local demolition of SAGE building

Chuck> At 02:15 PM 7/19/2005 -0400, you wrote: Chuck> I'm following the links from radomes.org and reading with Chuck> interest about SAGE. At mitre.org it says: Chuck> -When complete, the AN/FSQ-7 weighed 250 tons, and required a Chuck> 3,000kW -power supply and over 49,000 vacuum tubes. When SAGE Chuck> became fully -operational, it relied on 24 AN/FSQ-7s; they Chuck> remained in service -until the Air Force ended the SAGE Chuck> program in 1983. Chuck> Is this TRUE? Did they actually use vacuum tube computers up Chuck> untill 1983? Sounds right. I remember reading about this. It makes perfect sense. It's a critical application, and it has been running reliably on that hardware. It makes sense to continue running the hardware rather than deal with the cost and risk of porting it to new, unproven, technology. Another consideration: that machine had an amazing I/O bandwidth, especially considering its age. It would not have been easy to replace it in 1975. Finally -- what abort porting all the software? I assume it was in assembler. paul