RandomGuy Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 43 minutes ago, pipedreams said: I’m quite tempted to have the Wife write a bunch of these and we distribute them liberally around the University campus. 1 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pipedreams Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 5 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentpoet Posted March 21, 2019 Share Posted March 21, 2019 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentpoet Posted March 21, 2019 Share Posted March 21, 2019 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentpoet Posted March 21, 2019 Share Posted March 21, 2019 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pipedreams Posted March 21, 2019 Share Posted March 21, 2019 Technician with a 250 MB hard drive in 1979 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul53 Posted March 21, 2019 Share Posted March 21, 2019 2 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
janice6 Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 I occasionally tripped over one of these on my way into the model shop long, long, ago. Damn pallet was in the way! Magnetic drum memory The precursor to the hard drive, magnetic drums were cylinders of metal coated in ferromagnetic recording material, just like magnetic tapes. Like a hard drive, magnetic drums had heads — but rather than seek for data, magnetic drums featured many static heads that would simply wait for the right magnetic sector to spin into place. Drums varied in size and speed, but one of the most successful — a small IBM model that was 4 inches in diameter and 16 inches long (pictured right) — spun at 12,500 RPM, which meant its seek time was incredibly fast. Magnetic drums also varied widely in capacity, but generally they could store a few thousand bytes of data. Magnetic drums formed the main working memory of all electric computers until the end of the 1950s when magnetic-core memory and hard drives emerged. 4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
janice6 Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 4 hours ago, Paul53 said: That is great! I sent it to my Grand Daughter...………… Waiting for results. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentpoet Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
railfancwb Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 I occasionally tripped over one of these on my way into the model shop long, long, ago. Damn pallet was in the way! Magnetic drum memory The precursor to the hard drive, magnetic drums were cylinders of metal coated in ferromagnetic recording material, just like magnetic tapes. Like a hard drive, magnetic drums had heads — but rather than seek for data, magnetic drums featured many static heads that would simply wait for the right magnetic sector to spin into place. Drums varied in size and speed, but one of the most successful — a small IBM model that was 4 inches in diameter and 16 inches long (pictured right) — spun at 12,500 RPM, which meant its seek time was incredibly fast. Magnetic drums also varied widely in capacity, but generally they could store a few thousand bytes of data. Magnetic drums formed the main working memory of all electric computers until the end of the 1950s when magnetic-core memory and hard drives emerged.One of my tasks at a data processing center (I was financial guru not coder) was calculate the profit potential for distributed processing using one of these with remote terminals. Based on the numbers my boss gave me, I concluded the monthly loss would be only a few thousand. A path we didn’t take. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentpoet Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
janice6 Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, railfancwb said: One of my tasks at a data processing center (I was financial guru not coder) was calculate the profit potential for distributed processing using one of these with remote terminals. Based on the numbers my boss gave me, I concluded the monthly loss would be only a few thousand. A path we didn’t take. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk The reason that ours existed was that we made some of the first computers for the Navy and they were housed in our various plants. Over time obsolescence over came the hardware and in this case, it got as far as the model shop and apparently someone Pigeon holed the paperwork. Some of the mercury column delay line memories were still in the building too. Edited March 22, 2019 by janice6 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
railfancwb Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 The descendants of the horses knights with their heavy armor rode may be seen today pulling the Budweiser wagon and plows and other farm equipment on Amish farms. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentpoet Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 2 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
railfancwb Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 The reason that ours existed was that we made some of the first computers for the Navy and they were housed in our various plants. Over time obsolescence over came the hardware and in this case, it got as far as the model shop and apparently someone Pigeon holed the paperwork. Some of the mercury column delay line memories were still in the building too.TV station where I worked timed the signals from equipment within the building by coiling the coax cables according to the equipment’s distances from the designated zero point. All coils approximately equaled the length of coax between zero and the farthest away item. Stations and production facilities with larger budgets than ours had electronic delay devices probably similar to the Mercury columns you mention. Casual point of interest... we provided technical support for the first live nationwide telecast of The Grand Ole Opry, which was uplinked via satellite truck, downlinked to PBS, then uplinked by them to their satellite and downlinked to their member stations. The truck saw the signal coming in for initial uplink and the off air signal of our PBS broadcast. The delay was noticeable. 100,000 miles +/- is almost a second. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
janice6 Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 52 minutes ago, railfancwb said: TV station where I worked timed the signals from equipment within the building by coiling the coax cables according to the equipment’s distances from the designated zero point. All coils approximately equaled the length of coax between zero and the farthest away item. Stations and production facilities with larger budgets than ours had electronic delay devices probably similar to the Mercury columns you mention. Casual point of interest... we provided technical support for the first live nationwide telecast of The Grand Ole Opry, which was uplinked via satellite truck, downlinked to PBS, then uplinked by them to their satellite and downlinked to their member stations. The truck saw the signal coming in for initial uplink and the off air signal of our PBS broadcast. The delay was noticeable. 100,000 miles +/- is almost a second. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I remember the early days of color tv when a couple of the studio cameras had slightly more delay and it shifted the tint. 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inthefrey Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 2 hours ago, railfancwb said: TV station where I worked timed the signals from equipment within the building by coiling the coax cables according to the equipment’s distances from the designated zero point. All coils approximately equaled the length of coax between zero and the farthest away item. Stations and production facilities with larger budgets than ours had electronic delay devices probably similar to the Mercury columns you mention. Casual point of interest... we provided technical support for the first live nationwide telecast of The Grand Ole Opry, which was uplinked via satellite truck, downlinked to PBS, then uplinked by them to their satellite and downlinked to their member stations. The truck saw the signal coming in for initial uplink and the off air signal of our PBS broadcast. The delay was noticeable. 100,000 miles +/- is almost a second. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Were you guys using TK47's? ? Ah yes, I remember the chroma phase loops! In my shop, tweakers were licenced! Worked on Sony VP-1800 thru VP-7000 machines. Had this amazing Ampex 1" machine and, an old 2" machine they use to do crash edits on. Field camera guys would carry BVU-110's. They would take them from the air conditioning into 90 degree, high humidity and yell at me about condensation alarms! Then, there were the 250, RCA Lyceum's (tube type) we had to keep running at the USNA. Remember the pull-out adjustment drawer? ColorTrac? Then, getting zapped by capacitance of the CRT! Good 'ol days of broadcast engineering! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
railfancwb Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 Were you guys using TK47's? [emoji16] Ah yes, I remember the chroma phase loops! In my shop, tweakers were licenced! Worked on Sony VP-1800 thru VP-7000 machines. Had this amazing Ampex 1" machine and, an old 2" machine they use to do crash edits on. Field camera guys would carry BVU-110's. They would take them from the air conditioning into 90 degree, high humidity and yell at me about condensation alarms! Then, there were the 250, RCA Lyceum's (tube type) we had to keep running at the USNA. Remember the pull-out adjustment drawer? ColorTrac? Then, getting zapped by capacitance of the CRT! Good 'ol days of broadcast engineering!Yeah TK47 rings a bell. Also much of the Sony equipment. Portable 3/4” cassette tape machines. Lots of 2” reel to reel, then 1” reel to reel, finally field cameras which held cassettes. First short time VHS, then some kind of tiny Sony tape. Last time I saw the field team in action they had a GoPro. I was the financial guy - the one that always asked “You need WHAT? To do WHAT?” So what technical info I picked up was from that and lunch room chatter. Having to explain stuff well enough to get checks signed lends some clarity. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
railfancwb Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 The building, unsurprisingly, had three phase electricity. A squirrel gave its all and knocked out one breaker going to a transformer. Amazing what that can do to delicate equipment. Another time our telephone PBX, built by Northern Telecom, owned and operated by AT&T, had lightening come in the phone wires. Those AT&T guys were carrying circuit boards out by the armful. Just like vacations, it isn’t all the times everything goes right you remember but the much less frequent times when everything went wrong. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pipedreams Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwalchmai Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 35 minutes ago, railfancwb said: The building, unsurprisingly, had three phase electricity. A squirrel gave its all and knocked out one breaker going to a transformer. Amazing what that can do to delicate equipment. Another time our telephone PBX, built by Northern Telecom, owned and operated by AT&T, had lightening come in the phone wires. Those AT&T guys were carrying circuit boards out by the armful. Just like vacations, it isn’t all the times everything goes right you remember but the much less frequent times when everything went wrong. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk We got one of those NorTel PBXs in 1992, upgraded it over the years, and in 2005 we plucked it off the wall, drove it across town, and had it up and running at a new site at 8:00 the next morning. That's with about 100 extensions, too. I was lucky to have a local consultant who installed the original system when he worked for BellSouth, then hung out a shingle after he retired. He had a duplicate system in his basement to experiment with configurations so we were able to expand and mod the system a lot with no real impact on reliability. We eventually replaced it with a new ShorTel VOIP system at great cost, but of course we got a lot of new features nobody ever actually used... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pipedreams Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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