Old farts and new Linux

UncleDuke tmfu at comcast.net
Wed May 5 23:00:28 UTC 2004


> Meanwhile back at work, moved from CDC-6600 batch-mode computing to a
> Vax 750 with VT100 terminals (a cool $0.5M in 1983) and a $30k+

Heh.. The first system I worked on was a CDC 6600(S/N 32), single cpu/131K
core, dozen 401 Diskfiles, 667(NRZI) and 669(RE) tape units, 501 line
printer, 405+415 card punch+reader. Later it was upgraded to 844 and 885
diskdrives, a 512 and 580 line printers, 67x tapes. In mid 85 the unit was
pulled from service to be replaced with a Cyber 180-860. We also had a
Cy74-28(with a 4mb ECS box), and a Cy180-825. I still have 6 8877 tubes that
were used to power the consoles on the 6600 and 74-28. Also had the pleasure
of working on a CDC 8090 which used papertape to deadstart the card reader,
which then deadstarted the tapedrive (507 series) to load the OS, and the
console was a tty.. I still have several cordwood modules from the 6600, and
a 4k memory/pp stack. My first computer was a TS1000(witht he 16KB
modules,1040 printer), upgraded to a TS2068 with the Lareken FDD
controller,256KB module, 2040 printer,2050 modem, RTC module, and 2 360K
FDD's. Even ran a BBS on that. Finally graduated to a PC-XT with a Seagate
ST-412 on an Adaptec RLL controller.


Here's a pic of the 6600's last day..
http://owlfarm.dyndns.org/~tmfu/picaCDC6600.jpg

Greg
http://kernelpanic.dyn.dhs.org/





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