On 31 Oct, 2006, at 18:01, cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: Except the older ones did not have terminals, sometimes not even for the operator. Surely anything which predates the Minicomputer is by definition a mainframe, unless it was designed as a peripheral processor rather than intended as a central processor. That would let out things like the CDC 1700 which is the first machine I learnt assembler code on as it was no longer needed to read cards and send the data to the main 6600 which was several miles away.