10 Apr
2006
10 Apr
'06
11:51 a.m.
Richard wrote:
Hey, I was just skimming Knuth's Art of Computer
Programming chapter
where he talks about external sorting.
tape sorts make IBM 3420's make the strangest noises you might ever hope
to hear
out of a drive. Most of the action is not visible, but is in very high
frequency vibrations
in the vacuum columns, and some unusual motion in the tape loops in the
columns.
The 3420s can do 200ips forward or reverse reading, which suit them
quite well
for sorting. The tape sorts were faster than the dasd sorts at the time
I saw one
run in the late 80's on systems with 3380 drives, for large data sets.
There was a 3420 and 3803 for sale in an Ebay auction mentioned in another
thread. There is a lot of IBM stuff for sale from vendor "retrosoft" if
anyone
wants to look.
Jim