16 Sep
2013
16 Sep
'13
10:25 p.m.
Does anyone know what systems these types of cartridges were used in?
I have 10 of these, and they are all filled with IBM 8" Floppies as shown.
I am curious, because they don't go to anything that came in the large lot
of items I got last year, and have been a mystery since. I doubt they are
useful for anything, but are pretty neat.
Garrett Meiers
www.linkedin.com/in/theunixguy
16 Sep
16 Sep
11:30 p.m.
I forgot the link...
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ypu3bfafp3yi215/ZoXD3MnTTL
Thanks,
Garrett Meiers
www.linkedin.com/in/theunixguy
On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 9:25 PM, Garrett Meiers <me at garrettmeiers.com>wrote:
Does anyone know what systems these types of
cartridges were used in?
I have 10 of these, and they are all filled with IBM 8" Floppies as shown.
I am curious, because they don't go to anything that came in the large lot
of items I got last year, and have been a mystery since. I doubt they are
useful for anything, but are pretty neat.
Garrett Meiers
www.linkedin.com/in/theunixguy
11:40 p.m.
On 09/16/2013 07:25 PM, Garrett Meiers wrote:
Does anyone know what systems these types of
cartridges were used in?
I have 10 of these, and they are all filled with IBM 8" Floppies as shown.
I am curious, because they don't go to anything that came in the large lot
of items I got last year, and have been a mystery since. I doubt they are
useful for anything, but are pretty neat.
Garrett Meiers
www.linkedin.com/in/theunixguy
System/34 and System/36. Great for the RPG II-minded, not so much a
general-purpose system. Predecessor to the AS/400.
--Chuck
17 Sep
17 Sep
1:35 a.m.
The disk cartridges were used in System/38 also.
On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 9:40 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
System/34 and System/36. Great for the RPG II-minded,
not so much a
general-purpose system. Predecessor to the AS/400.
While it's quite possible that they may have seen more use for RPG-II and
later, they were definitely general-purpose and were also used for COBOL
and Fortran. IBM's System/360 and /370, though quite successful, did not
actually span the entire range of performance that they originally intended
(360 Model 20 notwithstanding), so they had to introduce various non-360
systems at the low end to fill the gap, and the various System/3x systems
were a major part of that.
The System/36 was in part a predecessor of the AS/400, but far more of its
heritage came from System/38, which was much different than the other
System/3x.
2:37 a.m.
On 09/16/2013 10:35 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
While it's quite possible that they may have seen more use for RPG-II and
later, they were definitely general-purpose and were also used for COBOL
and Fortran.
The ones that I've seen have been strictly data--no programs, just lots
and lots of EBCDIC data.
Probably used by many installations as backup only.
--Chuck
9:15 a.m.
Great information everyone -- thank you!
I only looked at two of them, and they only had blank disks in them (well,
disks with no labels). I wouldn't expect there to be labels on them in
any case if they were used for data. I can check the other 8 and make
sure there are no masters in them. I didn't try dumping the disks to see
if there is any data on them.
There are a couple people interested purchasing these. I can bring them
to VCFMW, and we can haggle/trade, or whatever. I might keep two of them
because they are neat. If you are not going to VCF, and want to buy some,
shoot me an e-mail with an offer.
Garrett Meiers
www.linkedin.com/in/theunixguy
On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 1:37 AM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 09/16/2013 10:35 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
While it's quite possible that they may have seen more use for RPG-II and
later, they were definitely general-purpose and were also used for COBOL
and Fortran.
The ones that I've seen have been strictly data--no programs, just lots
and lots of EBCDIC data.
Probably used by many installations as backup only.
--Chuck
7:24 p.m.
On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 12:37 AM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
I've dealt with some companies that only had a System/3x, and others that
also had mainframes. In the latter group, I never heard of any plans to use
the System/3x as a backup for any of the mainframe workload, though I
suppose in some circumstances that might have been possible. One company
ran some of their COBOL and Fortran programs on their local System/36
because they got shorter turnaround time running them locally than by
submitting RJE jobs to the remote mainframe. They used RJE for the jobs
that were too large or too computationally intensive for the System/36. I
think they also did some of their COBOL development on the System/36 for
programs eventually intended to run on the System/370, though obviously you
can't do that if the COBOL program will use mainframe facilities
unavailable on the System/36.
Eric
On 09/16/2013 10:35 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean. In addition to RPG, IBM sold or leased COBOL
and Fortran compilers for the machines, and customers did in fact use
them. The data was almost always in EBCDIC, but so what? AFAIK, the only
common programming language that mandated any particular pre-Unicode
character set was Ada 83, for the predefined CHARACTER type and the ASCII
package in the standard environment, but nevertheless it was able to deal
with other character sets including EBCDIC, and AFAIK there wasn't an Ada
compiler for any System/3x.
Probably used by many installations as backup only.
While it's quite possible that they may have seen more use for RPG-II and
later, they were definitely general-purpose and were also used for COBOL
and Fortran.
The ones that I've seen have been strictly data--no programs, just lots
and lots of EBCDIC data.
8:30 p.m.
On 09/17/2013 04:24 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
I've dealt with some companies that only had a
System/3x, and others that
also had mainframes. In the latter group, I never heard of any plans to use
the System/3x as a backup for any of the mainframe workload, though I
suppose in some circumstances that might have been possible. One company
ran some of their COBOL and Fortran programs on their local System/36
because they got shorter turnaround time running them locally than by
submitting RJE jobs to the remote mainframe. They used RJE for the jobs
that were too large or too computationally intensive for the System/36. I
think they also did some of their COBOL development on the System/36 for
programs eventually intended to run on the System/370, though obviously you
can't do that if the COBOL program will use mainframe facilities
unavailable on the System/36.
What I've seen have been inventory databases, etc, some specifically
labeled as backup. No programs.
More than likely, these were for standalone System/36 installations.
--Chuck
7:37 p.m.
The ones that I've seen have been strictly
data--no programs, just lots and
lots of EBCDIC data.
Probably used by many installations as backup only.
Those floppy cartridge systems were used as a way to get daily data
onto the S/3x machines. In the mid-1970s, 029s and 129 Keypunches were
falling to the wayside for data entry, replaced by the 3741 Data
Stations. When the floppy on a 3741 became full, the operator would
submit the floppy and start on the next. The submitted floppies were
gathered, put into the cartridges, and given to the S/3x machines to
chomp on.
--
Will
18 Sep
18 Sep
1:48 a.m.
On 9/16/13 8:40 PM, "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 09/16/2013 07:25 PM, Garrett Meiers wrote:
Yes, I remember working as an operator on a S/36 back in about 1979-80
that was upgraded to these. One of my favorite memories: an IBM FE shows
up in his white shirt and tie and, after working on the machine for a few
hours to install the upgrade, he was wearing a BLACK shirt. I learned
Does anyone know what systems these types of
cartridges were used in?
I have 10 of these, and they are all filled with IBM 8" Floppies as
shown.
I am curious, because they don't go to anything that came in the
large lot
of items I got last year, and have been a mystery since. I doubt they
are
useful for anything, but are pretty neat.
Garrett Meiers
www.linkedin.com/in/theunixguy
System/34 and System/36. Great for the RPG II-minded, not so much a
general-purpose system. Predecessor to the AS/400.
--Chuck
from him the trick of stuffing your tie in your breast
pocket to keep it
out of the works. Oh, and I had to help him finish the install.
-- Ian
17 Sep
17 Sep
2:21 a.m.
They was also a drive for the Series/1 that could take these. Like the S/36
etc. It had a toast rack thing that took three disks then space for two of
those boxes.
Dave
G4UGM
On 17 Sep 2013 03:36, "Garrett Meiers" <me at garrettmeiers.com> wrote:
Does anyone know what systems these types of
cartridges were used in?
I have 10 of these, and they are all filled with IBM 8" Floppies as shown.
I am curious, because they don't go to anything that came in the large lot
of items I got last year, and have been a mystery since. I doubt they are
useful for anything, but are pretty neat.
Garrett Meiers
www.linkedin.com/in/theunixguy
4:49 a.m.
Garrett, it looks like the two cartridges missing from my system 34. Are
you interested in selling them?
Best regards
Jacob Lindberg
Den 17 sep 2013 04:36 skrev "Garrett Meiers" <me at garrettmeiers.com>:
Does anyone know what systems these types of
cartridges were used in?
I have 10 of these, and they are all filled with IBM 8" Floppies as shown.
I am curious, because they don't go to anything that came in the large lot
of items I got last year, and have been a mystery since. I doubt they are
useful for anything, but are pretty neat.
Garrett Meiers
www.linkedin.com/in/theunixguy
4032
days inactive
4033
days old
11 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
cclist＠sydex.com -
dave.g4ugm＠gmail.com -
IanK＠LivingComputerMuseum.org -
lindberg.jacob＠gmail.com -
me＠GarrettMeiers.com -
spacewar＠gmail.com -
wdonzelli＠gmail.com