10 Aug
2012
10 Aug
'12
4:45 p.m.
> The old "well broken in" one, not the
factory demo!
Taken out of service does not mean factory demo.
(yes, Chuck, I know this was not you saying this).
Well, maybe not. Two of my co-workers at CDC had
intimate experience
with 6600 SN/1. One fellow was fresh out of school--his first
assignment was to measure all of the twisted-pair taper-pin backplane
loops to which Seymour had attached a tag that said "TUNE". The
second fellow was a CE who had to service the thing. It apparently
had been "modified" a bit over the years so that (IIRC) the floating
divide instruction didn't give the same results as all of the other
6000s out in the field...
I understand that all of the early 6600s were in some way unique, and
it was not until maybe around number 20 when the design settled down.
--
Will