[AccessD] Brain Fart regarding arrays

[John Colby]

My son loves the stories of the good old (archaic) days.

I joined the USN straight out of high school in 1972 at 17 YO.  I was sent
to school to learn to fix the navy's "mainframes".

Univac 642 a/b <https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/X184.83>

That was a mighty machine.  A half a million dollars, 11K transistors
(distinct transistors in little metal cans), it weighed over a ton and
consumed 2.5 KW.  I learned every gate in the entire machine and could
troubleshoot it with an o'scope and schematics.  Never learned to program
it though.  It was programmed in assembly because of the limited 32K word
magnetic core memory.

Two of these machines ran the entire intelligence center on the aircraft
carrier which was where I worked.

I was actually trained on 3 different "mainframes", a tape machine, an IBM
disk, the card reader, a rotating drum printer, a pen plotter and
everything else required to keep the intelligence center humming along.



On Sun, Jan 8, 2023 at 5:06 PM John Bartow <jbartow at winhaven.net> wrote:

> IBM 360/40 - the first computer system I learned.
>
> John B
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AccessD <accessd-bounces+jbartow=winhaven.net at databaseadvisors.com>
> On Behalf Of Rocky Smolin
> Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2023 9:37 AM
> To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving <
> accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] Brain Fart regarding arrays
>
> Yeah, that's how I controlled the disk drive; I can't remember why I
> needed to do that - seek specific sectors; but I read the IBM manual and
> figured it out. That was 1968. The University had just bought an IBM
> 360/40. Since I was the only one on campus who knew how to work the thing,
> I got to be the Systems Manager. My first paid job in computing.
>
> The year after I wrote my first commercial product using the school's
> resources of course. Delivered to customers on a deck of punched cards.
> Good times...
>
> r
> On Sat, Jan 7, 2023 at 10:41 PM Stuart McLachlan <stuart at lexacorp.com.pg>
> wrote:
>
> > IBM Channel Command Word?
> >
> >
> > On 7 Jan 2023 at 22:23, Rocky Smolin wrote:
> >
> > > P.S. Next stumper - The acronym CCW just came to mind. Do you know
> > > what that one was? What its function was?  Hint: you used BAL to>
> > manipulate it.
> > >
> >
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-- 
John W. Colby
Colby Consulting