12 Apr
2024
12 Apr
'24
10:28 a.m.
On 4/12/24 09:45, Christian Kennedy via cctalk wrote:
On 4/12/24 05:31, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote
[snip]
Isn't that the IBM 2321 Data Cell drive?
Having one's files "photostored" at LLL was a chancy proposition. There
were bootleg programs to access every file for a user, just to keep them
from being consigned to the photostore.
--Chuck
Yes. See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2321_Data_Cell . By
the standards of the time it was an unusually high capacity storage
device, way faster than a room full of tapes and much larger than the
2311 disk drive.
While on the topic of odd IBM mass storage systems, does anyone
recall
an IBM system that used rotating carousels holding sheets of magnetic
material? The carousel would rotate to position the selected sheet into
the read/write station, where it would be moved up and down relative to
the multiple fixed heads, a weird linear riff on a fixed head disk.
LBL had one of these systems, installed in the same room as one of the
few examples of the IBM 1360 photo digital storage system. They kept a
broom next to the later in order to sweep up the photo chips when the
thing occasionally spewed them everywhere.