JWColby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Wed Mar 21 10:57:50 CDT 2007
Definitely not the ones. These had 3 drives in drawers, the cabinet was head high and about as long as a couch. All to contain (3) 80 megabyte drives. John W. Colby Colby Consulting www.ColbyConsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gary Kjos Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 11:44 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] OT: But only Partly Oops, they were actually 2311's. Only 7.25 MB each drive. Found a picture http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/2311.html GK On 3/21/07, Gary Kjos <garykjos at gmail.com> wrote: > Close John. These were IBM 2314's 29Mb per drive.11 platters, 20 > heads. We had four drives but all of our stuff was set up to use only > 3 because one was often broken ;-) They had a plug thing in the front > as I recall that you could change which was which by changing the plug > from one to another. One drive was for the Operating system and our > programs, the other two had the data files and workspaces for sorting > etc. > > Wikipedia has a nice description of them here > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_IBM_disk_storage#IBM_2314 > > We got to know our Field Engineers very well. They were there every > week to do preventive maintenance and there were many weeks when they > were there almost every day for something or another. I remember one > time when we had been down for a while and there were about 4 FE's > there working on the drives, our company president came in and was > trying to pressure them to get it fixed faster and asked "so how long > is it going to be down?" and the senior FE replied that "if we knew > what was the matter it would already be fixed" The president went off > in a huff and they had it fixed an hour or so later and we were off > and running. Everybody in the room was happy to see the president > storm off in a rage as we all thought him a blow-hard. Ah, the good > old days. ;-) > > GK > > On 3/21/07, JWColby <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com> wrote: > > >In those days, disks on mainframes were removable from the drives > > themselves which were about the size of a washing machine. The disk > > packs were about the diameter of a LP record and the ones we used > > were about 8 inches tall. > > > > Must have been one of the old IBM hard disk cabinets. It had > > drawers that you could pull out and then unlock and remove the disk > > packs. Those were 80 mb packs if memory serves me. Something like > > 8 platters, heads on each side, hydraulically actuated heads. > > > > In 1972/73 I was trained by the USN to fix that disk drive system. > > > > John W. Colby > > Colby Consulting > > www.ColbyConsulting.com > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > > [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gary Kjos > > Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 10:37 AM > > To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving > > Subject: Re: [AccessD] OT: But only Partly > > > > Ouch. We used to do Disaster Recovery Firedrills back in my early > > mainframe days when I was a computer operator. We had an arrangement > > with another local company that had a similar hardware configuration > > to ours that we were backup sites for each other. In those days, > > disks on mainframes were removable from the drives themselves which > > were about the size of a washing machine. The disk packs were about > > the diameter of a LP record and the ones we used were about 8 inches tall. > > We would take our disks or maybe it was just backup tapes over to > > this other company and they would let us use their system over night > > and we would attempt to run our orders and print the picking > > documents. Since the hardware configuration was slightly different > > we had different execution job control that referenced the hardware > > they had there. I was mostly just along to carry stuff in the early > > days but later on I was called on to run the stuff too. When fixed > > hard drives and online terminals came along in about 1980 that > > ceased to be an option anymore as we would have had to actually > > overwrite their files on the disk or they would have needed enough > > empty space for us to load our stuff on and as disk was failrly > > expensive in those days that wasn't a viable option. So instead we > > concentrated on getting better covereage from our hardware > > maintenance group. And we used our backup tapes pretty often when > > stuff got corrupted and had daily, weekly and monthly full backups > > for an entire year of generations, so we were really quite secure > > and fully tested backup wise. Noplace I have worked since has had > > anywhere near that level of backup. But hardware failed a lot more > > then than it does now too, so we get lulled into a sense of security that drives don't fail. But in this case it wasn't even a drive failure that caused it, it was a human mistake. > > > > We had an occurance of the "can't read the backups" here a while back. > > It was a very bad thing. There had been a change to the backup > > software itself and maybe the hardware too. I don't remember exactly > > what the end result was as far as data loss - don't think we lost > > anything - but we were down for an entire day - no sales entered. > > Order takers had to write orders down on paper to be entered later. > > I think our website still took orders as it's seperate but there > > were no confirmations etc. It wasn't a total loss as some of that > > business came to us in the following days, but some of those orders > > went to other sellers instead of us and perhaps some of those customers went away disgruntled too. > > > > GK > > > > -- > > AccessD mailing list > > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > > -- > Gary Kjos > garykjos at gmail.com > -- Gary Kjos garykjos at gmail.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com