Full immersion emulation

On 2017-03-01 3:14 PM, Charles Anthony via cctalk wrote: They are all mechanical and stood up remarkably well to hammering away day and night printing out the console log, considering what they are, I would hardly think unreliable fits. Most of the problems where due to neglect or poor maintenance. The norm was to do a little as possible plus customers where often reluctant to give up the console for maintenance, so worm parts that should have been replaced often never did. Quite often the center bears where worn out which causes the cycle shaft to wobble a little and then you start fudging the adjustments to compensate and it just gets worse from there, but replacing the center bearing is a big job so most people avoided it. This was true of other selectric terminals as well. The OP guys ( fixed the office selectrics) would be horrified when they saw the condition of some of these machines. The last 1052 I saw operating the space cam was so worn out that it wobbled, but it still worked. The original selectric I/O was just a standard office selectric with contacts and solenoids hung off it to make it work as a terminal, or in the case of the 1052 a printer ( the keyboard in a 1052 is a keypunch keyboard mechanism). They where never designed to hammer away at the full speed 15.5 cps for hours on end. Later IBM came out with the I/O 2 which was designed from the ground up to be used as a I/O device and was much sturdier, but they came along too late for system consoles, by then consoles where CRTs and the console printer was a wire matrix printer. Paul.