out-of-mainstream minis

[Mike Ross]

I do difficult propositions, including prying pdps away from the cold
dead hands of the British ministry of defence! So tell more? You can
reach me off-list at this address.

I had been told that the System/7s were part of the billing system,
rather than the switch itself. My info may be defective, but that's
what I was told; one per exchange. I believe I have some doc referring
to that application.

Mike

On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 11:33 PM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove
<captainkirk359 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2 July 2015 at 17:39, Mike Ross <tmfdmike at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Take the IBM System/7. Successor to the 1800, succeeded by the
>> Series/1. They were *ubiquitous* - one in every telephone exchange in
>> the USA, I've heard. They even made a special ruggedised version for
> Being into telephony, I can say that I've not heard anything about IBM
> System/7 machines being used in exchanges. I do know that the WECo ESS
> exchanges did, of course, have computers. But the ESS exchange
> computers were custom systems and architectures built by Western
> Electric.
>
> The 1ESS/1AESS computer architecture is however, nearly completely
> extinct. There are, I believe, only two 1ESS/1AESS switches left. One
> is a partial, and non-functional exchange at the museum of
> communications in Seattle; the processor is complete, and it has one
> of each requisite switching frame, but it can't be used as they need
> to recompile the software that runs it (which isn't possible as
> they're lacking the crucial internal compiler that ran on WECo's IBM
> System/3x0 machines). The other 1ESS/1AESS switch is a complete and
> functional unit, still in service, last I heard. But there are plans
> to scrap it and put in a modern switch in its place. Saving it would
> be a difficult proposition, to say the least.
>
>
> Regards,
> Christian
> --
> Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove
> STCKON08DS0
> Contact information available upon request.



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