I used to teach Air Traffic Control for the Air Force. In the 1980's we had the only control tower simulator in the world at Keesler AFB. It consisted of a 270-degree motion picture screen that was 60' long and 40' high. The airport was projected to the screen by stationary projectors. The airfield lighting were fiber optics embedded in the screen. The aircraft images were projected to the screen by a tower of 15 film strip projectors each containing rolls of film with every aircraft in the AF inventory and a few civilian aircraft in every possible flight attitude that an aircraft could be in while in the control tower pattern. There were 6 pilot stations counting the supervisor console that could fly up to 6 aircraft each. It was all controlled by a computer about the size of two server cabinets side by side that had one hard disk about 18" in diameter and less muscle than a 286. When everything was working properly and the students flying were paying attention, we could make a fully qualified controller sweat and make Atlanta and O'Hare look slow. The hole things was programmed by punch cards. When we wanted to change the scenarios, five of us would lock ourselves in a padded room for a week to story board a scenario, then we'd have to type out the punch cards and read them in. I don't know which was worse, the story boarding or typing/loading the punch cards.
By the way, the filmstrips were produced by Walt Disney Studios at a cost of about $700 each. Life expectancy was about 20 days due to the heat from the bulbs. At contract renewal time, the first batch of filmstrips on the new contract were about $2000 each because Disney threw away the originals at the end of every contract period. It amazes me to think that my desktop could have run about 7 of those things and still had enough to do other things. My P4 laptop could have probably run 3 or 4. -----Original Message----- From: tech-geeks-boun...@tech-geeks.org [mailto:tech-geeks-boun...@tech-geeks.org] On Behalf Of Williams, Scott Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 5:54 PM To: Tech-Geeks Mailing List Subject: Re: [tech-geeks] WRITE(6,*)'Happy Birthday Fortran' I also played my first "computer game" playing star trek on not punch cards but, punch ribbons. We played it on this machine. Dang it was sooo cool. http://www.vintage-computer.com/asr33.shtml Scott ________________________________________ From: tech-geeks-boun...@tech-geeks.org [tech-geeks-boun...@tech-geeks.org] On Behalf Of Charlie Kinsella [ckinse...@dixonschools.org] Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2010 9:08 PM To: Tech-Geeks Mailing List Subject: Re: [tech-geeks] WRITE(6,*)'Happy Birthday Fortran' Stevenson at ISU around 1975 was the first time I saw Star Trek being played online. I had a room mate who was very much into the early 'video' game on punch cards. Charles Kinsella Technology Director Dixon Public Schools ckinse...@dixonschools.org (815) 284-7725 ________________________________ Also at ISU, in Stevenson - we had direct access to the IBM 1130 console, an IBM line printer, and a few keypunch machines AND I enjoyed every minute of it! Ill. State best turn-around time I remember (don't hear that phrase any more) was 5 minutes 2:00 a.m. - wee hours Sat. morning - most students were out doing things students do on Fri. night & not punching cards It was my first programming class at the U of I. Fortran using punch cards on an IBM mainframe system. Each student was alloted so many minutes of processor time and if you went over that limit, you failed the course. One infinite loop and you are "out of here". Many a night spent in the digital computer lab at the key punch machines, then carry your card stack to the reader, and wait for your printout. What fun...... | Subscription info at http://www.tech-geeks.org | | Subscription info at http://www.tech-geeks.org |
