On Monday 25 October 2004 05:32 pm, Bruce Marshall wrote:
My first computer experience was with a IBM 650. The memory was on a rotating belt-driven drum. Sometimes with a power spike, the belt would snap..... :-)
Didja ever see what happens to a 6 foot drum with fixed heads when there is a sudden phase reversal? The drum, rotating at 3600 rpm, stops in a fraction of a rotation as it slams into the heads. I doubt if many here have ever heard of, much less worked on a serial drum machine using ac logic. That was the first Process Control Computer, a RW/BR-300 invented around 1957 and still controlling the original process at the Texaco refinery when I left the company in 1973. You had to speak machine language on that one, assembly came later. ra -- Old age ain't for Sissies!