Bob wrote:
As I understand it, the 360 Mod 70 was never shipped.
But what happened to it?
It has been said that it evolved into the Mod 75 before it hit the streets.
As far as I've ever heard, no model 60, 62, or 70 systems were ever
built. I would expect that the prototype hardware in development became
the 65 and 75 prototypes.
Was it shipped to an undisclosed location, under a new
GSA number?
That seems extremely unlikely. What use would the government have had
for an unsupported prototype machine? Even if the machine existed, it
wouldn't have been worthwhile for the government to buy it, or for IBM
to sell it (or even give it away). Supporting a prototype machine at a
customer site would have been a nightmare.
When the government purchased one-off (or nearly one-off) machines from
IBM, they did so because they wanted machines with capabilities not
available from the normal product line, and the machines were still
considered to be production, fully supported IBM products, e.g. the two
360/95 systems built for NASA, or the one-of-a-kind HARVEST (IBM 7950
Data Processing System) build for the NSA.
My first question is what did it, or was it suspose to
look like.
What I am real interested in is any picture showing the console.
If a model 70 had been built, the console would probably have looked
about the same as the console of the model 75.
Eric