1990 Era computer room

[Christian Kennedy]

> On 22 Jun 2015, at 19:14, Jon Elson <elson at pico-systems.com> wrote:
> 
> Also, it is clearly NOT 1990 era, probably much closer to mid-1970's.  The cartridge disk drives look a little like double-decker Diablos, with the packs in racks on top of the cabinets.  The CPUs remind me of TI machines, but these would be earlier than the ones I had seen.

I think the hint is on the back.  This is a story of Delaine Donohue retiring from D&B where he created and ran the National Business Information Center and the Central Data Collection Group between the early 70s and early 80s.  He retired in ’89, so it’s not unreasonable to assume 80’s vintage in the context of D&B — although the drives do suggest earlier rather than later in the decade.

Figuring out the computers from the date range is more difficult.  Before 1978 D&B was still a Xerox (Sigma-5 and Sigma-9) shop; in 1979 they purchased National CSS and plunged into IBM mainframe land.  NCSS had a homebrew packet-switching network that talked to IBM and Amdahl iron (and, after the purchase, evolved to be DunsNet), so I suppose it’s possible that these are comm processors — although IIRC most of the original NCSS packet stuff was PDP-11 based.

Anyone have a photo of an Interdata model 50 or 55 communications processor?

--
Christian Kennedy, Ph.D.
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