IBM 1620

[Kevin Tikker]

I attended Vista at both locations the main building and the basement of the former Ross store. The new building was a mess, half finished, poorly designed and with the video studio poorly built. Thanks for the info on the 1620. Petals is such a vast organization it's entirely possible some 1620 lurks in some dark, dank unfinished space.


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> On Aug 28, 2015, at 11:05 AM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 27 Aug 2015, Kevin Tikker wrote:
>> I went to both Laney and Berkeley City College so you may have a clue.
>> Thank you
> 
> If you actually want to follow-up on such tenuous leads, . . .
> Wil Price would know what happened to the 1620 and 1401.  So would Ben Micallef and Jack Olson, but they're dead.
> 
> I guess that it may have been in the move up onto the hill in 1972? that Merritt switched to DEC.  Reliability of the PDP suffered from a bad disk drive, so it was replaced in 1983 with a few RJE terminals and a lot of 5150s.
> 
> In 1983, the PDP with drive that never worked reliably, was sold to Richmond schools (to pay for 5150s).  PG&E didn't fully understand the difference between Delta and Y three-phase.  But, in exchange for going along with lie that it "was struck by lightning during installation" (no other lightning strikes within miles for 100 years), PG&E magnanimously (with tax break) bought Richmond schools a new one.
> 
> Some of the 026 punches and EAM equipment was in the back hallways of Merritt until 1980s.  I did not have storage space to save anything, and they tried to fire the guy who pulled the other PDP from the dumpster.
> 
> I don't know what Laney was using.  Berkeley City College didn't exist at that time; it was established later and was known as Vista College until 2006, when it finally got its own building (on Center Street, instead of Milvia).
> 
> We suggested a delay in the name change from Vista to BCC with both names in use:
> 1) like a restaurant or retail establishment, a name change simultaneous with a move might save on stationery (which as expected, they didn't replace right away anyway) , but in terms of public, it is more like closing down and a new one opening.  THAT was borne out by enrollments.
> 2) release of Windoze Vista.  Our most heavily populated classes were job training for the digital sweatshop, and we could have advertised, "Vista is the best place to learn Vista!"
> 
> I taught programming in all campuses of Peralta (Merritt, Laney, College Of Alameda, Vista/BCC) from 1981 - 2013.  My pension is handled by the state (secure unless Mew Whitman gets elected), but my health benefits are run by Peralta, so kinda risky.
> 
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred             cisin at xenosoft.com
> 
>