IBM 7074 and then some: "Systems we love" conference

ben bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca
Wed Jan 25 15:37:39 CST 2017


On 1/25/2017 11:55 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 01/25/2017 09:39 AM, Jon Elson wrote:
>
>> Well, of course.  If you look at the design of some of the last gasps
>> of the tube generation like the Bendix G15, you will see what
>> incredible hoops they had to jump through to make a viable product.
>> Or, look at SAGE, which filled an enormous building with walls of
>> tube-encrusted cabinets.  Transistors and core memory really changed
>> the landscape completely.  On the other hand, computers like the LINC
>> were quite useful with a really modest number of transistors,
>> certainly no more than 1000 or so, while the 7070 used 30,000!
>
> Try, say, the PB-250, with 400 transistors; a 22 bit machine.  There was
> a healthy mistrust of early transistors.  Witness the one-transistor
> DTMF encoder used on early Touch-Tone phones or the very low transistor
> count in the early Dataphones.
>
> Nowadays, of course, we think of a million transistors as being modest.

What ever happened to computrons?

> --Chuck
>
Ben.





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