4 May
2016
4 May
'16
10:29 p.m.
On 05/04/2016 10:10 PM, Curious Marc wrote:
For the fun of the argument: I was privileged enough
to see Carl's
IBM 1130, and to my newbie eye, it may justifiably earn the title of
"small" computer, when compared to its brethren of the time. But it
would never occur to me to call it a mini! It's quite a biggie
computer actually. Heavy stuff, forklift or winch needed to put it
safely in the truck as I recall. Then I thought our IBM 1401 was big.
That's when more knowledgeable people pointed me to the IBM 7090. Now
that's *really* big. And then you have SAGE. Now that's huge. Or
insane, depending on your engineering point of view :-).
On the other hand, the PB250 was contained in a single 5' rack (table
model), ran off of a single 15A 120V circuit and weighed a bit over 100
lbs. I'd call it a minicomputer if it weren't for the fact that it was
brought out around 1961. 22 bit words. Up to about 16KW in the box;
magnetostrictive delay line memory, bit-serial ALU. IIRC, lotsa diodes,
but comparatively few (ca. 300-400) transistors.
--Chuck