7 May
2015
7 May
'15
7:11 p.m.
On 05/07/2015 02:15 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 05/07/2015 11:56 AM, Robert Ferguson wrote:
Small 360's at least had integrated channels, but you still
needed control units AS WELL as the peripherals.
It ends up being a fair number of boxes to just get even a
360/30 to do any reasonable bit of work. Some of the unit
record control units could live in shared boxes. But, a
reasonable system would need a unit record controller, a
tape controller and a disk controller, as well as the card
machine, tape drives and disk drives.
The 360/65 had no integrated channels, IIRC, so you needed
to have at least a couple channel boxes in addition to the
CPU and control units. Ended up being a forest of blue
boxes. And, the wiring under the floor was totally
unbelievable!
Jon
Is there a reliable estimate of the number of
extant
relatively complete and/or actually working System/360
machines? A registry, perhaps?
I would find that to be a very interesting data point.
I'd be interested also, in that a simple 360 CPU is
essentially useless. You need at least a minimum
collection of working peripherals to be able to do
anything at all.
--Chuck