30 Oct
2006
30 Oct
'06
3:04 p.m.
There are VERY VERY few people that have such systems.
I only know of at
most a dozen in the US, and most of them do not participate in on-line
discussions. A few rairly use email.
Mainframe people also tend to be very introverted when it comes to
computers. Even on the IBM-MAIN list (a list for current IBM
mainframes), where a more than a few old timers are active, I tend to
get shooed away. Go away kid, you bother me...
> Is there a more appropriate list?
ClassicMainframes on yahoo, but it is next to dead.
Surviving systems from before 1975 are very rare
animals, esp mainframes,
since so many of them have been scrapped for precious metals.
I think for mainframes it is the machines *after* 1970 that are very
rare. They just were not saved. People had the good sense to save some
S/360s, but how many S/370s or 30xx series machines? The whole line of
20 years of IBM muscle computers is basically gone. The same is true
for the Burroughs and Univac machines of the same era. The only
mainframes of the era that did survive well are PDP-10s, and they are
pretty far from the basic definition of mainframe - they are more like
what we now call superminis.
--
Will