On Thu, 21 Dec 2017 14:41:18 -0500, Edward Finnell wrote:

>The CE's called them noodle snatchers...

The 2321 Data Cell was called a noodle snatcher. I never heard 
of a 3850 being called that. The 2321 was a much smaller 
device that sat in one frame, maybe 2 feet wide.

When I worked at Wayne State University in the early 1970's, we 
had one. I saw the thing , but never saw it in operation. It used 
strips of magnetic media similar to tape, but much thicker, more 
like the media in a floppy disk than a tape. The strips were on 
the order of a foot long and a couple of inches wide. They were 
pulled up out of their storage container and wrapped around a 
spool to read and write them, then returned to their slot.

Several people had strips that had been discarded for one 
reason or another, and at least one person had a strip that had 
been crumpled as it was being returned to its slot.

The 3850 was much larger. When I was an Amdahl SE, one of 
my accounts had one. It was probably 20 feet long, maybe 
more. My impression was that it was a much improved version 
of the 2321.

-- 
Tom Marchant

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