Bitcoining on a 1401

[Sean Caron]

That explains ... I've got a handful of miscellaneous SMS cards, actually,
that I got from my dad; he probably picked them up from some electronics
scrap back when he was in high school or when doing his undergrad probably
for the same reason as you may have done; to salvage parts from...
Professionally he has always done embedded design so he was never in a
scenario where he would have been servicing EDP equipment.

I noted the paragraph on ibm1401.info there discussing the gold contents of
the edge connectors with some amusement... that must explain why they've
all been lopped off of mine!

This whole thread turned out to be a bit of kismet for me; my dad told me
the cards had come from "some old IBM mainframe" but it was never clear to
me the exact type or age range on the equipment ... now I know they are SMS
cards!

I also noted they've got a database of SMS modules there on ibm1401.info
... I'm excited to look mine up when I've got a bit of free time this
weekend. Besides having the edge connectors lopped off of them by the
original scrapper, the cards I've got, my dad never got around to
harvesting parts from so they are fairly intact for identification purposes.

Best,

Sean


On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 9:42 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:

> On 05/28/2015 05:08 PM, js at cimmeri.com wrote:
>
>  Wow.  Are common machines now really *billions* of times faster??
>>
>
> From imb1401.info:
>
> Thus, the average time to add two 10-digit numbers is 40 cycles, or about
> a 2.2 kHz add rate. Adding two 20-digit numbers is 70 cycles, or an add
> rate of 1.2 kHz. Compare that to a modern superscalar microprocessor with a
> peak add rate of two 64-bit add instructions per cycle at 3-GigaHertz, or
> an add rate of 6 Ghz; the modern microprocessor is 6,000,000,000 / 1,000 =
> 6,000,000 times faster!
>
> So, no, not for the common ones of today.
>
> The surplus stores during the 1960s used to sell 1401-style SMS cards by
> the crateful.  I used to disassemble them for the transistors.
>
> --Chuck
>
>
>