Karl, Karl, Karl.... boy you bring back some good memories... the only job I
ever had and enjoyed was a mainframe computer operator... Started in the
'tab' section sorting cards in 1966.. later moved up to computer operator
assistant (tape jockey) on a 1401 and graduated to a IBM-360...7 tape drives
and get this... ready ?? 32k of memory... we ran a steel mill with it. had
a keypunch section with 50 women punching cards. on three shifts. Our
payroll was punched on about 30,000 cards every two weeks. One job at a
time was the limit with all tape, no hard disk. Last system (1986) was two
Burroughs 4900s dual processors and about 1 gig of hard drive space that
took up a room 25 x 50 and took 6 tons of a/c to keep the units cool... disk
were about 3' in diameter and spun up about 3600 rpm... we still had a tape
library of about 5000 reels of backup of current files. Moved up to about
18 tape drives and could multiprocess... gawd I loved that machine. I was
the only operator out of 15 that had ever maxxed out the mix...processors
running at 100% capacity... had both processors totally loaded... usually
took about 15 jobs at once to do that. The Burroughs main frame techies
said it couldn't be done... My one claim to fame...
AFA the calculators... my dad was a surveyor and we did all calculations
(with trig tables) with a pencil... in the early 70's we bought a 4
function Craig handheld for 125.00. It cut our calc time by two thirds...
and did it right !!!.. My watch can do what it did and more...
but I miss those old mainframe days...
reminissingly..
John
----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Vacek" <kvacek@ameritech.net>
To: "John Innis" <jdinnis@gmail.com>; <shop-talk@autox.team.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 12:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Shop-talk] Quick question on garage floors and garage lifts
> Wow - UNIX ? E-mail ? Sounds pretty modern. When I was at Purdue we had
> an IBM 7094, and Fortran was translated onto tape by an IBM 1401 from the
> cards we punched. About the computing power of a desktop calculator with
> much better I/O, assuming you like cards or tape. No such thing as
> e-mail, no UNIX. If you were lucky, though, you might get to use one of
> the two IBM 029 card punches rather than the 026's. All of this had to be
> done in the sub-basement of the newly-opened (sophomore year) Math-Science
> Building. Ahhh, the good old days.
>
> When I returned for grad school a few years later (1973), there were
> remote terminals to directly input FORTRAN programs at a few campus
> locations. No trudging to the M-S Building to punch your cards. No
> e-mail then either, though. And I bought a TI SR-10 calculator ($119.95)
> just before going back to grad school - it could DO SQUARE ROOTS !!
>
> Karl
>
>
>
>> Yeah, kids now are spoiled wimps. When I graduated from Purdue, we
>> had to learn FORTRAN and all of the email systems were Unix.
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