24 Feb
2000
24 Feb
'00
3:39 p.m.
Chuck McManis wrote:
Ahh yes, the waay cool IBM MSS system. Used a robotic arm to pull a
cylinder that was then dumped into a reader and transferred _in bulk_ to an
attached 3380 disk drive that then was treated like available DASD storage.
Extremely cool, very big, and a kick to watch!
Did this use the same sort of technology as the '70s MSS? LBL had
one attached via homespun hardware to a CDC channel controller that
was in turn attached to a 6600. It was an amazing machine, used a
robotic arm to select a rectangular container which it sucked up
and shot through a Rube Goldbergesque collection of tubes to
a reading station. It used rectangular pieces of film which were
read optically.
Standard equipment for operation of this thing was a broom, since
it had an unhappy habit of puking the film bits all over the floor
on a regular basis. It was eventually replaced by a robotic
tape library (which promptly caught fire).
--
Chris Kennedy
chris(a)mainecoon.com
http://www.mainecoon.com
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97