New subject: IBM 4331 (was Re: FPGAs)

27 Jun 2013

David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote:
...
  On Jun 26, 2013, at 9:45 PM, ben wrote:
  What happend to all the mainframes? 
 No one wanted them when they were just "old", so they were scrapped
 for steel and copper. Same as all the other computers, except the
 small sample that survived because people forgot they were sitting
 in the attic (it's harder to forget there's a mainframe sitting
 anywhere, and good luck getting it to the attic). 
(OK, ok, not sure if that qualifies as a mainframe, but being the size of a rather large
chest freezer it has to be at least a supermini.)

The IBM 4331 Hans Franke, John Z. and my humbleness rescued back around 2000 here in
Germany was indeed stored in the attic of an, IIRC, three-storey house with no elevator,
and had to be manhandled down the stairs. No idea how the former owner once got it up
there, we however dismantled pretty much everything, took the heavy innards
(Ferro-resonant transformers, PSU boxen and the "logic gate", a swing-out frame
containing all the boards) down separately and only then were able to handle the empty
frame. Still managed to punch quite a substantial hole into the PVC flooring of a stair
with a corner of the frame.

The twin disk drive that came with the unit unfortunately was not so easy, the drive
mechanisms were already separate but the rest of the stuff (including the rather heavy air
pump and motor) weren't easily removable and thus left inside the Frame. Unfortunately
that drive was deemed unsalvageable afterwards, so once we get the Computer operational
(it is reassembled and the Service processor is accessible via the System terminal, but
IIRC something crashes without so much as an error code when the SP tries to enable power
to the CPU), we won't have period storage for it.

So Long,
Arno

FPGAs [Was: Re: C64 Power Supply Replacement Options]