Jim Arnott wrote: > I suspect that there's hundreds of System/360s still performing the > tasks that were assigned to them twenty-five years ago. Air Traffic > Control comes to mind. Also, running the backbone of most large > corporations. (I worked at General Dynamics for a number of years. Each > division had at least one. They took care of about everything from > customer billing to employee compensation. No mean feat when you have > over 100,000 employees.)
To say nothing of the fact that these machines were capable of driving impact line printers that could produce printed output to the tune of 1,000 to 2,000 lines-per-minute and electrostatic printers that pumped out reports at 10,000 to 30,000 lpm!!! I can remember bringing dozens of cartons of green line, continuous form paper into the computer room to feed these monsters all night while they cranked out P&L, Fixed Assets, Statements, Commercial Loans, Real Estate, and Trust documents, etc., by the tens, sometimes, hundreds of thousands of individual sheets. My god...I could see those trees being felled in obscene numbers to feed this lust for printed reports (which no-one ever read in their entirety, anyway). And we did this EVERY NIGHT! Then, CRTs began to replace the printers and I got cataracts.... /:( If it's not one thing, it's another. -- herb schulsinger Member, Apple Consultants Network Macintosh Specialist, Baldwin Park USD (626) 968-5342 Valinda, California -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
