I worked for a guy called Fred Ihrer he wrote programs to check if customers where using there memory correctly in Main frames like this... I wish I had asked him more questions about it before he passed Thank you for the video
I knew a couple of mainframe guys back in the day. I also wish I had asked more questions and just had a ton more conversations with them before they passed.
I can only suspect that those guys weren't much happy with being grilled from the both sides vendor's and client's as each of them demanded steady machine run without much outage because really big money was involved.
Back in 1960 I was a systems rep (later called Systems Engineer) for IBM in St. Louis. I was one of two IBM systems reps assigned to American Investment Company (which owned many small-loan offices around the country) in Clayton, a suburb of St. Louis. The task was to get their programmers up to speed so the 7070 they ordered would be ready to operate when they received it. We tested the programming at the IBM center in Chicago, since there were not yet a 7070 in operation in the St. Louis area. Yes, we succeeded. And... everyone pronounced 7070 as "seven-oh-seventy", not "seventy seventy".
That's interesting, because the 7094 was definitely called the "seventy ninety four" -- so somewhere along the line, the initial '70' must have gone from seven-oh to seventy. Another example is 1401, universally called the 'fourteen-oh-one'. And the 1410 was the "fourteen-ten". "360" was "three-sixty" 1620 as "sixteen-twenty" on and on.
@@cheponis We pronounced the 7090 as "seven-oh-ninety". I assume that was because the 709 (predecessor to the 7090) was "seven-oh-nine". And yes, the 1410, 360, and 1620 were pronounced as you said.
@@MalcolmRuthven a ha! I think that is where the 'split' happened. Where I was at the time (Indiana), we called that the seventy-ninety because folks had actually used the 7094 and were referring to the previous machine; yes the 704 was seven-oh-four so I see how when adding a digit, the 'seven oh' survived. The pronunciation *was* the 'name' of the machine; the number was just an artifact...
@@cheponisI never had anything to do with the 7094 so never knew (then) how it was pronounced. I also checked with two other people I knew back then and yes, we all said "seven-oh-seventy", "seven-oh-eighty", and "seven-oh-ninety". I worked with all three of those.
@@MalcolmRuthven Thank you for your research. I'm too young to have used those machines, my machine in Indiana in '68 was the 1401; my teachers had used the 7090 and 7094 in their colleges (Purdue, often). Earlier than that, all I really know is from the (contemporary) Computer History Museum & various books; you might like this www.vm.ibm.com/devpages/jelliott/pdfs/zhistory.pdf
Kinda cool seeing those SMS cards. Some guys I was talking to were saying computers in the future may have "solid state programs" eventually, circuits that could execute specific and frequently used functions faster than if it was run with normal software. Guess there was already something like that before in the SMS cards.
Loops of tape between the tape reels, which had high inertia, { slow to start & stop }, and the capstans & record/play heads, where the tape could move much faster, needed a method to keep the tape loops from losing tension, which would allow the tape to droop away from, and out of contact with, the record/play heads, - thus the vacuum column. I worked in the movie audio business in the 1970s - we had similar issues with sprocketed magnetic film {for audio recording/mixing}, but we used simpler rollers/pulleys on long spring-loaded arms to serve the same purpose. Ancient, obsolete tech - modern memory chips & hard drives have eliminated all this mechanical complexity. Thank God for 64 MB thumb drives... We live in a time of miracles. There is no such thing as "the good old days" - our lives were nasty, brutish & short. LOL Also search for information on the original Ampex quadruplex 2" tape video recorders which required vacuum assist to pull the tape into a semi-circular shape as it passed over the spinning record/play heads handling segmented 4 MHz bandwidth video signals. More obsolete tech from the late 1950s early 1960s... See : th-cam.com/video/zHDU1wXw1sU/w-d-xo.html
Because of the start/stop nature of reading data, it takes less effort to quickly move and stop tape when there is no heavy weight of a reel of tape attached to it. The vacuum columns serve as a low-inertia tape buffer by isolating the weight of the reels of tape from the region of tape that is across the read/write heads and in between the capstans that move the tape. For smaller tape drives found on minicomputers, less expensive tension arms substitute for the vacuum columns in taking up the slack.
@@jrb_sland5066 I remember using tape machines like these. If they had to be diagnosed, we put up a special diagnostic tape onto them, hooked up the remote telephone handset to the modem, got our high speed 9,000 or 12,000 baud connection going and let the tape mfg company run diagnostics. Then they would come out with the right parts and make their repairs, this was in the 1980s. They were very reliable. I remember the telephone modem, because we had to drawl under the operators desk to reach it.
Yes, you are so right. The ongoing power, cooling, and floor space rental must have added up considerably over time, not to mention maintenance. ($$$). : )
My dad programmed IBM mainframes starting in 1970, and he told me that the IBM maintenance guys were very skilled, arrived quickly, and fixed any problems amazingly fast.
There was a later IBM series of machines which used only decimal arithmetic (other than for address manipulation). It was called the System/3 and it had successors which also used decimal for the jobs for which they were sold. These were the Systems/ 32, 34 & 36. (Not the S/38, a completely different design.). The 34/36 did have decimal in one of their two processors but not available to the application programmer.
The SMS cards do look very low density, looked at with modern eyes. With some better component packaging and PCB layout, the density could have been doubled without too much effort, and so halved the amount of edge connectors for a given function, cutting cost and improving reliability. But it looks like space consumption just wasn't considered particularly important, possibly due to cooling considerations.
Yeah, even for 70's pcb's that's quite spaced out... Maybe some other cards were more dense and they simply had basic cards out for display? Or it helped with production numbers? Anyone work on one?
Hi Video99.co.uk, that is a good observation. I would tend to agree. It seems odd that the density was so low, but since they were "saving" so much space in the computer by not using vacuum tubes, they probably felt it was quite dense. : ) Cooling would be easier too, as you mentioned. Great comment! ~ Victor
Consumer solid state electronics of that period could be much higher density than those SMS cards. IBM probably wasn't concerned about the size of the system since the customers paid for the faciity and most probably wanted a big, impressive installation.
I would tend to another conspiracy 🤣🤣🤣 Those systems were developed really quickly at the pace we can't imagine without IT infrastructure assistance today. So folks just wanted to keep things simple and easy to debug either during testing period at factory or then at client's side.
Among the many other types of discrete solid state logic mainframe PCBs they sold in the late, great Meshna Surplus Bargains catalog, I think I recall cards like those in a computer card assortment I bought and scavenged for parts.
I’m still amazed to this day that by the mid-2000s there were data centres which still required a library of open reel tapes and were only just getting rid of the old vacuum column machines…….to be replaced with smaller tray loading equivalents. These were legal/contractual requirements and they couldn’t just image the tapes. Still, I wish in hindsight I had a chance to mess around with the old drives during my work experience, but they weren’t even connected by this point.
Hi tech3475, very good point! There is a massive data storage company (Iron Mountain) that keeps all types of computer media and other media in secure storage. I wonder how much tape storage they still have from the 1970's or earlier.... I think you are quite correct that many times legal requirements mandate that the original media be kept indefinitely (however long that is) in case there is a legal challenge to some original recording. Some very early tapes are probably no longer technically readable, but someone is paying to store them. Fascinating! ~ Thanks! ~ Hunter, at CHAP
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject I do not know about open real tapes..but i worked at Microsoft in the 1990s and 2000's and what they did was back up the servers onto 8mm tapes..these were stored in 2 tunnels under Microsoft for onsite storage..once the tapes were too old to keep onsite they were moved off-site ..one time my manager and i went out to the off-site location to retrieve some very important tapes..we drove down a paved road then turned onto a dirt road drove for a while and stopped in the middle of what looked like a cow pasture with an old beat up red barn..i thought he was playing a trick on me..we opened the barn door went down some steps and opened a vault style door and this HUGE room full of tapes...all climate controlled underground...got the tapes and left...still amazing to me.. I am keeping this comment vague due to i am not sure if MS is still using the offsite location...
Where I worked they had a huge automated tape machine. It seldom broke but when it did, IBM came out to fix it and said it was kind of a relic. But the company didn't like to get rid of things, it if worked they kept it - they thought this way about people too.
So those decimal machines must be the reason IBM and a few others had BCD instructions on later machines like S/360 and 370. High level language programs could be ported without introducing round off errors.
Even the Intel 8086 and 8087 (floating point coprocessor) have a set of Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) opcodes. Not sure if they've been carried over to the instruction sets of more recent processors, but I think so. COBOL used to compile to these instructions, but I don't know of any other modern language that does. (Of course, they're available through assembler.) IBM eventually adopted the 8-bit character encoding scheme EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code, pronounced "EBB-see-dik") before ASCII became widely accepted. By contrast, Control Data used a 6-bit scheme called "Display Code", which was convenient for the 60-bit word length they had chosen for the 6600 and 7600 series machines.
Intresting to hear that the Neckermann mail order company already had a computer. I thought Germany was in 1960 in the stone age of data processing 😉 I remember back in the 90s that I ordered there by browsing a fat catalog and filling a order postcard. Then I had to wait almost 2 weeks for delivery.
Hi Matneu27, very interesting! Thanks! .... I guess they did not pursue computer automation with sufficient vigor. They filed for bankruptcy around 2012. Amazon would never have grown without their computer automation business model... Thank you for your comment! ~ Hunter
SURE: had a neighbor who understood punch cards. He was upset that his utility bill was wrong. Back then, you gave the punch card back when you paid. He changed the punch card (maybe punched a minus in the right place?) and next month he had a big credit. I was a child when it happened, but remember the story being told many times while growing up.
My data processing teacher in high school told us he altered the punch card and returned it with his phone bill. He later received a letter from the phone company sternly telling him not to do that again.
You could actually diagnose and repair those cards, and they did. I remember in the 80s they were still repairing PC cards But by the early 90s they had abandoned repairing PC cards By 1995, when the PC stores were all over America, people would not even try to get warranty service, and would simply pull out the bad card. Sound, video, com port, modem, Ethernet, printer, HDD / FDD controller, memory, they were all just tossed in the trash and replaced. I remember the old days of the first ISA bus computers, 8 bit. Then the 16 bit ISA and the 32 bit PCI I also remember having USB in the very early 90s and literally no drivers and nothing that could use it The very first thing that was USB and was the only thing that was USB for the 2 or 3 early years was a mouse Then came a keyboard Many of the USB devices that came out would not work because of bad drivers or no drivers The early days were really amazing Dialup, all text internet People today don't know what it was like
Hi ocsrc, your comment brings back memories. Yes, all those cards became toss-outs rather than fixable. Many savvy computer users would know what card to buy and replace, with a little study. Today, it is doubtful most computer (and smart phone) users could accurately name the internal components of their devices. Except maybe SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards. (?) A lot has changed. ~ Thanks!
6 Meg disk storage, OMG, not much could be stored on that, in the early 80s our RPG programs I wrote had to be compact, and the chained files were difficult to understand, now that I learn more about Microsoft Access it's a simple link to eliminate redundancy and keep data from being stray variants of a desired set group of values. Technology has changed a great deal, but sadly there's always a big brother keeping track of every step you take.
Hi Neves, good question, here is a "short" answer. Decimal computers can represent numbers and addresses in decimal as well as providing instructions to operate on those numbers and addresses directly in decimal, without conversion to a pure binary (base two). Some computers also had a variable wordlength, which enabled operations on numbers with a large number of digits, for large calculations. The 7070 was a decimal computer with a fixed word length. By contrast, the 7080 computer, however, had a variable word length, and this, as well as other factors, made the 7080 a much faster machine than the 7070. Hope this helps. Much more data on-line if you want to delve deeper into decimal architecture vs. binary. Thanks~ ! ~ Hunter, at CHAP
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Other decimal computers that had a large usage were the IBM 1401/1410 series machines, and the entire Burroughs "Medium Systems" line of computers that existed from about 1965 to 2000.
It is truly fascinating to see all the stern-faced short-haircut men doing clerical work. Mr. Thomas J. Watson, salesman extraordinaire, had some quirky ideas about dress codes & sexual mores, but his rules were mainly about making money by beating back any competitors using both fair & foul techniques. In this respect he was just following in the footsteps of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, consolidator/monopolist extraordinaire, of Standard Oil fame. Only now are we breaking away from the businessman discipline of the necktie & the fedora {look it up if you don't know the word}. Should we return to the fashions of the 1880s - silk top hats, tail coats & big cigars? Find & read Thorstein Veblen's famous book "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (1899) for an appreciation of the social power of conspicuous consumption. It is a must-read. Amazon has multiple editions of it, all very inexpensive. Veblen was a superb observer of human behaviour. Nothing has changed much since then.
Hi jrb-sland, great observations. Have to agree. (My buddy is retired for over 20 years and still has all his ties in the closet... He can't seem to part with them. ) ~ Hunter
@@B9M3 When I got out of university and started working for a major credit card company, suits and ties were de rigeur. And when I joined the federal government in Canada about four years later, in a non-public facing job, suits and ties were still required, but by 2000 or maybe a little earlier, the requirement for a suit and tie basically disappeared and 'business casual' was the thing. That eventually devolved to people wearing jeans and T-shirts. So long as the jeans weren't ripped, you were good to go. Most people still wore casual slacks and shirts or polo shirts. I'm retired now, but don't miss having to wear a suit and tie. I always found suits and ties felt a bit constricting. And anyway, my attitude has always been, "If you want me to look and act like an executive, then pay me an executive salary, and give me executive benefits", LOL.
When I started to work for a fortune 50 company, we had very little interaction with the public in my dept. of about 90 to 130 people, but we had to wear a nice dress shirt and tie every day. I hated it, as I was always hot as my tie trapped all my heat in. They then had business casual on Fridays, then eventually business casual went to 5 days a week. The fossils who ran the company thought how they did it in 1907, should be how they did things in 2007, 3007, 4007.........if it works, why change it, even if your employees are miserable and hate their jobs........so!
Buggy software sometimes resulted in hilarious billing... "Your account is now -£0.00, clear the negative amount within 7 days or face prosecution !". 😂
![ค้างคืนโรงเก็บกระสวยอวกาศร้างกลางทะเลทราย [Around The World Ep. 3]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/E5bWZQhABJE/mqdefault.jpg)
I worked for a guy called Fred Ihrer he wrote programs to check if customers where using there memory correctly in Main frames like this... I wish I had asked him more questions about it before he passed
Thank you for the video
I knew a couple of mainframe guys back in the day. I also wish I had asked more questions and just had a ton more conversations with them before they passed.
Hi The POS Guy, you are very welcome. Glad you enjoyed it. ~ Victor
I can only suspect that those guys weren't much happy with being grilled from the both sides vendor's and client's as each of them demanded steady machine run without much outage because really big money was involved.
Thanks for sharing this valuable video.
You are very welcome. Glad you enjoyed it! ~ VK
Back in 1960 I was a systems rep (later called Systems Engineer) for IBM in St. Louis. I was one of two IBM systems reps assigned to American Investment Company (which owned many small-loan offices around the country) in Clayton, a suburb of St. Louis. The task was to get their programmers up to speed so the 7070 they ordered would be ready to operate when they received it. We tested the programming at the IBM center in Chicago, since there were not yet a 7070 in operation in the St. Louis area. Yes, we succeeded. And... everyone pronounced 7070 as "seven-oh-seventy", not "seventy seventy".
That's interesting, because the 7094 was definitely called the "seventy ninety four" -- so somewhere along the line, the initial '70' must have gone from seven-oh to seventy. Another example is 1401, universally called the 'fourteen-oh-one'. And the 1410 was the "fourteen-ten". "360" was "three-sixty" 1620 as "sixteen-twenty" on and on.
@@cheponis We pronounced the 7090 as "seven-oh-ninety". I assume that was because the 709 (predecessor to the 7090) was "seven-oh-nine". And yes, the 1410, 360, and 1620 were pronounced as you said.
@@MalcolmRuthven a ha! I think that is where the 'split' happened. Where I was at the time (Indiana), we called that the seventy-ninety because folks had actually used the 7094 and were referring to the previous machine; yes the 704 was seven-oh-four so I see how when adding a digit, the 'seven oh' survived. The pronunciation *was* the 'name' of the machine; the number was just an artifact...
@@cheponisI never had anything to do with the 7094 so never knew (then) how it was pronounced. I also checked with two other people I knew back then and yes, we all said "seven-oh-seventy", "seven-oh-eighty", and "seven-oh-ninety". I worked with all three of those.
@@MalcolmRuthven Thank you for your research. I'm too young to have used those machines, my machine in Indiana in '68 was the 1401; my teachers had used the 7090 and 7094 in their colleges (Purdue, often). Earlier than that, all I really know is from the (contemporary) Computer History Museum & various books; you might like this www.vm.ibm.com/devpages/jelliott/pdfs/zhistory.pdf
Kinda cool seeing those SMS cards. Some guys I was talking to were saying computers in the future may have "solid state programs" eventually, circuits that could execute specific and frequently used functions faster than if it was run with normal software. Guess there was already something like that before in the SMS cards.
What was the purpose of the vacuum column? Did it use the Venturi effect?
Takes up slack of tape and keeps the tension.
Loops of tape between the tape reels, which had high inertia, { slow to start & stop }, and the capstans & record/play heads, where the tape could move much faster, needed a method to keep the tape loops from losing tension, which would allow the tape to droop away from, and out of contact with, the record/play heads, - thus the vacuum column.
I worked in the movie audio business in the 1970s - we had similar issues with sprocketed magnetic film {for audio recording/mixing}, but we used simpler rollers/pulleys on long spring-loaded arms to serve the same purpose. Ancient, obsolete tech - modern memory chips & hard drives have eliminated all this mechanical complexity.
Thank God for 64 MB thumb drives... We live in a time of miracles. There is no such thing as "the good old days" - our lives were nasty, brutish & short. LOL
Also search for information on the original Ampex quadruplex 2" tape video recorders which required vacuum assist to pull the tape into a semi-circular shape as it passed over the spinning record/play heads handling segmented 4 MHz bandwidth video signals. More obsolete tech from the late 1950s early 1960s... See : th-cam.com/video/zHDU1wXw1sU/w-d-xo.html
Great information! Thanks so much for sharing your experience with some of the early tapes. A fascinating mixture of technology too. ~ Hunter, CHAP
Because of the start/stop nature of reading data, it takes less effort to quickly move and stop tape when there is no heavy weight of a reel of tape attached to it. The vacuum columns serve as a low-inertia tape buffer by isolating the weight of the reels of tape from the region of tape that is across the read/write heads and in between the capstans that move the tape. For smaller tape drives found on minicomputers, less expensive tension arms substitute for the vacuum columns in taking up the slack.
@@jrb_sland5066 I remember using tape machines like these. If they had to be diagnosed, we put up a special diagnostic tape onto them, hooked up the remote telephone handset to the modem, got our high speed 9,000 or 12,000 baud connection going and let the tape mfg company run diagnostics. Then they would come out with the right parts and make their repairs, this was in the 1980s. They were very reliable. I remember the telephone modem, because we had to drawl under the operators desk to reach it.
Brilliant. All transistor and super quick. Still expensive and a pain to use. :)
Yes, you are so right. The ongoing power, cooling, and floor space rental must have added up considerably over time, not to mention maintenance. ($$$). : )
My dad programmed IBM mainframes starting in 1970, and he told me that the IBM maintenance guys were very skilled, arrived quickly, and fixed any problems amazingly fast.
@@thetooginator153 They had skills back then.
The IBM 7090 computer which is part of the 7000 series is featured in the feature film _Hidden Figures_ .
You actually had to wear a suit to operate this device.
I used to work on Control Data (CDC) tape testing systems.
A decimal machine? That’s an intriguing detail.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-out-of-five_code
There was a later IBM series of machines which used only decimal arithmetic (other than for address manipulation). It was called the System/3 and it had successors which also used decimal for the jobs for which they were sold. These were the Systems/ 32, 34 & 36. (Not the S/38, a completely different design.). The 34/36 did have decimal in one of their two processors but not available to the application programmer.
The SMS cards do look very low density, looked at with modern eyes. With some better component packaging and PCB layout, the density could have been doubled without too much effort, and so halved the amount of edge connectors for a given function, cutting cost and improving reliability. But it looks like space consumption just wasn't considered particularly important, possibly due to cooling considerations.
Yeah, even for 70's pcb's that's quite spaced out... Maybe some other cards were more dense and they simply had basic cards out for display? Or it helped with production numbers?
Anyone work on one?
Hi Video99.co.uk, that is a good observation. I would tend to agree. It seems odd that the density was so low, but since they were "saving" so much space in the computer by not using vacuum tubes, they probably felt it was quite dense. : )
Cooling would be easier too, as you mentioned. Great comment! ~ Victor
@@volvo09 The computer is from the late 50s early 60s, not the 1970s. It's confusing before the model number is the 70s/7000s.
Consumer solid state electronics of that period could be much higher density than those SMS cards. IBM probably wasn't concerned about the size of the system since the customers paid for the faciity and most probably wanted a big, impressive installation.
I would tend to another conspiracy 🤣🤣🤣 Those systems were developed really quickly at the pace we can't imagine without IT infrastructure assistance today. So folks just wanted to keep things simple and easy to debug either during testing period at factory or then at client's side.
I really liked main-frame computers and the IBM punch card.
Among the many other types of discrete solid state logic mainframe PCBs they sold in the late, great Meshna Surplus Bargains catalog, I think I recall cards like those in a computer card assortment I bought and scavenged for parts.
It's amazing that any of that stuff actually worked.
Amazing to see this vintage film footage. What was the source film? 16mm?
Yes, the original was 16mm film, silent. It was a treasure to find it in good condition.
I’m still amazed to this day that by the mid-2000s there were data centres which still required a library of open reel tapes and were only just getting rid of the old vacuum column machines…….to be replaced with smaller tray loading equivalents. These were legal/contractual requirements and they couldn’t just image the tapes.
Still, I wish in hindsight I had a chance to mess around with the old drives during my work experience, but they weren’t even connected by this point.
Hi tech3475, very good point! There is a massive data storage company (Iron Mountain) that keeps all types of computer media and other media in secure storage. I wonder how much tape storage they still have from the 1970's or earlier.... I think you are quite correct that many times legal requirements mandate that the original media be kept indefinitely (however long that is) in case there is a legal challenge to some original recording. Some very early tapes are probably no longer technically readable, but someone is paying to store them. Fascinating! ~ Thanks! ~ Hunter, at CHAP
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject I do not know about open real tapes..but i worked at Microsoft in the 1990s and 2000's and what they did was back up the servers onto 8mm tapes..these were stored in 2 tunnels under Microsoft for onsite storage..once the tapes were too old to keep onsite they were moved off-site ..one time my manager and i went out to the off-site location to retrieve some very important tapes..we drove down a paved road then turned onto a dirt road drove for a while and stopped in the middle of what looked like a cow pasture with an old beat up red barn..i thought he was playing a trick on me..we opened the barn door went down some steps and opened a vault style door and this HUGE room full of tapes...all climate controlled underground...got the tapes and left...still amazing to me..
I am keeping this comment vague due to i am not sure if MS is still using the offsite location...
Where I worked they had a huge automated tape machine. It seldom broke but when it did, IBM came out to fix it and said it was kind of a relic. But the company didn't like to get rid of things, it if worked they kept it - they thought this way about people too.
So those decimal machines must be the reason IBM and a few others had BCD instructions on later machines like S/360 and 370. High level language programs could be ported without introducing round off errors.
Even the Intel 8086 and 8087 (floating point coprocessor) have a set of Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) opcodes. Not sure if they've been carried over to the instruction sets of more recent processors, but I think so. COBOL used to compile to these instructions, but I don't know of any other modern language that does. (Of course, they're available through assembler.) IBM eventually adopted the 8-bit character encoding scheme EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code, pronounced "EBB-see-dik") before ASCII became widely accepted. By contrast, Control Data used a 6-bit scheme called "Display Code", which was convenient for the 60-bit word length they had chosen for the 6600 and 7600 series machines.
Microsoft had a Currency data type that was the equivalent of BCD...programmed an accounting system in the late 1990's in Visual Basic!
Those tape drives needed a lot of maintenance!
Do you mean mechanical maintenance? as in drive motors, etc.?
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProjectVacuum pump maintenance is what I saw on later models.
Oh, I see. That would make sense. Thanks!
Intresting to hear that the Neckermann mail order company already had a computer. I thought Germany was in 1960 in the stone age of data processing 😉 I remember back in the 90s that I ordered there by browsing a fat catalog and filling a order postcard. Then I had to wait almost 2 weeks for delivery.
Hi Matneu27, very interesting! Thanks! .... I guess they did not pursue computer automation with sufficient vigor. They filed for bankruptcy around 2012. Amazon would never have grown without their computer automation business model... Thank you for your comment! ~ Hunter
SURE: had a neighbor who understood punch cards. He was upset that his utility bill was wrong. Back then, you gave the punch card back when you paid. He changed the punch card (maybe punched a minus in the right place?) and next month he had a big credit. I was a child when it happened, but remember the story being told many times while growing up.
Hi K K, that is a great story! Had not heard that before. Thanks! ~
My data processing teacher in high school told us he altered the punch card and returned it with his phone bill. He later received a letter from the phone company sternly telling him not to do that again.
I cut my teeth on IBM 370/148 and 158 running VM/370 R6 and later VM/370 BSSEPP and SEPP. My first full time job was installing VM/SP on a 4331.
Greetings, Very cool! Sounds like good tech background. Take a look at our video on the System/370 too, might bring back some good memories! ~ Thanks
Fascinating to think all the hardware in this video could be replaced by one modern high end laptop now.
The smartphone I watched this on is orders of magnitude more powerful than just about anything from that era.
They say the first iPhone had more computing power than all NASA needed for the Apollo missions
Well today's large systems are still decades ahead of our home systems. E,g. SAP in memory database can use up to 750 TB of RAM. Yes terabyte
Try a single board computer with the outline size of a credit card and about 2 centimeters high, costing less than US$ 100.00 .
I really like the synthwave song that kicks in at 5:17. Can anyone tell me the track name?
Hi Matt, I believe it is called "Cypher"... from youtube video library. It's a great piece!
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Thanks! That's correct. I found it by using an app called Shazam and holding it to my computer. It identifies songs.
Excellent! Thanks
You could actually diagnose and repair those cards, and they did.
I remember in the 80s they were still repairing PC cards
But by the early 90s they had abandoned repairing PC cards
By 1995, when the PC stores were all over America, people would not even try to get warranty service, and would simply pull out the bad card.
Sound, video, com port, modem, Ethernet, printer, HDD / FDD controller, memory, they were all just tossed in the trash and replaced.
I remember the old days of the first ISA bus computers, 8 bit.
Then the 16 bit ISA and the 32 bit PCI
I also remember having USB in the very early 90s and literally no drivers and nothing that could use it
The very first thing that was USB and was the only thing that was USB for the 2 or 3 early years was a mouse
Then came a keyboard
Many of the USB devices that came out would not work because of bad drivers or no drivers
The early days were really amazing
Dialup, all text internet
People today don't know what it was like
Hi ocsrc, your comment brings back memories. Yes, all those cards became toss-outs rather than fixable. Many savvy computer users would know what card to buy and replace, with a little study. Today, it is doubtful most computer (and smart phone) users could accurately name the internal components of their devices. Except maybe SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards. (?) A lot has changed. ~ Thanks!
The computer operators of those times were much better dressed as sysadmins of today.
6 Meg disk storage, OMG, not much could be stored on that, in the early 80s our RPG programs I wrote had to be compact, and the chained files were difficult to understand, now that I learn more about Microsoft Access it's a simple link to eliminate redundancy and keep data from being stray variants of a desired set group of values. Technology has changed a great deal, but sadly there's always a big brother keeping track of every step you take.
10K or 5K magnetic core storage unit (RAM). Imagine coding for that a whole banking system.
"decimal machine" how this works?
Hi Neves, good question, here is a "short" answer. Decimal computers can represent numbers and addresses in decimal as well as providing instructions to operate on those numbers and addresses directly in decimal, without conversion to a pure binary (base two). Some computers also had a variable wordlength, which enabled operations on numbers with a large number of digits, for large calculations. The 7070 was a decimal computer with a fixed word length. By contrast, the 7080 computer, however, had a variable word length, and this, as well as other factors, made the 7080 a much faster machine than the 7070. Hope this helps. Much more data on-line if you want to delve deeper into decimal architecture vs. binary. Thanks~ ! ~ Hunter, at CHAP
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Other decimal computers that had a large usage were the IBM 1401/1410 series machines, and the entire Burroughs "Medium Systems" line of computers that existed from about 1965 to 2000.
Ah, before tapes had internal labels.
This is what the inside of your phone looks like under a microscope.
It is truly fascinating to see all the stern-faced short-haircut men doing clerical work. Mr. Thomas J. Watson, salesman extraordinaire, had some quirky ideas about dress codes & sexual mores, but his rules were mainly about making money by beating back any competitors using both fair & foul techniques. In this respect he was just following in the footsteps of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, consolidator/monopolist extraordinaire, of Standard Oil fame.
Only now are we breaking away from the businessman discipline of the necktie & the fedora {look it up if you don't know the word}. Should we return to the fashions of the 1880s - silk top hats, tail coats & big cigars? Find & read Thorstein Veblen's famous book "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (1899) for an appreciation of the social power of conspicuous consumption. It is a must-read. Amazon has multiple editions of it, all very inexpensive. Veblen was a superb observer of human behaviour. Nothing has changed much since then.
Hi jrb-sland, great observations. Have to agree. (My buddy is retired for over 20 years and still has all his ties in the closet... He can't seem to part with them. ) ~ Hunter
Yeah, the computer dudes of today are slackers wearing flip-flops, sweatpants, T-shirts with juvenile slogans, and hoodies. Nice improvement, heh?
@@B9M3 When I got out of university and started working for a major credit card company, suits and ties were de rigeur. And when I joined the federal government in Canada about four years later, in a non-public facing job, suits and ties were still required, but by 2000 or maybe a little earlier, the requirement for a suit and tie basically disappeared and 'business casual' was the thing. That eventually devolved to people wearing jeans and T-shirts. So long as the jeans weren't ripped, you were good to go. Most people still wore casual slacks and shirts or polo shirts.
I'm retired now, but don't miss having to wear a suit and tie. I always found suits and ties felt a bit constricting. And anyway, my attitude has always been, "If you want me to look and act like an executive, then pay me an executive salary, and give me executive benefits", LOL.
When I started to work for a fortune 50 company, we had very little interaction with the public in my dept. of about 90 to 130 people, but we had to wear a nice dress shirt and tie every day. I hated it, as I was always hot as my tie trapped all my heat in. They then had business casual on Fridays, then eventually business casual went to 5 days a week. The fossils who ran the company thought how they did it in 1907, should be how they did things in 2007, 3007, 4007.........if it works, why change it, even if your employees are miserable and hate their jobs........so!
Buggy software sometimes resulted in hilarious billing... "Your account is now -£0.00, clear the negative amount within 7 days or face prosecution !". 😂
All the men - no women shown - had on their standard dark suits, white shirts and ties, oh and nice short hair cuts.
All is as it should be.
They look like Agent Smith from The Matrix. The way they tried to make Thomas Anderson/Neo to be (or "be to"?).
9 track tapes
Man, not the IBM 7094.
Just a family relative...
Computer processing dates back to 1958? Holy cow.