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To: Next_Time_NJ

I used to maintain IBM 1311 disk drives. They used a removable, interchangeable disk "pack" that had 10 active surfaces on 6 14-inch disks, 100 cylinders, 20 sectors of 100 BCD characters each, total 2 million characters. About 10 pounds, and VERY fragile. Two units required about the same space as a dining room table.

On the table beside me is an old 512 megabyte USB "jump drive", the size of a pocket knife and about equally fragile. It operates in microseconds instead of milliseconds, and has greater capacity than the sum total of all the computers in Memphis from those days.


82 posted on 03/25/2005 7:08:03 AM PST by MainFrame65
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To: MainFrame65
I used to maintain IBM 1311 disk drives. They used a removable, interchangeable disk "pack" that had 10 active surfaces on 6 14-inch disks, 100 cylinders, 20 sectors of 100 BCD characters each, total 2 million characters. About 10 pounds, and VERY fragile. Two units required about the same space as a dining room table.

I remember these beasts. The drive was the size of a top-loading washing machine. The "operator" - a high priest who was the only person given permission to actually be in the same room as a computer in those days - had to flip up the top of the drive and laboriously unscrew the disk when you needed another 2 megabytes of EBCDIC. It took both hands to lift the "disk pack" and heave it up to the shelf.

88 posted on 03/25/2005 8:38:31 PM PST by BlazingArizona
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