On Mon, 2007-07-23 at 17:09 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote: > David Boles wrote: > > >>> Yes, Solaris is Unix, and runs on x86 and lots of other architectures. > >>> As to the big machines in really cold rooms, most modern desktops have > >>> more power than the early Unix systems did. In 1972 a 10Mb disk was > >>> huge. I worked on a 40Mb disk which had air pumps, pnumatic pistons to > >>> drive the heads and ran at 3600 RPM with platters that were about 20" in > >>> diameter if I remember right. > >> Are you sure they were pneumatic? When I worked on those types of disk > >> systems in the 70's they were hydraulic. > > > > > > I honestly have no idea what it is that you GEEKS are talking about here. > > I'm talking about the Control Data 808 Disk. The one I worked on was craned > in to a site on Wall Street in NYC. When it was de-installed it was cut in > pieces with an acetylene torch and taken down the elevator. > > > But a long, long time ago. > > > > I remember really large machines in really cold rooms with 'tapes' going > > back an forth. ;-) This was remodels. And a really long time ago. > > > > I really don't care these days. Bottom line is green works really well. > > Much better than red. ;-) > > Well, in those days the margin on hardware sales was *VERY* good. So, the > green was flowing. The salesman for our government services organization > owned his own airplane..... > by red and green, I guess you were refering to either mag tape (red was feric oxide and tended to eat the heads), or paper tape, where red was classified and green was not or was the bootstrap. If paper tape, then silver (mylar) was the very best, although an 18" reel would probably circle the earth if stretched out. I have used up to 14channel 1" tapes, at 240" persecond, paper tape at about 1KB/sec, and mylar at about 20KB/sec (optical reader). I have also worked with drum memory, analog magnetic disk recorders, drum memory, CRT memory, punch cards, floppies of several discriptions (8", 5.25" 3.5" and 1") floppy tape drives, and about 20 other kinds of tape drives. I love modern hard disks. I once dropped three drawers of IBM cards just before I had indexed them with the diagonal line. I had to resort the entire set on a card sorter. It took me the better part of three hours to get them sorted, separated, back int he drawers, and marked. Not to mention the heart break of the two guys who had to monitor the whole process. And yes the room was quite cool, especially since I was on Guam, and the temp outside was about 105 and matched by the humidity. Regards, Les H
