4 Feb
2016
4 Feb
'16
8:48 p.m.
I'm trying to identify a system which appeared in "The Killer Elite"
(1975), with a room full of tape drives and a couple of terminals:
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-1.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-2.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-6.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-9.png
The drives appear to be IBM 3420s, but with an additional box on top,
labeled "SMS". The system itself doesn't appear in any of the shots.
Some sort of IBM 370, perhaps?
Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/
4 Feb
4 Feb
9:56 p.m.
On 02/04/2016 07:48 PM, Mike Loewen wrote:
I'm trying to identify a system which appeared in "The
Killer Elite" (1975), with a room full of tape drives and
a couple of terminals:
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-1.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-2.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-6.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-9.png
The drives appear to be IBM 3420s, but with an
additional box on top, labeled "SMS". The system itself
doesn't appear in any of the shots. Some sort of IBM 370,
perhaps?
I'm thinking they might be 2420's. They have a "9" label on
the head cover. This is to distinguish 9-track from 7-track
drives, I don't think they put those labels on 3420 drives.
The drive addresses are 5xx, meaning they are attached to
channel 5 on the CPU. That is not impossible on a 360, but
few 360's could handle that many channels. The cluster of
3270's also suggests a 370 system, although they certainly
could be used on 360's.
The SMS boxes displayed the volume label of the tape to
mount. Mounting the wrong tape was a BIG problem in large
systems, so a number of vendors came up with these sorts of
schemes to try to reduce those errors.
Jon
9:57 p.m.
Some models of 3420s were 7 track.
--
Will
On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 9:56 PM, Jon Elson <elson at pico-systems.com> wrote:
On 02/04/2016 07:48 PM, Mike Loewen wrote:
I'm trying to identify a system which appeared in "The Killer Elite"
(1975), with a room full of tape drives and a couple of terminals:
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-1.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-2.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-6.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-9.png
The drives appear to be IBM 3420s, but with an additional box on top,
labeled "SMS". The system itself doesn't appear in any of the shots. Some
sort of IBM 370, perhaps?
I'm thinking they might be 2420's. They have a "9" label on the
head cover.
This is to distinguish 9-track from 7-track drives, I don't think they put
those labels on 3420 drives.
The drive addresses are 5xx, meaning they are attached to channel 5 on the
CPU. That is not impossible on a 360, but few 360's could handle that many
channels. The cluster of 3270's also suggests a 370 system, although they
certainly could be used on 360's.
The SMS boxes displayed the volume label of the tape to mount. Mounting the
wrong tape was a BIG problem in large systems, so a number of vendors came
up with these sorts of schemes to try to reduce those errors.
Jon 
5 Feb
5 Feb
12:22 a.m.
On 02/04/2016 08:25 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
On 02/04/2016 08:57 PM, William Donzelli wrote:
Some 6-bit systems hung around for a very long time. E.g. CDC CYBER
170/180. 7-track drives for those never really went out of fashion
until well into the 1980s.
Here's a 1981 CW article that specifically mentions the CDC 667 in the
drive inventory of McDonnell Douglas automation.DP center:
http://bit.ly/23MFZOb
--Chuck
Some models of 3420s were 7 track.
Yes, I suppose there was a need in some installations to handle old,
archival tapes. But, I certainly never saw one. Most sites got rid
of their 7-tk stuff as soon as they could.
12:30 a.m.
On 02/04/2016 11:22 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 02/04/2016 08:25 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
I was there on a tour, a few years earlier. I think they
still had the model 195 at the time.
A vast facility filled with big blue boxes. The basement
had so many 415 Hz UPS's that you had to stick your fingers
in your ears.
Jon
On 02/04/2016 08:57 PM, William Donzelli wrote:
Some 6-bit systems hung around for a very long time. E.g.
CDC CYBER 170/180. 7-track drives for those never really
went out of fashion until well into the 1980s.
Here's a 1981 CW article that specifically mentions the
CDC 667 in the drive inventory of McDonnell Douglas
automation.DP center:
http://bit.ly/23MFZOb
Some models of 3420s were 7 track.
Yes, I suppose there was a need in some installations to
handle old,
archival tapes. But, I certainly never saw one. Most
sites got rid
of their 7-tk stuff as soon as they could. 
1:16 a.m.
On 2/4/2016 9:30 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
I was there on a tour, a few years earlier. I think
they still had
the model 195 at the time.
A vast facility filled with big blue boxes.
They had two 195's at McAuto in
STL. We may have gone on the same tour,
probably in 72 or so. I am not sure if it was organized by the ACM in
Rolla or if you went at a later time.
A later tour of the new facility had made arrangements for similar real
estate to the original building, but the main computer room had a small
cluster of systems in the middle of a big empty room which was quite
amusing. And we were in an observation gallery which was actually
converted raised floor area they converted to office use after the
original design was well under way. Almost 1/2 of the space was used
for offices but was originally going to be computer floor.
Anyway, if this was a facility like the Mc Auto facility we toured there
was a processor and tape floor, DASD on the next floor down, and the
basement had systems with printers and power. The tape library and cpu
systems was on the top main floor.
This could have been in such a facility. Mc Auto was designed to be
vertical so the channel cables could be dropped to storage directors on
the floor below from systems above.
The printing was done with 360/40's and the like, and was for people who
needed local printing (and they had a lot of it).
thanks
Jim
12:17 p.m.
On 02/05/2016 12:16 AM, Jim Stephens wrote:
On 2/4/2016 9:30 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
Yes, it quite possibly COULD have been when I was at Rolla.
Jon
I was there on a tour, a few years earlier. I
think they
still had the model 195 at the time.
A vast facility filled with big blue boxes.
They had two 195's at McAuto in
STL. We may have gone on
the same tour, probably in 72 or so. I am not sure if it
was organized by the ACM in Rolla or if you went at a
later time.
1:10 a.m.
On 2/4/2016 6:56 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
On 02/04/2016 07:48 PM, Mike Loewen wrote:
The 3270's would be tape operator consoles as well. They could respond
to tape mount messages as needed on those consoles. The traffic at some
point could be configured to be restricted to tape mounts.
Later tape libraries had a couple of 3270 ports connected and would read
the mount requests, find the tape mount it and the reply to the mount
message. This may be in the era where they had consoles there and had
to respond to the tape mounts manually, not sure.
I'm trying to identify a system which appeared in "The Killer
Elite" (1975), with a room full of tape drives and a couple of
terminals:
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-1.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-2.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-6.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-9.png
The drives appear to be IBM 3420s, but with an additional box on
top, labeled "SMS". The system itself doesn't appear in any of the
shots. Some sort of IBM 370, perhaps?
I'm thinking they might be 2420's. They have a "9" label on the
head
cover. This is to distinguish 9-track from 7-track drives, I don't
think they put those labels on 3420 drives.
The drive addresses are 5xx, meaning they are attached to channel 5 on
the CPU. That is not impossible on a 360, but few 360's could handle
that many channels. The cluster of 3270's also suggests a 370 system,
although they certainly could be used on 360's.
The SMS boxes displayed the volume label of the tape to mount.
Mounting the wrong tape was a BIG problem in large systems, so a
number of vendors came up with these sorts of schemes to try to reduce
those errors.
Jon
12:38 a.m.
On 2016-Feb-04, at 5:48 PM, Mike Loewen wrote:
I'm trying to identify a system which appeared
in "The Killer Elite" (1975), with a room full of tape drives and a couple of
terminals:
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-1.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-2.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-6.png
http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-9.png
The drives appear to be IBM 3420s, but with an additional box on top, labeled
"SMS". The system itself doesn't appear in any of the shots. Some sort of
IBM 370, perhaps?
Funny, I've been doing a bit of a Peckinpah retrospective and watched that two nights
ago.
Noticed the computer equipment of course but concluded about as much as you did: IBM
drives and 3270-ish terminals, hence IBM shop; no CPU visible but 370 era.
11:16 a.m.
On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 2:48 AM, Mike Loewen <mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us> wrote:
The drives appear to be IBM 3420s, but with an additional box on top,
labeled "SMS". The system itself doesn't appear in any of the shots. Some
sort of IBM 370, perhaps?
Funny that the SMS box shows "INNPUT" - it looks like it was written
by a Norwegian with limited English skills.
(Norwegian "inn" is the same as English "in")
:-)
--
Regards,
Torfinn Ingolfsen
12:03 p.m.
On 2/5/2016 8:16 AM, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:
On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 2:48 AM, Mike Loewen<mloewen
at cpumagic.scol.pa.us> wrote:
A friend who
worked on a system with the SMS device software sent this:
They're 3420s with the SMS boxes on top. The SMS boxes were hooked to a
controller that looked like a console to the 370. The console got tape
messages and would display which tape volumes were to be mounted on each
drive.
The picture with a volume named INNPUT is someones idea of a joke, since
tape volume names were 6 characters. The volumes had to be labeled with
a utility and JCL had to be written to call for the volume.
The tape label utility was IEHINITT.
Thanks
Jim
>
> The drives appear to be IBM 3420s, but with an additional box on top,
>labeled "SMS". The system itself doesn't appear in any of the shots.
Some
>sort of IBM 370, perhaps?
Funny that the SMS box shows "INNPUT" - it
looks like it was written
by a Norwegian with limited English skills.
(Norwegian "inn" is the same as English "in") 
12:34 p.m.
On 5 February 2016 at 17:16, Torfinn Ingolfsen <tingox at gmail.com> wrote:
(Norwegian "inn" is the same as English
"in")
:-)
Og "i" ogs?, er det ikke sant?
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
12:46 p.m.
On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 6:34 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
On 5 February 2016 at 17:16, Torfinn Ingolfsen
<tingox at gmail.com> wrote:
det stemmer. :-)
(Norwegian "inn" is the same as English
"in")
:-)
Og "i" ogs?, er det ikke sant?
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
--
mvh
Torfinn
3091
days inactive
3091
days old
13 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
cclist＠sydex.com -
elson＠pico-systems.com -
hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca -
jws＠jwsss.com -
lproven＠gmail.com -
mloewen＠cpumagic.scol.pa.us -
tingox＠gmail.com -
wdonzelli＠gmail.com