Posted on 05/30/2015 11:28:13 AM PDT by QT3.14
About 1988 I had to install a 20 Mb hard drive in a desktop computer. The drive box was about 8”x 6” x 4” and weighed at least 5 lbs.
A couple of days ago I was looking as some microSD cards online for a new android tablet. The carrier for the 32 gb card was about 7/8” x 1-1/3” and the actual memory card was less than 5/8” x 1/2”.
>>You rarely see the elegance of tight simple code for a given task anymore ...
Because we don’t have to waste money writing tight simple code for a given task anymore. We don’t have to build a specialized computer that is optimized for a limited range of functions. I can buy a $1000 computer and add some of that “kludgy mashup” software and use it to play a game, write a letter, surf the web, control a power plant, sequence a gene, etc and I can do that without changing anything.
From someone that started with the Univac 1050-II,
with the huge, then, teletype-tickertape remotes; thru
octal and hexadecimal displayed test equipment,
Hewlett Packard HP-1b test consoles with steel
removable hard disk packs, to today’s wowee laptops;
I can vouch for the quickening of Moore’s Law.
Earlier, in the late 1970s, I had to take a 10MB hard drive's disks and drive them (there were two 5MB platters about 15" in diameter in plastic cases) from Stockton to San Francisco every time we needed to defrag the drive. . . which was about once a month.
That first box is a 3880 controller for the 4 3380’s behind it,, each 3380 could have 2 spindles 3380 a or b models were the smallest and are the 500mb size ,, I only had 3380 d/e and K drives , the “K” was the big dog at 2.1GB d’s and e’s were 1gb... the “K” drives had spindle bearing issues...at one time I had 3TB of these monsters shared with 7 mainframes , a 370/168 , 2 3031AP’s and 4 3081’s ... now you can buy 3TB for $99 at CompUSA.
The Apollo/Saturn V computers were pie shaped and arranged in a ring of 7 identical computers ... the memory was the ancient wire grid with donut shaped magnets at the intersections... NASA would fly a mission with 3 computers down as long as 3 of the 4 remaining agreed on results... needless to say that memory style combined with MILLIONS of explosive horsepower wasn’t optimal.
Not only did that land with that computer - they took off from the moon without a support structure....
Not only did they land with that computer - they took off from the moon without a support structure....
An IBM RAMAC 305 5 mb hard disk being loaded into an airplane in 1956.
As one that started on a Burroughs B3500, then transferred to the Sperry (then Unisys) 1160, I am with you.
@elt,i ,tpf$.masm
$(1),st
l,u a0,($CAS(’Hi, FR!!’))
lxi,u a0,0102
er aprint$
er exit$
end st
@end
@masm,ie tpf$.masm,tpf$.obj
@eof
@map,ie tpf$.obj,tpf$.test
@test
Hi, FR!!
While that is basically true, it is all about cost. Using more hardware resources for quickly written code is cheaper overall than more efficient code in lower resource hardware in most cases.
The controller makes sense. We had 3330’s and 3350’s and a single 3380 that was delivered. Don’t know if there was a free-standing controller or not. Probably had a 3380 for each of our 3083’s. We had a 370-158 for R&D.
Gosh, I miss those days. Especially now.
My first “machine contact” was in ‘65 using FORTRAN on an IBM 1620 (with punch cards). I was first year EE. I fondly remember scamming the dept’s secretary, two of us on either end of two teletypes, convincing her she was talking to a computer. Great fun. Things have sure changed.
I actually got to hear Grace Hopper speak in person.
Oh, so long ago. Had forgotten about that.
Thanks for the memory. No pun intended.
She actually had nanoseconds of wire to hand out to us.
You should have seen all these guys in suits rush to the front to get them. I probably lost mine.
Yeah , those 3330’s (I had 16 3330 mdl 1’s and 16 3330 mdl 2’s) and the 3350’s were about 300+mb each spindle... I had a 3083 but it was used for VM/profs ... before we had pc networks for e:mail...
One day one of our processes left our HR Sys/36 SNA-connected to one of the 3083’s. I got a call from my user telling me she had been typing in commands and nothing was working.
She was issuing commands to the 3083 through a remote console.
I about fainted.
Fortunately, none of her commands were recognized since she only knew a bit of OCL, not MVS/OS.
Oh well ,,, I still know all the MVS and Jes2 commands and parms... never had a system36 ... I did have a as400 for VM before the 3083...
What kills me is that Microsoft takes years (It’s been 15 years since Windows 2000 pro) to make an “all new” OS ... there is nothing new or brilliant released in 15 years ... and with tens of thousands of programmers they can’t streamline the stinking spaghetti code they sell... not even a little... just add more junk and change the look a little?
They keep reinventing the wheel, is my guess.
Yeah, I’ve spent a lot of time on AS/400. Hope to find a niche again. Has a lot of great little tools and aftermarket tools, if they’re deployed.
Because it’s a lesser evil! A no brainer really. A lifetime of expense and support vs. a few hundred bucks and an afternoon at the clinic? What’s not to love?
/Liberal
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