The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers as well.
[email protected] (Ted MacNEIL) writes: > I believe they stopped after 3350-compatible drives. We were one of > the last users in the Greater Toronto Area (Ontario Government) to > migrate to 3380's. > And, CDC didn't even participate in the RFP. > It was just Amdahl, STK (as it was called back then), NAS & IBM. there is the folklore about 200(?) or so disk engineers leaving San Jose disk division over a period of time ... lots of going to Memorox to do plug-compatible disk drives ... but some number of them going to other places like CDC. in the late 70s I was over in bldg. 28 ... working on various things ... like original relational/sql implementation ... some past posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr but they would also let me play disk engineer over in bldg. 14&15. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#disk I was getting ask to participat in some number of high level discussions ... including conferences with channel engineers in POK. I aksed why and was told that those activities had previously been handled by various senior engineers ... but so many had left over the previous ten yrs. plug-compatible controllers & devices has been given as major motivation for the Future System effort in the early 70s. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys couple old posts with various quotes/reference about FS motivation/activity: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#33 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#17 I was somewhat involved in clone controllers as undergraduate in the 60s. I tried to get the 2702 communications controller to do something ... which it could almost, only (i.e. NOT) do. This was some of the motivation behind the university starting a clone controller project using an Interdata/3; reverse engineering the 360 channel interface, building channel interface board for the Interdata/3, and programming the Interdata/3 to emulate 2702 (and do some additional stuff). This was marketed by Interdata ... and then later when Perkin-Elmer bought Interdata, marketed under the Perkin-Elmer name. One of the big issues for 3370s & 3380s were new kind of (thin-film) disk head (and possibly drop off in plug-compatible compitition ... although there was also pickup in disk market in other places ... like workstation and PCs). Past posts mentioning "air-bearing" simulation as part of designing thin-film/floating heads: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#39 195 was: Computer Typesetting Was: Movies with source code http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#44 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#6 IBM 610 workstation computer http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#0 IBM 610 workstation computer http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#14 IBM 610 workstation computer http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#41 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#18 Why so little parallelism? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#27 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#31 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#43 FBA rant http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#46 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#64 Disc Drives http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#52 Drums: Memory or Peripheral? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#77 Disk drive improvements http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#60 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
