Mainframe computer

Note the tape drives, woman in "mod" attire, man with black shoes, thin tie, nerdy glasses, raised floor (wires ran under it), toggle switches, flourescent lighting. This was very "bright future" stuff in the dim past.

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Comments

martin english (AUS) says:

you kids and yer modern tape drive thingies. Wheres the card reader ? how will you IPL off the Init without your original card deck ?

Doesn't matter anyway... There's a market for about 5 of these things, worldwide, max.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

Adam Chernow says:

I bet you some kids these days have never seen one up close. Marquette's VAX was more advanced than what is in the picture, but it still took up a good chunk of the server room.

I think it was retired about 2 years after I graduated. Or at least the student info system was. Someone over in MSCS might still be crunching statistical information on it.

-Adam
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

bruce.lerner says:

The "dim past" also known as less than 50 years ago. And Martin you do mean toggle switches and paper tape readers, right?
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

metakappa says:

how did they post twits ?
;-D
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

TheWillEd says:

I love how people think Mainframes are dead and gone, that's not true. IBM still makes them and markets them, and there's still a large business for them. Mostly for number crunching and database processing.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

klrkaw650 says:

the older mainframes were more fun. Some of my jobs read from all three tape drives. And I had access to "the computer room". So during daytime testing, I went in and mounted the tapes, then I could watch a yellow light on the master console that showed CPU useage. We didn't have any other system monitors. There were some lights back on the disk drive controllers that also showed activity. Was way more "hands on" than today.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

Bookshelf Boyfriend says:

Ok, this has got nothing to do with dating or the internet, but we love it and it does have a man, a woman and a computer, so we used it for our Beginner's guide to online dating anyway!
Thank you.
Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink )

nfgusedautoparts says:

i'm thinking this is an early IBM System/360, dating from the mid-60s. discrete transistors and maybe some small scale IC packages (just a couple of gates). three tape drives is the minimum necessary to do a tape-to-tape sort (4 is much easier, see Knuth's art of computer programming volume on sorting for the painful details of tape sorts.)
the card reader and the model 1403 printer are clearly around the corner, you couldn't run this thing without them.
Posted 3 months ago. ( permalink )

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