Thread: how far we have come

Originally Posted by Graeme

My entry to the field was early 1970 as a trainee programmer on an IBM 360/30 with 16K memory that was soon doubled to 32K. I remember being intrigued to see the ferrite cores with 2 wires running through the centres, 1 core per bit, 9 per word.

Back in the early Eighties, I was the Principal Technical Officer in charge of a couple of data centres, one was called the international Message Gateway and switched telegrams internationally. The other switched fax messages.

When I took over the Message Gateway, it was just changing over from a magnetic storage device called a Fastrand Drum to removeable disk packs.

The Fastrand Drum was a long spinning cylinder coated with magnetic material and the heads were driven along the cylinder by compressed air. It had a capacity of about 90MB.

The FASTRAND II



Disk packs went into a device about the size of a washing machine.



The chassis from the Fastrand compressor cabinet is my arbor press and drill press stand. Some of the air filters and pressure regulators are on my compressor.

well I had a commodore 64 with the cassette and all I ever did was play Harvey Smiths show jumping and summer Olympics...

Imagine where I could have been now if I had actually learnt code instead

Just read this whole thread. Did not understand one word.

Carburettor anyone???

Originally Posted by stealth

Just read this whole thread. Did not understand one word.

Carburettor anyone???

I have in front of me a fascinating little booklet "Zenith Carburetor (sic), Instructions for Operating and Adjusting", 6th Revised Edition, June 1919.

Not just computers that have changed, and carburettors have been around a lot longer.

John

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I have in front of me a fascinating little booklet "Zenith Carburetor (sic), Instructions for Operating and Adjusting", 6th Revised Edition, June 1919.

Not just computers that have changed, and carburettors have been around a lot longer.

John

computer manual is easier going than that little number!

Originally Posted by p38arover

Back in the early Eighties..... The other switched fax messages.

I attended the demonstration of a fax machine to the company but thought it would be useless without everyone having one. These days I still maintain a fax facility for my farm business but am always trying to get people to change to email.

Originally Posted by Graeme

I attended the demonstration of a fax machine to the company but thought it would be useless without everyone having one.

When our company first offered the sending of international faxes, it cost $10 per page. Customers would come into our Head Office and have the faxes sent. The fax machine was as big as a washing machine.

The fax messaging centre we operated for a large Japanese electronics company - I think it was Toshiba but I can't recall. That was only part of that data centre's functions.