18 Aug
2006
18 Aug
'06
12:02 p.m.
On 8/18/2006 at 10:49 AM Billy Pettit wrote:
If you get a chance, look at the 6600 or 7600 in the
Museum. Seymour
loved
those dense wire mats - he used wire lengths to tune
his systems. If you
worked on one of his machines, you spent a significant part of your
working
hours buried in wire up to your forearms.
It was very convenient to carry a penlight that you could hold in your
mouth while digging through the maze with both hands. It was pretty
surprising how much digging the taper-pin backplanes could take without
breaking a wire.
Unlike wire-wrap backplanes, wire lengths in these backplanes sometimes
mattered a lot. A friend of mine said his first job with CDC was taking
one of Seymour's machines and measuring the loops of wire to which were
attached a tag with the word "TUNE" written on it.
Cheers,
Chuck