Man the oil we had to keep clean in the 407's - a PM on that baby took at least 4 hours and that was if you were proficient!

[txhurl]

I was always the chick that proved the printer/CPU problem correlation. You know what I mean, you dog. That bug where system printer stops CPU and job scheduling.

[Bobibutu]

"I was always the chick that proved the printer/CPU problem correlation. You know what I mean, you dog. That bug where system printer stops CPU and job scheduling."

Now Now - Let's let bygones be bygoens and if you are still having problems - I know a few of the big dog techs that can solve you problem -

[Varmint Al]

Here is a picture of the IBM 1401 control panel. When the power was turned on, the memory was blank. The computer didn't know anything until some instructions were keyed in by hand. I believe the first few instructions were in Octal. After positioning the switches for an instruction, one would press an enter button. Can't remember which button it was. I believe it took about 5 or 6 separate instructions to tell it to read the tape drive. Then a run button was pushed, I think and if you did it correctly, the tape drive would start reading the tape.

Here was the output card punch, key card punch for input, the computer, the tape drives, don't remember what the next consol was, and finally the printer. And the one I was using had 4K of memory! The good old days.

Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

[B-Chan]

IBM 026 bump. (My first computer job, 1983, University of Dallas).

[Bobibutu]

"don't remember what the next consol was"

The Random Acess Disk Drive!

Nice Find!

[Bobibutu]

Octal is good - Hexadecimal  is better

can anyone xlate 02FC? (Hex)

[txhurl]

Oh, no. I hunt arrowheads for a living now. :)

[txhurl]

Is that why we were so high?

[Varmint Al]

02FC=764 dec
FFFF=65535 dec
00FF=255 dec

Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I remember all of those. Remember the 650 , with a rotating drum for memory, before CORE for memory!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Nothing compares with the 360/370 ....3090 ...MVS...VM!

[VMI70]

I don't know what or who is PDP.
I know it was not the IBM 1401 that Varmint Al put up. The console was much bigger, about 4-5 feet across, and one stood up to use it. The switches were at about mid torso level.