22 Sep
1998
22 Sep
'98
12:20 p.m.
At 11:28 22-09-98 +0000, Joe <rigdonj(a)intellistar.net> wrote:
Chris,
I learned to program in APL on one in 1968 or 1969. We didn't have to use
punch cards, we were THE PROGRAMMERS, the machine was turned over to us
when we walked in the door. At that time it was the only computer in
central Florida. Not bad for a kid that was still in high school!
Good Heavens! And I thought I was fortunate when my high school's
administration encouraged me to check out and play with a demonstrator
Friden desktop calculator which had a CRT display and quite a few math
function keys. This was about 1969 and I cannot recall the model of the
Friden.
Around 1979 I worked for a third party company in Virginia that
maintained 1130s and also upgraded them with third party hardware. I well
remember adding boxs with core memory made by someone else (not IBM and not
us). I think it upgraded them to a whapping 32K! One of the 1130s that I
upgraded was owned by Gallop in Princeton, NJ. They're the people that do
the Gallop polls. Another one was owned by Virginia Military Institute in
Lexington, Va.
Those machines seem to last forever, I'll bet there's still some of them
in use!
Yeah man! Where???????!!!!!!! I'll rent a tent and camp out at the place
which has one until either they get tired of it or that Y2K thing obsoletes
it. W. Donzelli would be camping right next to me I think.
Seriously, that would be, in my opinion, the most excellent find! As I
mentioned, I have never heard of any around these days. They were, I
believe, not the typical mainline computers one would hear of in business
like the S/360's and S/370's. Weren't they more used in R&D and academia
because of their ability to handle number crunching not so much as
databases like a business application would?
Did they use I/O channels like I know the S/370 and my 9370 do for
printers, etc.?
Ours at the college had, in addition to the "huge" 32k of core, a
"huge"
5Mb removable hard disk, a 1403 printer and a plotter which could handle up
to 'D' or 'E' size drawings. Somewhere I still have a plot of Marilyn
Monroe in that famous nude pose found in a '53 or '54 Playboy Magazine
centerfold that the IBM CE had run to "checkout the hardware". I kinda
liked that "softwear" and he gave me the plot :-)
I notice that the venerable 1403 printers are STILL being used after all
these years. They are blazing fast and evidently quite durable (If it ain't
broke, don't fix it! Or in other words, IBM is possibly saying: "If it
still serves its purpose reliably, don't design and sell a replacement
model".)
Joe
At 09:55 AM 9/22/98 -0400, you wrote:
>At 22:33 21-09-98 +0000, Joe <rigdonj(a)intellistar.net> wrote:
>>At 09:35 PM 9/21/98 -0400, Christian Fandt wrote:
>>>
>>>Ever hear much of an IBM 1130? Any info on the web, etc. on that machine?
>>>
>>
>> Yeah, I learned to program on one. Many years later I worked on them.
>
>That's where my interest lies as this was my first exposure to computing.
>In college I learned Fortran IV/66 in 1972/73. I've always been curious
>about those machines since then. Never heard of them anymore over the past
>25 (!!) years.
>
>At least I can tell stories to the youngsters, like other "old time"
>computer folks here, about spending hours in the noisy keypunch room on an
>IBM 026 (I think) keypunch machine punching out my programs onto the
>Hollerith cards, hauling the stack of cards (without dropping the danged
>things!) over to the Computer Operator Guru to be run together in a batch
>with all the other students' Fortran and Cobol programs overnite and coming
>back the next morning to be greeted with several pages of compiler errors
>typically generated by a very simple syntax error in the early part of my
>program. No fancy-a** GUI there!! :-)
>
>That machine was "huge" by some standards then: it had 32K of core memory!
>The technical faculty at this rather small junior college was quite
>impressed.
>
>Ahhh, those were the days....
>
>Of course, I would LOVE to have one! Anybody got one laying around they
>want to get shed of?? <g!>
>
>Have any technical/interesting facts or anecdotes about the 1130 to share
>with us big iron folk Joe?
>
Thanks for the further info!
Regards, Chris
-- --
Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY USA
Member of Antique Wireless Association
URL: http://www.ggw.org/freenet/a/awa/