24 Jul
2005
24 Jul
'05
3:56 a.m.
On Sat, 2005-07-23 at 23:59 -0400, William Donzelli wrote:
And as found with Colossus, it's power cycling that really kills them,
so keep that to a minimum and they tend to last pretty well. I'll have
to ask what the failure rate was with the original Colossus machines,
also it's possible that never got documented anywhere (at least anywhere
that isn't still classified)
Various
SAGE histories have reported "technicians running up and down
the aisles pushing shopping carts full of tubes". I don't know about
other air divisions, but I never saw it.
Perhaps when the systems were first installed - tube computers went thru
lots of tube during the first few months of life. Once the break in period
was finished, and all the weak tubes were weeded out, tube machines are
reasonably reliable. Most of the tubes in my SAGE junk appear to be
originals.