On 2016-May-25, at 6:14 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
> 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.)
A 1403 was in use at UBC for undergrad batch services up till the end of that
service in 1979/80.
I used to get a kick out of pushing the button to raise the cabinet shroud. The
big shroud would rattle and shake as the motor-chain drive raised it to expose
the print mechanism, all while it continued to print, and the noise level would
go up by some tens of db.
At least I presume it was a 1403, it looked like just like this:
http://ibm-1401.info/1403Cable-PP-04-.jpg
