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Today In History

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johnpcapitalist
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Re: Today In History

#76

Post by johnpcapitalist »

noblepa wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 10:23 pm
qbawl wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 7:21 pm Somewhere around here I have a System 360 POP (Principles of operations) manual. I should look for it; with winter approaching it would make great reading by the fire on a cold and blustery evening.
I began my professional life as an Assembler programmer on an IBM 360 model 40 running OS/PCP. I spent many happy (??) hours perusing the POP manual.

The story I heard was that, when the engineers at IBM's Triangle Park center began working on the 360, the first thing they did was to write the POP manual. Then they set about building a computer around it.
That's what I recall as well -- the POP manual is essentially the hardware architecture specification for everything including the processor instruction set, I/O channel interface, interrupt handling mechanism, etc. You can't start figuring out how to build the OS until you have the instruction set and other things like the memory protection mechanism nailed down.

My first computer was a 360/44 at USC. 256 kb of core memory and some 2314 drives (25 mb, the size of a washing machine) and a few classic 3420 tape drives (each the size of a refrigerator). They had 029 keypunch machines for input and the awesome 1403N1 line printers for output. The printers were truly an amazing achievement and really fun to see in operation, unless they started leaking the hydraulic fluid that was used to run the paper advance mechanism. That would leak down under the raised flooring and cause major damage.

It ran a prototype Fortran compiler called WATFIV that was an academic project from University of Waterloo in Canada. The idea was that it would try to produce a piece of code that actually ran, to try and give some value in each iteration of the keypunch/submit/review printout cycle. But unless you had one or two trivial errors in each deck, whatever code it could actually compile was basically useless.

They also had a 370/158 in the main computer center, but you only got 10 second blocks of CPU time for free, which was barely enough to compile a program and run some pretty minimal calculations. You had to have department funding for any job that ran longer, or that mounted tapes or that accessed or wrote data to disk. So basically all your data was on cards.

That computer center had the heavy metal -- a ton of 3420 tapes and the new 3330 drives -- eleven 14" platters in each disk pack, two packs per machine for a total of 200 megabytes per drive unit, each of which was the size of a large commercial refrigerator. They had 12 of these, for a whopping 2.4 gigabytes on line. We couldn't even imagine at the time how you could use that much storage, since nobody had yet figured out how to digitize and store porn.

We spent most of our time writing programs that would print out giant signs on the 8 1/2" x 14" fanfold paper that came out of the line printer, with one letter per page. Those would run well enough in the free 10 second time blocks and they didn't charge for the paper you wasted.
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Re: Today In History

#77

Post by qbawl »

Quoting JPC:
"the awesome 1403N1 line printers for output. The printers were truly an amazing achievement and really fun to see in operation, unless they started leaking the hydraulic fluid that was used to run the paper advance mechanism."

The 1403 could also be used as a musical instrument. You could make the print chain 'sing' by printing certain combinations of characters. My favorite was She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain When She Comes. Also they could create some awesome artwork that required viewing from a distance.
After the 1401 and 7074 my first System 360 was a model 30 which was mostly used to emulate 2 1401s. Then a Mod 40, an MP65 running 360 MFT, an MP165 / 168 running MVT, and eventually MVS in its many iterations.
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Re: Today In History

#78

Post by noblepa »

johnpcapitalist wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 10:58 pm
noblepa wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 10:23 pm
qbawl wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 7:21 pm Somewhere around here I have a System 360 POP (Principles of operations) manual. I should look for it; with winter approaching it would make great reading by the fire on a cold and blustery evening.
I began my professional life as an Assembler programmer on an IBM 360 model 40 running OS/PCP. I spent many happy (??) hours perusing the POP manual.

The story I heard was that, when the engineers at IBM's Triangle Park center began working on the 360, the first thing they did was to write the POP manual. Then they set about building a computer around it.
That's what I recall as well -- the POP manual is essentially the hardware architecture specification for everything including the processor instruction set, I/O channel interface, interrupt handling mechanism, etc. You can't start figuring out how to build the OS until you have the instruction set and other things like the memory protection mechanism nailed down.

My first computer was a 360/44 at USC. 256 kb of core memory and some 2314 drives (25 mb, the size of a washing machine) and a few classic 3420 tape drives (each the size of a refrigerator). They had 029 keypunch machines for input and the awesome 1403N1 line printers for output. The printers were truly an amazing achievement and really fun to see in operation, unless they started leaking the hydraulic fluid that was used to run the paper advance mechanism. That would leak down under the raised flooring and cause major damage.

It ran a prototype Fortran compiler called WATFIV that was an academic project from University of Waterloo in Canada. The idea was that it would try to produce a piece of code that actually ran, to try and give some value in each iteration of the keypunch/submit/review printout cycle. But unless you had one or two trivial errors in each deck, whatever code it could actually compile was basically useless.

They also had a 370/158 in the main computer center, but you only got 10 second blocks of CPU time for free, which was barely enough to compile a program and run some pretty minimal calculations. You had to have department funding for any job that ran longer, or that mounted tapes or that accessed or wrote data to disk. So basically all your data was on cards.

That computer center had the heavy metal -- a ton of 3420 tapes and the new 3330 drives -- eleven 14" platters in each disk pack, two packs per machine for a total of 200 megabytes per drive unit, each of which was the size of a large commercial refrigerator. They had 12 of these, for a whopping 2.4 gigabytes on line. We couldn't even imagine at the time how you could use that much storage, since nobody had yet figured out how to digitize and store porn.

We spent most of our time writing programs that would print out giant signs on the 8 1/2" x 14" fanfold paper that came out of the line printer, with one letter per page. Those would run well enough in the free 10 second time blocks and they didn't charge for the paper you wasted.
If I recall correctly, there weren't too many model 44's built. That was the "scientific" version that had a very (for the time) fast arithmetic and floating point processor.

I worked for Ernst & Whinney in the 1980's, at their main data center in Cleveland, before the merger with Arthur Young. We had THE last 3330 active in Ohio (IBM told us so). When TPTB finally decided to decommission it, they couldn't find any used equipment dealer who would take it. Even the outfits that mine old electronics for the gold, silver and other precious metals didn't want it. So a friend of mine and I dismantled it. Our plan was to take the electric motors and sell them. However, IBM used 1.5 HP, 220v, 3 phase motors, with non-standard mounting flanges in them. My friend took them to a place that rebuilds electric motors. The guy said that they couldn't sell a motor that small. If someone was going to go to the trouble of installing 3 phase wiring, they weren't going to do it for anything less than 5 hp. For years, I had one of the platters and the read/write head. I still have the 110v utility outlets that were in the machine to allow CE's to plug in test equipment. I used it in my home workshop. I've never seen shielded 110v power cable before or since. The 3380 disks that replaced them used what appeared to be ordinary 1/2 hp home furnace motors.
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Re: Today In History

#79

Post by qbawl »

noblepa wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:23 pm
johnpcapitalist wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 10:58 pm
noblepa wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 10:23 pm

:snippity: :snippity:
I worked for Ernst & Whinney in the 1980's, at their main data center in Cleveland, before the merger with Arthur Young. We had THE last 3330 active in Ohio (IBM told us so). When TPTB finally decided to decommission it, they couldn't find any used equipment dealer who would take it. Even the outfits that mine old electronics for the gold, silver and other precious metals didn't want it. So a friend of mine and I dismantled it. Our plan was to take the electric motors and sell them. However, IBM used 1.5 HP, 220v, 3 phase motors, with non-standard mounting flanges in them. My friend took them to a place that rebuilds electric motors. The guy said that they couldn't sell a motor that small. If someone was going to go to the trouble of installing 3 phase wiring, they weren't going to do it for anything less than 5 hp. For years, I had one of the platters and the read/write head. I still have the 110v utility outlets that were in the machine to allow CE's to plug in test equipment. I used it in my home workshop. I've never seen shielded 110v power cable before or since. The 3380 disks that replaced them used what appeared to be ordinary 1/2 hp home furnace motors.
After the 3330s came the 3350s. The motors in those iirc were made by Hitachi or perhaps another Japanese company, in any event I always took great pleasure in pointing out to our CSE the fact that IBM was using the Japanese motors in their DASD while doing everything possible to prevent any non-IBM peripherals from ever reaching the computer center floor.
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Re: Today In History

#80

Post by Frater I*I »

What was it like for you folks to use personal chalk boards in school to write down answers instead of paper...?


Signed,

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He's got the answers to ease my curiosity, He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity"

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Re: Today In History

#81

Post by qbawl »

Frater I*I wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:57 pm What was it like for you folks to use personal chalk boards in school to write down answers instead of paper...?


Signed,

Gen X

:batting:
Just like kids today I used a tablet and stylus. Of course the tablet was clay and the stylus a sharpened twig from an oak tree.
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Re: Today In History

#82

Post by keith »

qbawl wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:43 pm After the 3330s came the 3350s. The motors in those iirc were made by Hitachi or perhaps another Japanese company, in any event I always took great pleasure in pointing out to our CSE the fact that IBM was using the Japanese motors in their DASD while doing everything possible to prevent any non-IBM peripherals from ever reaching the computer center floor.
When we got a string of 3350's it was one of the very first shipped out, it was certainly the first string in Arizona. I am pretty sure that we got early dibs on the 3350's because we had just put in a CDC memory expansion and a couple of CDC printers to replace the old 1403's we had. I think IBM was keen to keep CDC DASD out of the room as well so we got put on the early adopter program.

When the CE's got it installed and plugged and they started running diagnostics they all stood back and started patting themselves on the back for doing it right the first time and everyone retired to the keypunch room for a little celebratory 'punch'. All of a sudden somebody noticed a gawd-awful banging coming from the computer room and everyone ran for it in panic.

Turns out the diagnostics were all going like sweetness and light until pretty much the last test which was apparently a seek from cylinder zero to cylinder 555 and back and forth as fast as possible for thousands of times. All that flailing about set up a standing wave in the box which had it bouncing across the computer room floor. But since the four spindles (I think it was) were running the same test and they were basically tied together and they were just a bit out of sync they were banging back and forth going in every direction at once. If it wasn't so serious for expensive equipment it would have been hillarious.

Instead of everything going perfectly and everyone getting home early, the CE's all had to spend another four or five hours going everyone of those boxes to check for damage while the SEs contacted the diagnostic programmers to give them hell and figure out how to turn that test off. And then they had to run the diagnostics all over again for another couple of hours of course.

Great times.
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Re: Today In History

#83

Post by keith »

noblepa wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 10:23 pm
qbawl wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 7:21 pm Somewhere around here I have a System 360 POP (Principles of operations) manual. I should look for it; with winter approaching it would make great reading by the fire on a cold and blustery evening.
I began my professional life as an Assembler programmer on an IBM 360 model 40 running OS/PCP. I spent many happy (??) hours perusing the POP manual.

The story I heard was that, when the engineers at IBM's Triangle Park center began working on the 360, the first thing they did was to write the POP manual. Then they set about building a computer around it.
In my place it has always been known at the POOP manual. Principles Of OPeration. I thought I still had a 360 POOP, but all I can find now is a 370 POOP. But I do have a CDC 6000 series equivalent (which is actually older than any 360 version since the 6000 came out much earlier than the 360). (and a Zylog Z80 equivalent).

I also have several versions of the 370 Green Card, both Green and Yellow.
Has everybody heard about the bird?
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Re: Today In History

#84

Post by RTH10260 »

Frater I*I wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:57 pm What was it like for you folks to use personal chalk boards in school to write down answers instead of paper...?


Signed,

Gen X

:batting:
Terrible when the chalk started to screech, went all down the spine :crying: Some teachers never learnt how to hold the chalk stick and write without making the class shudder :blackeye:
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Re: Today In History

#85

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

'The Flintstones' premieres on ABC
The first animated primetime sitcom debuts, introducing viewers to Fred Flintstone and his modern stone-age family. The show will run for six seasons, but spinoffs—and vitamins—will keep the franchise rolling for more than five decades.
www.bing.com
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Re: Today In History

#86

Post by qbawl »

keith wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:17 am
qbawl wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:43 pm After the 3330s came the 3350s. The motors in those iirc were made by Hitachi or perhaps another Japanese company, in any event I always took great pleasure in pointing out to our CSE the fact that IBM was using the Japanese motors in their DASD while doing everything possible to prevent any non-IBM peripherals from ever reaching the computer center floor.
When we got a string of 3350's it was one of the very first shipped out, it was certainly the first string in Arizona. I am pretty sure that we got early dibs on the 3350's because we had just put in a CDC memory expansion and a couple of CDC printers to replace the old 1403's we had. I think IBM was keen to keep CDC DASD out of the room as well so we got put on the early adopter program.

When the CE's got it installed and plugged and they started running diagnostics they all stood back and started patting themselves on the back for doing it right the first time and everyone retired to the keypunch room for a little celebratory 'punch'. All of a sudden somebody noticed a gawd-awful banging coming from the computer room and everyone ran for it in panic.

Turns out the diagnostics were all going like sweetness and light until pretty much the last test which was apparently a seek from cylinder zero to cylinder 555 and back and forth as fast as possible for thousands of times. All that flailing about set up a standing wave in the box which had it bouncing across the computer room floor. But since the four spindles (I think it was) were running the same test and they were basically tied together and they were just a bit out of sync they were banging back and forth going in every direction at once. If it wasn't so serious for expensive equipment it would have been hillarious.

Instead of everything going perfectly and everyone getting home early, the CE's all had to spend another four or five hours going everyone of those boxes to check for damage while the SEs contacted the diagnostic programmers to give them hell and figure out how to turn that test off. And then they had to run the diagnostics all over again for another couple of hours of course.

Great times.
One of my favorite stories regarding DASD involved a certain computer room supervisor (who coincidently is the most obnoxious magat / anti-vaxxer I see on Facebook) who having experienced a head crash on one drive proceeded to mount the damaged disk on 4 other drives in the complex before someone working for him convinced him that all that disk swapping may not be a 'best practice' troubleshooting / recovery technique.
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Re: Today In History

#87

Post by Frater I*I »

qbawl wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 12:21 am
Frater I*I wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:57 pm What was it like for you folks to use personal chalk boards in school to write down answers instead of paper...?


Signed,

Gen X

:batting:
Just like kids today I used a tablet and stylus. Of course the tablet was clay and the stylus a sharpened twig from an oak tree.
Touche sir

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He's got the answers to ease my curiosity, He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity"

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Re: Today In History

#88

Post by northland10 »

qbawl wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:30 pm Old‽ I'll give you old. In '67 ...
In '67 I was... oh wait.. you people are old.

The today in history thread is useful for me since, unlike others here, I did not experience it directly.

Now I should probably show myself out.
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Re: Today In History

#89

Post by qbawl »

northland10 wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:04 pm
qbawl wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:30 pm Old‽ I'll give you old. In '67 ...
In '67 I was... oh wait.. you people are old.

The today in history thread is useful for me since, unlike others here, I did not experience it directly.

Now I should probably show myself out.
Your time will come and trust me that's a good thing.
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Re: Today In History

#90

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

Qbawl and I are old together! :biggrin:
"Mickey Mouse and I grew up together." - Ruthie Tompson, Disney animation checker and scene planner and one of the first women to become a member of the International Photographers Union in 1952.
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Re: Today In History

#91

Post by Foggy »

I'm old AND I have a rock. :towel:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Today In History

#92

Post by Uninformed »

Plutocrat! :evilmonkey:
If you can't lie to yourself, who can you lie to?
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Re: Today In History

#93

Post by bill_g »

That's a butte.
No, that's a mount.
Might purdy too.

you gotta be olde to amember that joke.
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Re: Today In History

#94

Post by RTH10260 »

:(
20 years ago - 2 Oct 2001 - The burial of a mythos: Swissair

as retold five years ago
Swissair grounding: 15 years on

It was a shock to the nation which gave the government and banks pause for thought. “My world collapsed,” recalls one former Swissair flight attendant.

“A national legend brought to the ground”: for the media, the grounding of a once-proud flying icon 15 years ago was a “national meltdown” and “the definitive end to Switzerland's ‘special’ era.” The sudden collapse of the popular Swiss fleet, which flew around the world, deeply affected the country.

“My world collapsed. It was inconceivable that Swissair would no longer fly. I sat speechless in front of my TV on holiday,” Kathrin Kraus, a former Swissair flight attendant recalled.

The shock of that event is still felt deeply in Switzerland. Current media reports are looking back at “black Tuesday”. “On October 2, 2001, Swissair was no more. Because the airline had run out of money, the aircraft had to stay on the ground. It was a shock to the nation, which gave the government and banks pause for thought,” writes the Handelszeizung newspaper.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/national-l ... n/42481312
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Re: Today In History

#95

Post by RTH10260 »

In the aftermath of the grounding of the Swiss national airline the then charter airline Balair with IATA code LX was pushed into service as the national airline, transformed and renamed as Swiss Airlines, now a Lufthansa subsidiary. Rather than rebuilding from scratch the Balair workaround was used to retain all international flight and landing rights.

The liquidation of the former Swissair is still ongoing. My late mother owned bonds and I still receive partial repayments (will end up with about 20% of nominal value when finished). I was lucky as the relaunching as Swiss Airlines attempted to save good will and they guaranteed the frequent flyer miles. As I used to fly often for business back then, I managed to pay a return ticket Zurich - Bangkok with the miles in the same autumn.
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Re: Today In History

#96

Post by RTH10260 »

It was a shock to the nation, which gave the government and banks pause for thought,” writes the Handelszeizung newspaper.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/national-l ... n/42481312
Actually it was the banks that did initiate the bankruptcy by denying the airline a further credit line in a surprise coup. They had been long supportive of turning around the company after the former management was replaced.
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Re: Today In History

#97

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

1969
BBC-TV premieres something completely different

Five Brits and one American write and star in the BBC's new sketch comedy show, 'Monty Python's Flying Circus.' Their particular brand of silly, surreal mayhem will change the comedy landscape over 45 episodes that at first garner a cult following before achieving worldwide fame.
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Re: Today In History

#98

Post by Azastan »

RTH10260 wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 6:45 am
Frater I*I wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:57 pm What was it like for you folks to use personal chalk boards in school to write down answers instead of paper...?


Signed,

Gen X

:batting:
Terrible when the chalk started to screech, went all down the spine :crying: Some teachers never learnt how to hold the chalk stick and write without making the class shudder :blackeye:
Frater's quote actually implies that the 'folks using personal chalk boards in school' were using slates.
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Re: Today In History

#99

Post by northland10 »

Foggy never did explain what rock he was using/uses.
101010 :towel:
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Re: Today In History

#100

Post by RTH10260 »

Azastan wrote: Tue Oct 05, 2021 1:38 pm
RTH10260 wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 6:45 am
Frater I*I wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:57 pm What was it like for you folks to use personal chalk boards in school to write down answers instead of paper...?


Signed,

Gen X

:batting:
Terrible when the chalk started to screech, went all down the spine :crying: Some teachers never learnt how to hold the chalk stick and write without making the class shudder :blackeye:
Frater's quote actually implies that the 'folks using personal chalk boards in school' were using slates.
Fuzzy memory starts to clear, and yes, I actually do remember that in 1956 my 1st grade class learned to write the alphabet with thin pencil like chalk sticks before they trusted us kids with real pencil and paper. Soon to be followed with splattering ink.
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