Comments on: Listen to your head being examined by Hitachi

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 20:10:35 +0000

There were lots of them. That was in the minicomputer revolution. These things were much smaller and less expensive than mainframes, so individual businesses could afford them. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, a lot of companies made money on selling systems as low as 10K for small businesses (mostly DEC PDP-8’s and PDP-11’s). ‘83 on I worked for a company that sold systems to accountants. We would load up the OS and applications and just wheel the system into their office, plug it in, train them and go. Back then, the biggest part of the profit was on the hardware sale, and software was a necessary evil. Then came the PC revolution and *Poof* went the hardware market. Software rules.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 20:00:42 +0000

Only 80 large? Wonder why didn’t they have more of these systems?

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 19:53:15 +0000

Yes, it was. Two of those (192MB) was enough for the entire university’s data and programs, including budget, cashier’s office, student and faculty records, and the user accounts of some 600 Computer Science students. And the memory…a whole megabyte! To share between up to 64 processes at a time. And all of this cost only somewhere around 80 grand.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 19:37:38 +0000

lol, 96MB drives … just think, Sterling, that was *huge* space at one time.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 18:19:57 +0000

Oh, I forgot. These drives held a whopping 96MB.
Oh, and this computer ran the whole university.
Oh, and the latest backups were three months old.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 18:17:35 +0000

More than I can count. My favorite though was back in 1979. The university computer center had a Data General Eclipse C-330 with two large disk drives the size of washing machines. They had 10-platter removable disks, with 20 heads (one to read each side of each disk) suspended above and beneath the platters. The heads were mounted on a linear motor that moved all 20 heads simultaneously in and out to seek to the particular sector that was required. So on a busy day these machines would jump around like they wanted to leave the room. One day, the assembly that holds the heads failed on one of these things and 10 heads dropped onto 10 spinning platters, digging a trench in each one. Such a scream I have never heard before or since.