Early 360 machines (Was: Front panel switches - what did they do?)

[Jon Elson]

On 05/25/2016 05:31 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>      > From: Jon Elson
>
>      >> I interned at IBM Bermuda, and they had a 360/20 as their main service
>      >> bureau machine; it had (IIRC) ... a 4301 printer.
>
>      > I'm guessing, maybe, that would be a 1403 printer?
>
> Ah, right you are! The old grey cells are, well, old! ;-)
>
> Those printers had an amazingly long life! They were first introduced in 1959
> with the 1401 computer, and, like I said, the brand spanking new System 3
> they got in ca. 1976 came with one! I wonder when IBM stopped producing
> them?
>
>
I believe IBM recycled them from retired machines for an 
amazing length of time.  Certainly, a number of 1403s were 
in use on 370 and even later systems.  I was recently 
surprised while digging at bitsavers to find out how ancient 
the 2821 controller was - all SMS cards and some very 
ingenious magnetic transformer tricks to do the address 
selection of the core stack with as few transistors as 
possible.  (The 2821 was the controller for the card 
read/punch as well as the 1403 printer family.)

Jon