Oh wow. What memories. My mom worked in an IBM shop for years and would drag me into work with her on weekends. I was there for the upgrade of a 4341 to a 4381, then to a 3090. I think they're running a Z-series to this day. In violation of all sorts of company policy, she would let me pull and mount 9-track tapes when jobs called for them. The vacuum sound and the sliding door were hours of amusement for a 7-year-old.
@sm1else Not to mention all the interesting sounds that they made. The long brrrrrrrrrrrr of a checkpoint being written, or the soft but steady bup, bup, buping of tape logging. You could always tell when something was wrong because the noises either stopped or suddenly all the tapes were rewinding and the tape doors snapping open!
Wow! What memories. Some things have changed while others not so much. The IBM 3800 printers were real work horses. I have seen and worked with newer faster printers, but argueably faster in that those printers required more PMs and experienced more falures/repairs. As a young operator I was told to always remember, "no ringy no writey", with regards to the tape reels. I still remember... too funny.
Thanks for the memories:) We had some of this equipment at GSFC/NASA. We also had the IBM 360 series. I forgot about those write rings! Thanks for posting!
Long shot here, but does anyone happen to have IBM 3290 Display Station equipment they would be willing to sell? The 3290 came with a plasma screen monitor and either a 122 or 104 key keyboard.
I remember having to get some 3420 tape units made for an Indian customer after they had gone out of production. They loved the 3480 cartridges but had a huge seismological data library on tape reels.
awesome! thank you for posting. my dad worked for IBM in Kingston NY in the early 90's. I worked on WYSE terminals myself in the 90s and loved that environment. Give me a wyse and ORACLE on unix and i am a happy camper and i am only 37. Those days were amazing for REAL. I am an IT Manager now and i know things are not half as interesting anymore.
ahh the good ole days, 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 3 days on, 4 days off this week, next week, 4 days on, 3 days off. Every 3 months swap between day and night shift...ABEND ABEND ABEND....
ahh the good ole days, 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 3 days on, 4 days off this week, next week, 4 days on, 3 days off. Every 3 months swap between day and night shift...ABEND ABEND ABEND....
ahh the good ole days, 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 3 days on, 4 days off this week, next week, 4 days on, 3 days off. Every 3 months swap between day and night shift...ABEND ABEND ABEND....
@tww56 I miss them too. We had 8 hour shifts 5 days a week. I liked 16:00 to 00:00 from Tuesday thru Saturday best. I really enjoyed mounting tapes and paper on the printers. Truly loved operating the console. So much so that I graduated to programming; and now I'm an analyst -- but I never see the computer room anymore. Anyway, they've totally changed. Miss those days a lot.
@Piddlepaddler Yes, Cannopa also pointed out the error a few months ago. I wish I could replace this video with one with corrected titles, (I also misidentified the 3880 MCCU as a GRS control unit) but I can't without losing all the posted comments, view count, etc. So I've tried to correct it by revising the comments for the video.
IBM had "Dual Core" and "Quad Core" computing back in 1980, They called it Diatic and quadratic processing. its was offered on the 308x series. and people think multi core processing is new?? What still amazes me, is that PC manufacturers are light years behind IBM mainframe concepts. Mainframes were un-stopable. You might get a run away program, but the operator was still able to cancel it, and get rid of it. PC's can be stopped dead in their tracks by a rogue piece of software.
My first job in IT at age 21 (1997) was running the night shift on a DOS/VSE system. It was a 'small' shop, just one operator working per shift. It was a Hitachi mainframe with a good sized room for the DASD. 6 hitachi cartridge tape drives, and two IBM 'round' tape drives. There was just enough processing power to get the jobs done overnight. Had to have all the carts pulled and sequenced in order so the jobs wouldn't stop and ask for a tape, that's how tight on time it was.
I still miss those days sometimes. Taking a nap on the non-billing cycle weekends, where there's literally nothing to do but be there. Responding to the water alarm panel only to find the humidifier tray from the AC unit overflowed and leaked under the raised floor.. Having to call Xerox to fix the 50ppm laser, meanwhile alter all the jobs in the queue so that the couriers that arrive first have their output.. Telnet into the colleges AS/400 and work on that RPG program for class.
@RuggedBrotha I have the "Emergency Pull" knob from the faceplate of an IBM-360-30. I would LOVE to get the full face panel from the 360-30. I used to write application in assembler for years! I wrote for the BPS, TOS, and DOS 26.2 them later for DOS/VSE systems. Since I knew both COBOL (both 'D' and ANSI versions) and Assembler, I used to read core dumps, and re-write the code into COBOL when the idiots lost the source code for several programs.
@RuggedBrotha The 4300 series were meant to run DOS. VM (yes folks VM is NOTHING new) and MVC ran like dogs on those machines, DOS used the HADWARE DAT (Much faster) MVS & VM relied on a software routine for DAT.
Funny how I am still making money off a idea I had just after transitioning from OS/MVT to MVS back in 1984. It is very obvious but can't tell because it gets me 20K a shot as a base. Getting ready to start offering a new service for 30K but will save a small zOS shop 60K an year. I am avaliable for an expenses only assessment.
1980s? More like the 1970s. In the 1980s micro-processor architectures like the MC68000 were already around, high density optical and hard disk technology was slowly becoming more and more the standard.
@eMGeeGFX - Hate to break it to you, but that's VERY MUCH a representative floor of an IBM-centric shop of the 1980's. There were shops going into the 90's that didn't change much from what you see here. The 3279s became 3290s (hated those) and the 3081s and 3084s became 3090 Enterprise machines. The 1657 and 3420 tapes mostly went to 3490, even though we kept a few 3425s around as late as 2000. All the bus and tag cables became fiber-channel. Believe it. I worked at a very similar shop.
I love it when people say "my laptop is more powerful then this stuff" Last mainframe I programmed on (assembler lang) was a 3033. Lets see, 25,000 users with 2,000 of them program developers all working on ONE machine. Lets see today's laptop do that! Heck ONE programmer can stop a PC dead in its tracks.
@rty1955 You're comparing apples with oranges. On the other hand, when you look at raw computer power, a modern quad core laptop easily outperforms this...by far. I think you underestimate who much technology has advanced and trust, I'm an old IT guy who has worked with those beasts.
@DaBossk - If you watch the video all the way through you will be rewarded with the titles, names of the performing groups and a picture of some of the performers about 20 seconds before the end. :)
I remember my dad telling me how much easier computer operations are now, as compared to his days in the Navy back in 1970. (USS Compass Island, and USS Ulysses S. Grant)
@Ricambio1 SPAR tape!! I haven't thought about that in years. I still have a red card with the vacuum and pressure settings used for PMs. I still install storage stuff and I hear people complain about running fibre channel cables. Little do they know what it was like to run a 100ft bus & tag pair (Grey Away!).
@JesusManson323 Already does. Other than printing and offline (eg tape) storage, an iPhone probably has the power and capacity of these old mainframes.
@michaelboett173 I remember visiting a large telco data center back in the mid 1980's. They had a huge area the size of 3-4 basketball courts dedicated to disk drives. The total capacity of the whole setup was just under a terabyte. Today you get double that in a single drive that fits in the palm of your hand. 25 years has seen an incredible increase in computer speed and capacity.
@YTM021807 hehe... I still have a couple of the old tape reels (with write rings) in my computer memorabilia box. I also have an acoustic delay line memory module (about 1k bits) from an old computer from the 1950s!! It is in a metal case about 18" square and an inch high.
Nice photos. I used to fix many of these types of machines as an IBM CE. BTW the card punch machines, at about 1 min in, are 029 not 129. The 029 used mechanical relays and not the solid state logic of the 129 ( which had a dial on the front to select the function) :-)
I lioke those old computers, because they don´t hold less information than actual Systems do (and with information i don´t mean YT-Videos, HTML or oversized Excel-Sheets). So for me there is no real improvement compared to actual machines.
Being an ex-mainframe operator (okay.ex-ICL 2900s & S39) I still have fond memories of working with the beasts. The hardware was very hardware and nothing could beat them for multi-user constant number crunching. Oh the drone noise of motors, aircon and impact printers the good old days of tape libraries and continuous paper. Yes I am oldish and proudly (some might say sadly) remember many of the ICL VME operator commands. Bring the giants back.
@lafosterjr Actually, what really amazes me as I do research on mainframe computing is how young this industry really is. Many people who worked with 360 systems are still working, but the hand-off to the next generation needs to get on track because the retirements are coming, and there is a lot of knowledge that needs to be transfered to the next generation of mainframers.
@lafosterjr hahaha... I had been working on mainframes for probably 15 years by the time this video was made. I started in 1973 as a COBOL programmer on a very old Honeywell H115 system. One CPU running at 1Mhz, 16k of core memory, 4 tape drives, a printer and a card reader. This beast ran ALL of the data processing, including development and production work, for a medium sized company. It was used 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. We did not need to run it on weekends. How times have changed.
@mjwh205 I remember going back to work after the pub late one Friday night to collect some stuff from the office. The mainframe computer operator, who was working alone on the night shift, was sitting in the middle of the computer room floor playing a violin. Boss and I saw him but he did not see us. We sneaked out so as not to embarrass him. That was in 1973. Fun days!!!
What was a typical task done with one of these computer systems? I always see pictures of people standing around them and putting stuff in them but still have no idea what they were actually trying to achieve.
Since I was born 1991 and didn't know the typical use for a Mainframe; Yes I did have to ask and I thank you for answering my question. But was it really necessary to be that condescending?
FYI I'm currently learning basic (controlling a homemade relay board threw the lpt port) and have a general dislike for social networking excluding youtube.
Vacuum tube machines date from the early 40s. IBM introduced its first solid state machines in 1958. These machines are all solid state with volatile memory.
No, unless you want to talk about the security and necessity of computer operator jobs.
Mainframes have definitely improved in overall efficiency, capacity, and look a lot cleaner these days, but since they are also easier to operate...your operators only need to know a few simple commands, and most of the things they used to do have been replaced with automation.
Actually, it can't. The amount of data being processed per second in those banks of CPUs (even back then) exceeds what a normal single desktop cpu can do today. You also have to know that these mainframes were used for long-term storage of data in a secure location...
Your phone is definitely more powerful than most computers of the 80s and 90s, but mainframes deal with a LOT of data.
It's the problem that a mainframe is not one single device contained in a small package, running for the sole purpose of entertainment and portability.
A mainframe is a giant network of devices that all serve the same purpose, with giant BANKS of cpus, tape drives, switches/hubs/routers/firewalls...each individual "part" of the chain in it's own enclosure, and with it's own cooling devices.
No single personal computer, game device, mobile phone, etc, can compare.
No, a single PC has to worry about running several other applications essential to keeping it's OS up, and all the programs that might be running with it (antivirus, antispam, IM programs, web browsers, games..)
I should have been a bit more detailed about etc, though. Yes, a supercomputer could be more powerful than a mainframe.
However, a supercomputer isn't made for the same purposes as a mainframe.
I hated working in these computer rooms. The computer room I worked in during the 1980's was kept really cold. When I sat at the teminal I would slowly roll backwards in the office chair because of the hard rubber floor tiles that would dip in the middle.
One time I put a thermometer on the floor and found the temp to be 49 degrees! But they had to push a lot of cold air to keep all that equipment within its operating specs. We had (I think) some 300 to 400 3350s. The 3380s which came later were designed to need much less cooling.
After a short time I realized just how loud the computer room was, I started bringing earplugs to work.
Pretty soon everyone was wearing them, and thanking me for the idea.
One coworker said her hearing had been great, but after a few years her hearing chart showed a huge deaf spot right at the frequency of a spinning 10" fan. No kidding!
Oh, great memories! Those were good times with all that heavy equipment running all around me.
I'll bet a Pentium 4 quad core PC with 4 GB of ram, 1 TB of HD, and a high performance laser printer would replace most of the hardware in this video. And occupy no more space than an office desk.
Still, I'd like to go back 20 years just for a day with all this noisy stuff! They all had character and so did the people who ran them. LOL
I wish I had a recording of the sound of it. You could always tell how the system was running by the sounds the tape drives made or how your printers were doing by their sounds, except for jams. If you weren't paying attention, you didn't know about that until the printer stopped and the cover yawned open on its own on the 3211s.
It really was the people, and it took a LOT of people. Facilities, maintenance, dedicated buildings, and it really did feel like a team, like we were all working toward keeping that machine running.
I found this while looking for that IBM commercial where the entire raised-floor area is empty, and the suit is going ballistic "Someone stole the mainframe!"
Think of all that tape and then think about compressed data form and you have more data then you could cover in 3 life times let alone one. That.s a lot of data from mining to market to you materials that you would have never needed in the first place and say it is for your convenience. Sure; all right I'll buy that. NOT!
This almost brings tears to my eyes. I worked my way up through the printer pool and tape library to become an MTO for MVS and IMS back in the '80's. This was at IBM in San Jose. Wow. We had those 1657s, too. Evil beasts compared to the 3420s. Vaccuum column faults aplenty with those. I went on to do batch restarts shuffling JCL. Your floor is VERY close to our own Bldg. 026 data center. We didn't have manual punches by then, though we had 3525s. We also had 3505s like yours. Thanks!
These laser printers could do over 500fpm; they were the fastest line printers in the world at the time. So fast they could print a 300-page book in under a minute.
We were always told that keeping the covers closed on the printers would protect us. We did do this on the 3211s because they were so loud. The 3800s were different. You really couldn't keep up production with the covers closed. They just needed too much attention to keep running smoothly and ensure the quality of the output, which could only be observed with the cover open.
I remember those reel tapes and one time one of the tapes feel and struck my feet. Dang it hurts. I also familiar with those old printers. Its fun operating those printers. Watch out when you are bending because they like to watch you bend over. The mvs systems are pretty cool and you have to be careful because you could shut down systems.
Oh man that takes me back...I worked in a mainframe shop, starting out as a tape librarian using 3480's, and then was trained on the operation of 2 3800 printers that were made when I graduated high school in 1977
I think the closest thing to that today is a server room and the most matenence that would need to be done on those is dusting them off and restarting them.
The telecommunication rooms are actually better in my opinion, they houses the routers, switch and hubs, etc dte and dsu/csu crap. the most you do in those rooms is idk program routers i.e, config terminal int fa0/0 ip address 192.168.1.65 255.255.0.0 router rip lol you get the point, : )
I remember. Good times if you were an operator and didn't make mistakes. Hell (always) if you were a programmer. I was both. I miss those days so much. I do remember rubber bands holding a few of the reel tape drives together. Fun! Fun! Fun!!!
Our 3090 had a leak as well, I still remeber the operator on a ladder filling up the tank. One of the analysts saw it and asked if he would check the oil as well :-)
I still remeber throwing a ring away so the operator would not overwrite the tape. I also remeber the 3380's. We ran a 4341 and 4381 till the very late 80's, did not go to water until the 90's with a 3090
That reminds me of how an IBM CE checked the water level in our shop. We had a machine that was losing water (a 3081 I think), so the CEs had to keep adding some until the leak was found. One guy would get up on a ladder and dip his tie into the tank to check the water level, and then add more distilled water accordingly!
Excellent video! It really brings back some memories. My customer had a single 3800 printer that routinely moved 1.5M feet of paper per month. It was my favorite machine because of all the overtime it generated for me.
My pops used to work for IBM. He now works in a datacenter for a major electric company here in California. Right now we have 3 mainframes, system Z10. Used to have 6 StorageTek Powderline silos, but decommissioned one and now have a Sun SL8500 pending install. Due to its weight, the raised floor will have to be retrofitted before use.
That reminds me of grocer (which shall remain unnamed since they're still around) that I interviewed with. They had just built a new data center, but when they tried to install the mainframe (3081 I think) they found that the ceiling was too 'low' for it. Someone had forgotten to figure in the height of the raised floor...
I absolutely could not remember the correct name for this device when I was putting the slide show together, but I kept it in because I was always amused by the batteries someone had set on it (and hoping someone WOULD know!) Yes, that's it, a 3088 Multisystem Channel Communication Unit (MCCU). Hope I have this right now. It connected our 5th CPU, a 3081 running VM/XA for R&D, to the rest of the world which at that time, 1983, consisted of 2 3033s and 2 other 3081s. Thanks for the memory jog!
More is coming back! CTCAs weren't needed on 308x (& later) as they were defined as such in IOCDS. I only ever had one account that had them, luckily they never went wrong. Channnel switching boxes (3814?) were a completely different kettle of fish & were quite common in IBM suites, they had hundreds of cables going in & out of them !!!!
We had one or two 3814s in our shop, but the 2914s, of which we had several, with their manual rotary dials (pull it out, rotate, push it back in) and push pins that completed the circuit, were my favorites. Sadly, I don't seem to have any pictures of them.
Reminds me of the days of manual batch operations, calling in jobs one by one, checking them off as completed and calling in the next job. Long before CA7/11 or CTM. Manual tape mounts, kicking the hell out the 3800 printers or 3600 bursters. Beer under the floor, porn and tv in the lounge. Good old days!
Yep, it can run Linux natively or over z/VM with the IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux) special processor. HiperSockets is a cool feature of Linux on zSeries. It creates virtual TCP/IP memory-to-memory network connections within the hardware.
I came to work for a major brokerage firm in 1989 as a Tape Pool Operator. Basically staring at a monitor and writing down tape volsers, looking them up to see if they were in the tape library and if there was more than one. Then I went to work in the Tape Library. I am still with the company but they now have VSM by STK. Not fun anymore.
Prior to getting UCC-1 (CA-1 today), we logged all our tapes on run sheets. (That's why we needed the pencil sharpener!) The librarians used the run sheets to pull tapes for the next day and set them out on carts to be ready for us when jobs called them in. Before UCC-1 it was oh SO important to pull out the write ring to prevent a non-scratch tape from being written over! With UCC-1, we no longer had to do that, or even log the tapes. That, it seems, was the beginning of the end of the fun.
We used to have to log all data set contention besides messaging the user to release the data sets. No way you could do all that manual stuff now at big companies! AF/Operator took away all of that.
Thanks very much GrnScrn. Much appreciated. I $HASP'ed IBM 3081, IBM 3084 on good old MVS. Now and then I still get my hands on older mainframes, if anybody is interested. What we found in those raised floors.. unbelievable. Sysabend all
Excellent thanks for this! I am currently working as a SysProg on IBM System Z (Mainframe) as well System P (AIX Midrange). The mainframe still has my heart though and these old photos made me smile (especially the haircuts!). If it ain`t covered in flashing lights then it ain`t really a computer...and now to the Bat Cave!
It was fun then, and it still is today, even though the technology has changed drastically. Even better, the mainframe's long standing characteristics of reliability, scalability, integrity, security and resource management through virtualization, are going to inform and play a role in the revolution's next wave. (No, I don't work for IBM.)
This is fairly representative of the time. SPNB was a large bank (over 600 branches in Calif). At its peak there were 32 operators on a shift, 3 shifts a day, covering 6 days a week, running as many as 12 3211s, 5 or 6 3800s, 5 mainframes (3 - 3081s and 2 - 3033s), somewhere around 50 tape drives, about 400 3350s, fewer 3380s and 8380s (STC equivalents), not many 2305s, pairs of 3505s and 3525s (card punch), and miles of cable under the raised floor tying it all together!
I have an old tape cleaner cartridge with barcode attached. My pops works with mainframes and he worked with IBM in the 1980s as well. He got me exposed to computers. I was first introduced to the computer tape silo which was amazing to me and still amazes me of how many cartridges that thing holds!
Used to be, before silo and tape cartridges, what mattered was how many tapes you could carry on your arms as you ran from one drive to the next mounting and dismounting them. I suppose that's one reason why the person hanging tapes was usually referred to as a "tape ape". Then again, maybe it was just the alliteration...
Yeah those were the days. It intrested me when I actually walked inside a StorageTek? silo when I was about 8 years old or so. Now my pops works for Pacific Gas and Electric Company here in California for their computer operations/data center. I haven't seen their place yet on the inside but he said they do have 3 IBM Z-series mainframes.
Yes, tape is still around. They no longer it quote it in BPI, but in total storage per cartridge. However it's still 1/2" wide...
Tape is still used for backup and archival storage, but these days system availability demands have driven data centers to find ways to accomplish these processes faster. This can mean using virtual tape on the front end, and offloading to a physical tape later, or dispensing with tape altogether and backing up directly to a remote site.
Ah, the memories! I started with this setup in 1985. At first it was all reel to reel, then 6 months after I started work, the cartridge drives were installed. The big advantage was that once the cartridges were inserted in the slot, the tape was automatically connected to the take-up reel requiring no manual intervention. High-tech! Yeehah! Nowdays, robot arms load/unload the cartridges in 'silo' shaped compartments.
Oh wow. What memories. My mom worked in an IBM shop for years and would drag me into work with her on weekends. I was there for the upgrade of a 4341 to a 4381, then to a 3090. I think they're running a Z-series to this day. In violation of all sorts of company policy, she would let me pull and mount 9-track tapes when jobs called for them. The vacuum sound and the sliding door were hours of amusement for a 7-year-old.
sm1else 1 month ago 2
@sm1else Not to mention all the interesting sounds that they made. The long brrrrrrrrrrrr of a checkpoint being written, or the soft but steady bup, bup, buping of tape logging. You could always tell when something was wrong because the noises either stopped or suddenly all the tapes were rewinding and the tape doors snapping open!
GrnScrn 1 month ago
Err... can it run crysis?
fishcomputer33 2 months ago
Wow! What memories. Some things have changed while others not so much. The IBM 3800 printers were real work horses. I have seen and worked with newer faster printers, but argueably faster in that those printers required more PMs and experienced more falures/repairs. As a young operator I was told to always remember, "no ringy no writey", with regards to the tape reels. I still remember... too funny.
TealFog 2 months ago
Every time i see this old stuff i get this weird feeling like i wish i lived in those old times
people there seems to be really happy
TheSyriaFreedom2011 2 months ago
Thanks for the memories:) We had some of this equipment at GSFC/NASA. We also had the IBM 360 series. I forgot about those write rings! Thanks for posting!
1961tinkerbell 3 months ago
Geezzee,the old days never looked so good,that 3800 printer brings back alot of good times at Magraw Hill in 1982.
gio048 6 months ago
This would have made such a cool video if the audio were replaced with a nice badass chiptune instead of that horrendous march.
Xezlec 6 months ago
I'm starting to feel old.
scaleop4 6 months ago
Long shot here, but does anyone happen to have IBM 3290 Display Station equipment they would be willing to sell? The 3290 came with a plasma screen monitor and either a 122 or 104 key keyboard.
xblueshadowX 7 months ago
I remember having to get some 3420 tape units made for an Indian customer after they had gone out of production. They loved the 3480 cartridges but had a huge seismological data library on tape reels.
lasiorhinuskrefftii2 7 months ago
Amazing, totally amazing to see this.
summer20105707 7 months ago
awesome! thank you for posting. my dad worked for IBM in Kingston NY in the early 90's. I worked on WYSE terminals myself in the 90s and loved that environment. Give me a wyse and ORACLE on unix and i am a happy camper and i am only 37. Those days were amazing for REAL. I am an IT Manager now and i know things are not half as interesting anymore.
oceantrolls73 8 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
ahh the good ole days, 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 3 days on, 4 days off this week, next week, 4 days on, 3 days off. Every 3 months swap between day and night shift...ABEND ABEND ABEND....
Oddly enough, I really do miss those days...
jorgetechful 8 months ago
Thanks for uploading this :)
Norway2011 10 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
ahh the good ole days, 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 3 days on, 4 days off this week, next week, 4 days on, 3 days off. Every 3 months swap between day and night shift...ABEND ABEND ABEND....
Oddly enough, I really do miss those days.
tww56 11 months ago
ahh the good ole days, 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 3 days on, 4 days off this week, next week, 4 days on, 3 days off. Every 3 months swap between day and night shift...ABEND ABEND ABEND....
Oddly enough, I really do miss those days...
tww56 11 months ago 2
@tww56 Me too. If only we realized it then...
GrnScrn 10 months ago
@tww56 hahaah I have three on them, 1 db deadlock and 2 ftp failures :D
long live the mvs
cz040188 10 months ago
@tww56 I miss them too. We had 8 hour shifts 5 days a week. I liked 16:00 to 00:00 from Tuesday thru Saturday best. I really enjoyed mounting tapes and paper on the printers. Truly loved operating the console. So much so that I graduated to programming; and now I'm an analyst -- but I never see the computer room anymore. Anyway, they've totally changed. Miss those days a lot.
chem100 6 months ago
Anyone remember the assembler programmer's cheer?:
Shift to the left, shift to the right,
Push down, pop up,
Byte, byte, byte!
bluemax79 11 months ago
Just give me a 3270 terminal and IBM COBOL and I'll be happy as a peach.
jvolstad 11 months ago
Those are 029 card punches, not 129's...
Piddlepaddler 1 year ago
@Piddlepaddler Yes, Cannopa also pointed out the error a few months ago. I wish I could replace this video with one with corrected titles, (I also misidentified the 3880 MCCU as a GRS control unit) but I can't without losing all the posted comments, view count, etc. So I've tried to correct it by revising the comments for the video.
GrnScrn 1 year ago
IBM had "Dual Core" and "Quad Core" computing back in 1980, They called it Diatic and quadratic processing. its was offered on the 308x series. and people think multi core processing is new?? What still amazes me, is that PC manufacturers are light years behind IBM mainframe concepts. Mainframes were un-stopable. You might get a run away program, but the operator was still able to cancel it, and get rid of it. PC's can be stopped dead in their tracks by a rogue piece of software.
rty1955 1 year ago
this stuff looks amazing
so much effort into getting this behemoths running.
and all that power now fits snug in a pc
happysplinters 1 year ago
3:53 ... looks like a tough job. lol
sbalogh53 1 year ago
My first job in IT at age 21 (1997) was running the night shift on a DOS/VSE system. It was a 'small' shop, just one operator working per shift. It was a Hitachi mainframe with a good sized room for the DASD. 6 hitachi cartridge tape drives, and two IBM 'round' tape drives. There was just enough processing power to get the jobs done overnight. Had to have all the carts pulled and sequenced in order so the jobs wouldn't stop and ask for a tape, that's how tight on time it was.
smithbe40 1 year ago
I still miss those days sometimes. Taking a nap on the non-billing cycle weekends, where there's literally nothing to do but be there. Responding to the water alarm panel only to find the humidifier tray from the AC unit overflowed and leaked under the raised floor.. Having to call Xerox to fix the 50ppm laser, meanwhile alter all the jobs in the queue so that the couriers that arrive first have their output.. Telnet into the colleges AS/400 and work on that RPG program for class.
smithbe40 1 year ago
Where can I get an IBM 360 Nameplate???
Itll remind me of dad...
He worked 360 / 370 envirnment. i went on to work 370 4331 3080 3090
Im only 41...
RuggedBrotha 1 year ago
@RuggedBrotha My guess is that 360 nameplates are hard to find. Best bet, eBay...
GrnScrn 1 year ago
@RuggedBrotha I have the "Emergency Pull" knob from the faceplate of an IBM-360-30. I would LOVE to get the full face panel from the 360-30. I used to write application in assembler for years! I wrote for the BPS, TOS, and DOS 26.2 them later for DOS/VSE systems. Since I knew both COBOL (both 'D' and ANSI versions) and Assembler, I used to read core dumps, and re-write the code into COBOL when the idiots lost the source code for several programs.
rty1955 1 year ago
@RuggedBrotha The 4300 series were meant to run DOS. VM (yes folks VM is NOTHING new) and MVC ran like dogs on those machines, DOS used the HADWARE DAT (Much faster) MVS & VM relied on a software routine for DAT.
rty1955 1 year ago
And this is when computers actually looked nice.
raymangold22 2 months ago
Funny how I am still making money off a idea I had just after transitioning from OS/MVT to MVS back in 1984. It is very obvious but can't tell because it gets me 20K a shot as a base. Getting ready to start offering a new service for 30K but will save a small zOS shop 60K an year. I am avaliable for an expenses only assessment.
Robbob9933 1 year ago
21century now. how lucky.
1DeZeMaNakaJimBO1 1 year ago
Laser printers were HUGE back then!!!
gbowne1 1 year ago
1980s? More like the 1970s. In the 1980s micro-processor architectures like the MC68000 were already around, high density optical and hard disk technology was slowly becoming more and more the standard.
eMGeeGFX 1 year ago
@eMGeeGFX - Hate to break it to you, but that's VERY MUCH a representative floor of an IBM-centric shop of the 1980's. There were shops going into the 90's that didn't change much from what you see here. The 3279s became 3290s (hated those) and the 3081s and 3084s became 3090 Enterprise machines. The 1657 and 3420 tapes mostly went to 3490, even though we kept a few 3425s around as late as 2000. All the bus and tag cables became fiber-channel. Believe it. I worked at a very similar shop.
diesixdie 1 year ago
I love it when people say "my laptop is more powerful then this stuff" Last mainframe I programmed on (assembler lang) was a 3033. Lets see, 25,000 users with 2,000 of them program developers all working on ONE machine. Lets see today's laptop do that! Heck ONE programmer can stop a PC dead in its tracks.
rty1955 1 year ago
@rty1955 You're comparing apples with oranges. On the other hand, when you look at raw computer power, a modern quad core laptop easily outperforms this...by far. I think you underestimate who much technology has advanced and trust, I'm an old IT guy who has worked with those beasts.
3ytc 1 year ago
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3ytc 1 year ago
zomg this song is sweet. what is it?!!?!? i love classical music
DaBossk 1 year ago
@DaBossk - If you watch the video all the way through you will be rewarded with the titles, names of the performing groups and a picture of some of the performers about 20 seconds before the end. :)
GrnScrn 1 year ago
@DaBossk, I hate to break it to you, but that isn't classical music...
eMGeeGFX 1 year ago
I remember my dad telling me how much easier computer operations are now, as compared to his days in the Navy back in 1970. (USS Compass Island, and USS Ulysses S. Grant)
Firesoar13 1 year ago
STC 3600 Big Box Tape drives on a 3800 controller anyone got a SPAR tape ?
Thanks foe posting this ,,,,,,,,,cool :-)
Ricambio1 1 year ago
@Ricambio1 SPAR tape!! I haven't thought about that in years. I still have a red card with the vacuum and pressure settings used for PMs. I still install storage stuff and I hear people complain about running fibre channel cables. Little do they know what it was like to run a 100ft bus & tag pair (Grey Away!).
ExSTCer 4 months ago
i bet these can play crysis !
Cobac 1 year ago
Just think: everything shown in this video will one day fit on something you hold in your hand.
JesusManson323 1 year ago
@JesusManson323 Already does. Other than printing and offline (eg tape) storage, an iPhone probably has the power and capacity of these old mainframes.
sbalogh53 1 year ago
@sbalogh53 The iPhone is actually more than 100.000 - 1 mill times faster than this "old" machines..
Ps3besta 1 year ago
1:35 external harddrives. lol. external because they need another room than the rest of the computer. cool stuff !!
michaelboett173 1 year ago
@michaelboett173 I remember visiting a large telco data center back in the mid 1980's. They had a huge area the size of 3-4 basketball courts dedicated to disk drives. The total capacity of the whole setup was just under a terabyte. Today you get double that in a single drive that fits in the palm of your hand. 25 years has seen an incredible increase in computer speed and capacity.
sbalogh53 1 year ago
@sbalogh53 yes of course. but these old 80's stuff looks better then this styled shit what u can by now. :) Love my c64 :)
michaelboett173 1 year ago
Some of these pictures remind me of scenes in the Tron movie... Which fits because the movie was made and released in the 80's.
SappinSentry 1 year ago
I have not seen a write protection ring (in a tape) in decades!
Great nostalgic post! Thanks!
YTM021807 1 year ago
@YTM021807 hehe... I still have a couple of the old tape reels (with write rings) in my computer memorabilia box. I also have an acoustic delay line memory module (about 1k bits) from an old computer from the 1950s!! It is in a metal case about 18" square and an inch high.
sbalogh53 1 year ago
The best thing about that era were the long coffee breaks while waiting for the CE to repair the system lol
luridplanet 1 year ago
Nice photos. I used to fix many of these types of machines as an IBM CE. BTW the card punch machines, at about 1 min in, are 029 not 129. The 029 used mechanical relays and not the solid state logic of the 129 ( which had a dial on the front to select the function) :-)
cannopa 1 year ago
@cannopa Yeah, you're right. I had just assumed we had the latest and greatest. Everything else we had seemed so up to date! ;-)
GrnScrn 1 year ago
I lioke those old computers, because they don´t hold less information than actual Systems do (and with information i don´t mean YT-Videos, HTML or oversized Excel-Sheets). So for me there is no real improvement compared to actual machines.
TheMCMXXL 1 year ago
And you thought windows vista was bad...
AylatheRaichu 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@AylatheRaichu "And you thought windows vista was bad..."
A - Vista isn't bad, it turned out to be a great OS after SP1 and after the manufacturers got of their lazy asses to write descent drivers.
B - You're comparing an operating system with a data center....not very smart
3ytc 1 year ago
Being an ex-mainframe operator (okay.ex-ICL 2900s & S39) I still have fond memories of working with the beasts. The hardware was very hardware and nothing could beat them for multi-user constant number crunching. Oh the drone noise of motors, aircon and impact printers the good old days of tape libraries and continuous paper. Yes I am oldish and proudly (some might say sadly) remember many of the ICL VME operator commands. Bring the giants back.
meridian101 1 year ago
EARLY PERSONAL COMPUTERS!
78Boza 1 year ago
If you remember working in this environment, you are OLD!!!
lafosterjr 1 year ago
@lafosterjr Actually, what really amazes me as I do research on mainframe computing is how young this industry really is. Many people who worked with 360 systems are still working, but the hand-off to the next generation needs to get on track because the retirements are coming, and there is a lot of knowledge that needs to be transfered to the next generation of mainframers.
GrnScrn 1 year ago
@GrnScrn what knowledge exactly ? COBOL or CICS ?
dargay 1 year ago
@lafosterjr 49 to be exact!!! Still in the industry...
chem100 1 year ago
@lafosterjr hahaha... I had been working on mainframes for probably 15 years by the time this video was made. I started in 1973 as a COBOL programmer on a very old Honeywell H115 system. One CPU running at 1Mhz, 16k of core memory, 4 tape drives, a printer and a card reader. This beast ran ALL of the data processing, including development and production work, for a medium sized company. It was used 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. We did not need to run it on weekends. How times have changed.
sbalogh53 1 year ago
@sbalogh53 When I started we had weekends off. It was the introduction of ATMs that made banking a 7 day a week operation for us.
GrnScrn 1 year ago
@lafosterjr
YES!!! I'm old I worked for IBM from 1966 until 1996. If IBM made it I worked on it.
jcrobso 1 year ago
great stuff. The scary thing is it doesnt seem that long ago , and I'm not THAT old.
cullyvan 1 year ago 8
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art1card 1 year ago
@art1card indians can learn and use existing technology to make money. They can't come up with anything new.
dargay 1 year ago
@art1card "I thought they were all just a bunch of rag heads living in mud huts"
SO TRUE. People need to realize that the rest of the world has evolved to and sometimes past the USA.
evilfreethinker 8 months ago
good old times
maqbeq 1 year ago
Great video. I was a service rep for most of this equipment. I particularly liked the shot of the ops with their feet up. :-)
mjwh205 1 year ago
@mjwh205 I remember going back to work after the pub late one Friday night to collect some stuff from the office. The mainframe computer operator, who was working alone on the night shift, was sitting in the middle of the computer room floor playing a violin. Boss and I saw him but he did not see us. We sneaked out so as not to embarrass him. That was in 1973. Fun days!!!
sbalogh53 1 year ago
What was a typical task done with one of these computer systems? I always see pictures of people standing around them and putting stuff in them but still have no idea what they were actually trying to achieve.
Bp1033 2 years ago
@Bp1033
So your question is basically what can you use a computer for? Is this a joke? Do you seriously have to ask what you can use a computer for?
No, I'm sorry, Facebook isn't the only thing a computer can do.
Bank administration, a pretty common thing for old computers to do.
Databases of arbitrary content, such as information on citizens kept by the government or a hospital.
On universities and in the industry in general it would be typical to run physics simulations of various kinds.
getpagesize 2 years ago
@getpagesize
Since I was born 1991 and didn't know the typical use for a Mainframe; Yes I did have to ask and I thank you for answering my question. But was it really necessary to be that condescending?
FYI I'm currently learning basic (controlling a homemade relay board threw the lpt port) and have a general dislike for social networking excluding youtube.
Bp1033 2 years ago
1980s? when was the vacume tube computer built 1960s?
AlbertInSanAntonio 2 years ago
Vacuum tube machines date from the early 40s. IBM introduced its first solid state machines in 1958. These machines are all solid state with volatile memory.
GrnScrn 2 years ago
The good old days?
Probewitch 2 years ago
@Probewitch
No, unless you want to talk about the security and necessity of computer operator jobs.
Mainframes have definitely improved in overall efficiency, capacity, and look a lot cleaner these days, but since they are also easier to operate...your operators only need to know a few simple commands, and most of the things they used to do have been replaced with automation.
i8246i 1 year ago
Funny how this all fits in a mobile phone.
CobraProductionsTV 2 years ago
@CobraProductionsTV
Actually, it can't. The amount of data being processed per second in those banks of CPUs (even back then) exceeds what a normal single desktop cpu can do today. You also have to know that these mainframes were used for long-term storage of data in a secure location...
Your phone is definitely more powerful than most computers of the 80s and 90s, but mainframes deal with a LOT of data.
i8246i 1 year ago
Ipod Ipad is less powerfull ?.
Then what is compareable ?
CobraProductionsTV 1 year ago
@CobraProductionsTV
It's the problem that a mainframe is not one single device contained in a small package, running for the sole purpose of entertainment and portability.
A mainframe is a giant network of devices that all serve the same purpose, with giant BANKS of cpus, tape drives, switches/hubs/routers/firewalls...each individual "part" of the chain in it's own enclosure, and with it's own cooling devices.
No single personal computer, game device, mobile phone, etc, can compare.
i8246i 1 year ago
I know what a mainframe is.
But NOT a single PC ?
Game device your right.
Mobile phone nope
a Supercomputer from now ?
CobraProductionsTV 1 year ago
It's slow...
CobraProductionsTV 1 year ago
@CobraProductionsTV
No, a single PC has to worry about running several other applications essential to keeping it's OS up, and all the programs that might be running with it (antivirus, antispam, IM programs, web browsers, games..)
I should have been a bit more detailed about etc, though. Yes, a supercomputer could be more powerful than a mainframe.
However, a supercomputer isn't made for the same purposes as a mainframe.
i8246i 1 year ago
True,thank you for all this information.
CobraProductionsTV 1 year ago
@CobraProductionsTV
And anything made by Apple is *never* as powerful as they want you to believe.
i8246i 1 year ago
It isn't as fast as i expected
CobraProductionsTV 1 year ago
@CobraProductionsTV
I'm sorry you got led on by another company's jib.
I got led on by Nintendo with the Wii...baaad purchase.
i8246i 1 year ago
Heh yeah,it looks to be the size of the playstation while it is the size of the controller of the playstation.
CobraProductionsTV 1 year ago
I hated working in these computer rooms. The computer room I worked in during the 1980's was kept really cold. When I sat at the teminal I would slowly roll backwards in the office chair because of the hard rubber floor tiles that would dip in the middle.
killernanobot 2 years ago
One time I put a thermometer on the floor and found the temp to be 49 degrees! But they had to push a lot of cold air to keep all that equipment within its operating specs. We had (I think) some 300 to 400 3350s. The 3380s which came later were designed to need much less cooling.
GrnScrn 2 years ago
I can hear the noise from the pictures !! Air conditioners, line printers, computers.. all making noise and we couldn't speak inside there.
lostinxlation 2 years ago
After a short time I realized just how loud the computer room was, I started bringing earplugs to work.
Pretty soon everyone was wearing them, and thanking me for the idea.
One coworker said her hearing had been great, but after a few years her hearing chart showed a huge deaf spot right at the frequency of a spinning 10" fan. No kidding!
CurtHowland 2 years ago
Oh, great memories! Those were good times with all that heavy equipment running all around me.
I'll bet a Pentium 4 quad core PC with 4 GB of ram, 1 TB of HD, and a high performance laser printer would replace most of the hardware in this video. And occupy no more space than an office desk.
Still, I'd like to go back 20 years just for a day with all this noisy stuff! They all had character and so did the people who ran them. LOL
Ryckster1 2 years ago
I wish I had a recording of the sound of it. You could always tell how the system was running by the sounds the tape drives made or how your printers were doing by their sounds, except for jams. If you weren't paying attention, you didn't know about that until the printer stopped and the cover yawned open on its own on the 3211s.
GrnScrn 2 years ago
It really was the people, and it took a LOT of people. Facilities, maintenance, dedicated buildings, and it really did feel like a team, like we were all working toward keeping that machine running.
I found this while looking for that IBM commercial where the entire raised-floor area is empty, and the suit is going ballistic "Someone stole the mainframe!"
It's an environment our children will never know.
CurtHowland 2 years ago
@Ryckster1
P4 Quad? Doesn't exist, tard.
secret00agent00man 1 year ago
@secret00agent00man
So I meant P5 Quad, dim wit!
Ryckster1 5 months ago
Think of all that tape and then think about compressed data form and you have more data then you could cover in 3 life times let alone one. That.s a lot of data from mining to market to you materials that you would have never needed in the first place and say it is for your convenience. Sure; all right I'll buy that. NOT!
SKeene1956 2 years ago
Great video! thank you.
funorex 2 years ago
me recuerda viejos tiempos con el S/38, las 3203, las teminales 5251, y las unidades de disquetes de 8´´
2978534 2 years ago
This almost brings tears to my eyes. I worked my way up through the printer pool and tape library to become an MTO for MVS and IMS back in the '80's. This was at IBM in San Jose. Wow. We had those 1657s, too. Evil beasts compared to the 3420s. Vaccuum column faults aplenty with those. I went on to do batch restarts shuffling JCL. Your floor is VERY close to our own Bldg. 026 data center. We didn't have manual punches by then, though we had 3525s. We also had 3505s like yours. Thanks!
diesixdie 2 years ago 2
when isay "i wish I was born earlier" i seem to be forgetting about these beasts.
ahetza 2 years ago
I used to run an IBM 1403 printer once upon a time in a universe far away long ago!
AmericanMale1953 2 years ago
I only worked with one briefly myself. I remember it being a lot like a 3211 except that the 1403 used a carriage control tape.
GrnScrn 2 years ago
These laser printers could do over 500fpm; they were the fastest line printers in the world at the time. So fast they could print a 300-page book in under a minute.
douro20 2 years ago
good times... eventhoug i can smell the cancer-causing substances and fumes..well, guess no one had or has risk-free jobs...
BADtimmay 2 years ago
We were always told that keeping the covers closed on the printers would protect us. We did do this on the 3211s because they were so loud. The 3800s were different. You really couldn't keep up production with the covers closed. They just needed too much attention to keep running smoothly and ensure the quality of the output, which could only be observed with the cover open.
GrnScrn 2 years ago
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znetmac 2 years ago
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znetmac 2 years ago
I remember those reel tapes and one time one of the tapes feel and struck my feet. Dang it hurts. I also familiar with those old printers. Its fun operating those printers. Watch out when you are bending because they like to watch you bend over. The mvs systems are pretty cool and you have to be careful because you could shut down systems.
TheIxtlan 2 years ago
Oh man that takes me back...I worked in a mainframe shop, starting out as a tape librarian using 3480's, and then was trained on the operation of 2 3800 printers that were made when I graduated high school in 1977
DeanBearSyr 2 years ago
OMG... Been there... got the T-Shirt... That makes me feel soooo old ! Those were the days.
fronkenpoop 2 years ago
I think the closest thing to that today is a server room and the most matenence that would need to be done on those is dusting them off and restarting them.
JimTheMingebag 2 years ago
The telecommunication rooms are actually better in my opinion, they houses the routers, switch and hubs, etc dte and dsu/csu crap. the most you do in those rooms is idk program routers i.e, config terminal int fa0/0 ip address 192.168.1.65 255.255.0.0 router rip lol you get the point, : )
chucknorris687 2 years ago 2
con este video recuerdo mis tiempos de programador en RPG S/38 y AS/400
recuerdo las impresoras y las unidades de cinta, hoy en dia aqui en mexico bajo mucho este tipo de equipos por la spcs.
saludos a todos los compañeros de esta epoca, los saluda CESAR SANCHEZ.
cesarcocho 2 years ago
I remember. Good times if you were an operator and didn't make mistakes. Hell (always) if you were a programmer. I was both. I miss those days so much. I do remember rubber bands holding a few of the reel tape drives together. Fun! Fun! Fun!!!
chem100 2 years ago
we always play circus music in our datacenter
ANARCHYdashTVdotCOM 2 years ago
cool guys at 3:52!
robin173robin 2 years ago
wow, and now we are using virtual machines.
macedonian82 2 years ago
Our 3090 had a leak as well, I still remeber the operator on a ladder filling up the tank. One of the analysts saw it and asked if he would check the oil as well :-)
rtfordy 3 years ago
I still remeber throwing a ring away so the operator would not overwrite the tape. I also remeber the 3380's. We ran a 4341 and 4381 till the very late 80's, did not go to water until the 90's with a 3090
rtfordy 3 years ago
That reminds me of how an IBM CE checked the water level in our shop. We had a machine that was losing water (a 3081 I think), so the CEs had to keep adding some until the leak was found. One guy would get up on a ladder and dip his tie into the tank to check the water level, and then add more distilled water accordingly!
GrnScrn 3 years ago
Finally a use for ties in a workplace enviroment.
wrtlpfmpf 2 years ago
Excellent video! It really brings back some memories. My customer had a single 3800 printer that routinely moved 1.5M feet of paper per month. It was my favorite machine because of all the overtime it generated for me.
liberty2001 3 years ago
My pops used to work for IBM. He now works in a datacenter for a major electric company here in California. Right now we have 3 mainframes, system Z10. Used to have 6 StorageTek Powderline silos, but decommissioned one and now have a Sun SL8500 pending install. Due to its weight, the raised floor will have to be retrofitted before use.
Mmartin47 3 years ago
That reminds me of grocer (which shall remain unnamed since they're still around) that I interviewed with. They had just built a new data center, but when they tried to install the mainframe (3081 I think) they found that the ceiling was too 'low' for it. Someone had forgotten to figure in the height of the raised floor...
GrnScrn 3 years ago
I absolutely could not remember the correct name for this device when I was putting the slide show together, but I kept it in because I was always amused by the batteries someone had set on it (and hoping someone WOULD know!) Yes, that's it, a 3088 Multisystem Channel Communication Unit (MCCU). Hope I have this right now. It connected our 5th CPU, a 3081 running VM/XA for R&D, to the rest of the world which at that time, 1983, consisted of 2 3033s and 2 other 3081s. Thanks for the memory jog!
GrnScrn 3 years ago
More is coming back! CTCAs weren't needed on 308x (& later) as they were defined as such in IOCDS. I only ever had one account that had them, luckily they never went wrong. Channnel switching boxes (3814?) were a completely different kettle of fish & were quite common in IBM suites, they had hundreds of cables going in & out of them !!!!
twobarrows 3 years ago
We had one or two 3814s in our shop, but the 2914s, of which we had several, with their manual rotary dials (pull it out, rotate, push it back in) and push pins that completed the circuit, were my favorites. Sadly, I don't seem to have any pictures of them.
GrnScrn 3 years ago
The IBM Education Centre in UK had loads of 2914s, and down the road IBM Greenford had loads of 3814s. Great fun cabling these beasts:-)
twobarrows 3 years ago
The GRS Control Unit was a Channel to Channel adaptor, device type was something like 2088 if my memory serves me correctly.
twobarrows 3 years ago
Reminds me of the days of manual batch operations, calling in jobs one by one, checking them off as completed and calling in the next job. Long before CA7/11 or CTM. Manual tape mounts, kicking the hell out the 3800 printers or 3600 bursters. Beer under the floor, porn and tv in the lounge. Good old days!
dougat 3 years ago
Yes, but can it run linux?
nat1192 3 years ago
Yep, it can run Linux natively or over z/VM with the IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux) special processor. HiperSockets is a cool feature of Linux on zSeries. It creates virtual TCP/IP memory-to-memory network connections within the hardware.
GrnScrn 3 years ago
Mainframes are not dead!
darijo203 3 years ago
I wish i worked there.
cutebikerwannabe 3 years ago
Thanks for posting this. Very nostalgic of my time at GTE.
jtel 3 years ago
Oh, the dear old 3278. Those where the days when one did one thing at the time - before 3279 with "dual-logic".
Thanks a lot for sharing! This is true nostalgia! (And I suddenly feel ancient ;-) remembering most of these HW. However, I was born Blue.)
domramalaja 3 years ago
Love the circus music as well as the long hair and beards! Reminds me of the mainframe computer room at Bell-Northern Research in 1981!
spinoza1111 3 years ago
I came to work for a major brokerage firm in 1989 as a Tape Pool Operator. Basically staring at a monitor and writing down tape volsers, looking them up to see if they were in the tape library and if there was more than one. Then I went to work in the Tape Library. I am still with the company but they now have VSM by STK. Not fun anymore.
adelgado75 3 years ago
Prior to getting UCC-1 (CA-1 today), we logged all our tapes on run sheets. (That's why we needed the pencil sharpener!) The librarians used the run sheets to pull tapes for the next day and set them out on carts to be ready for us when jobs called them in. Before UCC-1 it was oh SO important to pull out the write ring to prevent a non-scratch tape from being written over! With UCC-1, we no longer had to do that, or even log the tapes. That, it seems, was the beginning of the end of the fun.
GrnScrn 3 years ago
We used to have to log all data set contention besides messaging the user to release the data sets. No way you could do all that manual stuff now at big companies! AF/Operator took away all of that.
dougat 3 years ago
MAINFRAMES!
Interesting stuff though, seriously.
gthreek 3 years ago
Thanks very much GrnScrn. Much appreciated. I $HASP'ed IBM 3081, IBM 3084 on good old MVS. Now and then I still get my hands on older mainframes, if anybody is interested. What we found in those raised floors.. unbelievable. Sysabend all
nopartyplease 3 years ago
Excellent thanks for this! I am currently working as a SysProg on IBM System Z (Mainframe) as well System P (AIX Midrange). The mainframe still has my heart though and these old photos made me smile (especially the haircuts!). If it ain`t covered in flashing lights then it ain`t really a computer...and now to the Bat Cave!
AndyFox390 3 years ago
I worked at Computer Consoles in Rochester from 83 to 85. This video brought back many memories. Thanks!
andreaandjohn 3 years ago
amazing that this technology spawned a computer revolution, it seems so antiquated now
RockTheHouse4 3 years ago
It was fun then, and it still is today, even though the technology has changed drastically. Even better, the mainframe's long standing characteristics of reliability, scalability, integrity, security and resource management through virtualization, are going to inform and play a role in the revolution's next wave. (No, I don't work for IBM.)
GrnScrn 3 years ago
COOL.thanks for uploading those 80s computer video.i really enjoy
gck86 3 years ago
Ah, man just realized that my comments went haywire!
xX2142Xx 3 years ago
Fixed it! :)
GrnScrn 3 years ago
wow!
xX2142Xx 3 years ago
What happened to Storagetek drives? They still around as well?
xX2142Xx 3 years ago
Yes, StorageTek (or in the good ol' days, STC) was acquired by Sun in 2005, so it's "Sun StorageTek" now.
GrnScrn 3 years ago
Wow so this was it in the 80's?
xX2142Xx 3 years ago
This is fairly representative of the time. SPNB was a large bank (over 600 branches in Calif). At its peak there were 32 operators on a shift, 3 shifts a day, covering 6 days a week, running as many as 12 3211s, 5 or 6 3800s, 5 mainframes (3 - 3081s and 2 - 3033s), somewhere around 50 tape drives, about 400 3350s, fewer 3380s and 8380s (STC equivalents), not many 2305s, pairs of 3505s and 3525s (card punch), and miles of cable under the raised floor tying it all together!
GrnScrn 3 years ago
I have an old tape cleaner cartridge with barcode attached. My pops works with mainframes and he worked with IBM in the 1980s as well. He got me exposed to computers. I was first introduced to the computer tape silo which was amazing to me and still amazes me of how many cartridges that thing holds!
oOx666xOo 3 years ago
Used to be, before silo and tape cartridges, what mattered was how many tapes you could carry on your arms as you ran from one drive to the next mounting and dismounting them. I suppose that's one reason why the person hanging tapes was usually referred to as a "tape ape". Then again, maybe it was just the alliteration...
GrnScrn 3 years ago
Yeah those were the days. It intrested me when I actually walked inside a StorageTek? silo when I was about 8 years old or so. Now my pops works for Pacific Gas and Electric Company here in California for their computer operations/data center. I haven't seen their place yet on the inside but he said they do have 3 IBM Z-series mainframes.
Is tape still used today for backup purposes?
oOx666xOo 3 years ago
Yes, tape is still around. They no longer it quote it in BPI, but in total storage per cartridge. However it's still 1/2" wide...
Tape is still used for backup and archival storage, but these days system availability demands have driven data centers to find ways to accomplish these processes faster. This can mean using virtual tape on the front end, and offloading to a physical tape later, or dispensing with tape altogether and backing up directly to a remote site.
GrnScrn 3 years ago
Oh I see. I found the cartridge my Father got from his work. It's an Imation T9840- cleaning cartridge. Barcode reads CLN920U
I recently bought a tape drive off eBay. It's an HP StorageWorks internal SCSI. It's an LTO.
Tape backups/storage is something that has always got me intrest. =)
oOx666xOo 3 years ago
I bet a mainframe is needed to catalog those tapes ;)
agungk 3 years ago
Great Stuff.... Those were the days!!!
iluviyengar 3 years ago
AARGH those tape librarys I could never find the one I wanted.
ajay999999 3 years ago
Ah, the memories! I started with this setup in 1985. At first it was all reel to reel, then 6 months after I started work, the cartridge drives were installed. The big advantage was that once the cartridges were inserted in the slot, the tape was automatically connected to the take-up reel requiring no manual intervention. High-tech! Yeehah! Nowdays, robot arms load/unload the cartridges in 'silo' shaped compartments.
jeffr890 3 years ago
Try Hercules - the IBM Mainframe emulator available at Zophar's
Masta686Yamato 3 years ago