Text 5615, 42 rader
Skriven 2010-03-04 22:21:31 av Bo Simonsen (2:236/100.0)
   Kommentar till text 5596 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
Ärende: Windows Update Fix
==========================
BA>None taken.  I didn't know your background.  I've been playing with
BA>these
BA>things since the early 1970s - and was acquainted with them years before
BA>that.  The first computer I was introduced to was an IBM 1401, back in
BA>about 1966 or 1967; shortly after the introduction it was replaced by a
BA>new
BA>IBM 360.

Ah I got my first computer in the early 90's, so you have been using
computer two decades before I got my first. How did you get access to
these machines back then?

BA>The first computer I actually worked on was a Honeywell H-6000, back
BA>in 1974 or thereabouts.  That thing was the size of about six big
BA>refrigerators and had a whopping one megabyte of memory (the H-6000
BA>was an octal machine and had a hardware limit of 256KB words of
BA>memory - a word was 36 bits in this case, not the usual 32 bits or
BA>4 bytes).  That thing had about fifty remote terminals attached to it,
BA>including 19 off-the-shelf Bunker Ramo BR-90 terminals (the BR-90 is
BA>about 5.5 feet high, 2.5 feet deep and six feet wide, and weighs about
BA>half a ton - and it's a *terminal*), serial numbers 1 through 19.  The
BA>system was known as PACER (Program Assisted Console Evaluation and
BA>Review).  Those BR-90s were sold for scrap for about $5 each back in
BA>the late 1980s, dunno what was used to replace them (I haven't set foot
BA>in the former SAC Headquarters since I walked out of the place at the 
BA>end of September, 1983, and into military retirement).

A lot of strange things was invented in the early days of computers.
Like the russians had a computer which used three states instead
of two (as we know from binary numbers), so each "bit" could represent
-1, 0, and 4. I have heard of 36 bits or so before.. I cannot remember
if it was a stranger number. 

I guess these terminals didn't use RS232? Pretty cool to have 20 terminals
on such a machine, I guess the larger mainframes have several hundred ports.
Now a day you connect to them using x3270 and TCP/IP however in the past
people may have used modems or plain terminals to access them.

Bo

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