There were covers for the boards that allowed room for several inches of wiring.

For those who never saw the Tinkertoys®,, the concept of having to wire each 
column instead of field start and length may seem strange; it seemed normal at 
the time. OTOH, I would never want to go back to any of the relay or vacuum 
tube equipment I used, although I have fond memories of some discrete 
transistor machines.


--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3

________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of 
Doug [[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2022 4:55 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: my new z114

The "boards" were maybe 1 inch thick, with holes in them. You put an
overlay over the board (depending on what you were programming) and
inserted wires between the holes based on the overlays. My father
programmed these things for a bank on Long Island NY. The wires were of
various lengths depending on how far they had to reach. They were mabe
12inches by 12 inches, and went into a receiver, and then were snapped
into the machine. After I went to 360 Common I/O school, I went to work
for Sorbus for awhile and had to deal with them there, but I never could
program them.

Doug Fuerst


------ Original Message ------
From: "Grant Taylor" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: 29-May-22 15:23:01
Subject: Re: my new z114

>On 5/29/22 12:26 PM, Seymour J Metz wrote:
>>You could theoretically add wires without removing the board. I've never seen 
>>it done and I suspect that it's not safe.
>
>I'm now getting the impression that the wires were sort of latched into the 
>board and the plugboard tool was used to unlatch wires for insertion and 
>removal.
>
>The idea of plugs & wires being latched into the board makes more sense as far 
>as inserting & removing the entire board from the system.  As if the board is 
>simply a passive frame that holds the plugs & wires in place while the actual 
>jack for the plugs remains in the system.
>
>I have no idea if this is remotely correct, but it does make a LOT more sense 
>to me than removing and inserting boards with a bunch of jack in them.
>
>
>
>-- Grant. . . .
>unix || die
>
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