31–40 of 43 posts
Would love to know whether security was a concern at all on those systems (eg industrial espionage, internal program meddling for the purpose of tricking auditors, etc). And if yes, then what are some interesting stories about investigating and resolving security issues. Thanks for doing this!
I worked as a field engineer on Honeywell mainframes in the late 1970s and later moved into programming so I'm always keen on hearing about the good old days when computers looked impressive. I'd be interested in hearing about their most challenging debugging problems. I'd also like to hear about how your grandfather serviced core memories back in the day. Honeywell core memories had spare bits built in which made is…
The current set of developers are often tempted to start again - to start a new software codebase which will surely fix all mistakes of the old. Was this a temptation in the days of big iron?
Did he ever work on the System/3 or System/32 devices? (I am looking for a System/32 but there are very few around!) Also what was his favorite machine and why?
Were there any parallels between the systems they worked on and helped bring into this world and the modern era with "supercomputers" and AI, as far as people being worried about the technology replacing their jobs? Did they have much of a network or reference to lean on when novel problems would come up, or was it more of a "figure out a way to make it work" way of troubleshooting?
Given what they’ve seen almost 60 years ago and today - can they extrapolate what will the computing field look like in another 60 years? What tools/techniques/methods from the past do they miss the most? Which of these do they think could/should be adapted to current realities and used to greater effect? What are their top 3 do’s and don’ts from those times?
As a recently retired IBMer, I would love to know what the think of IBM today vs when they worked there.
I'm curious in regards to repairs (and perhaps this is just stupidity on my part): Were spare parts for repairs kept on-site, did they have to be ordered/shipped, or did your grandfather have a, er, service truck with parts, etc?
Oh! I would like to know what sort of reliability and headaches they had out of different types of memory! Drum, core, film memory etc.
I worked as a field engineer on Honeywell mainframes in the late 1970s and later moved into programming so I'm always keen on hearing about the good old days when computers looked impressive. I'd be interested in hearing about their most challenging debugging problems. I'd also like to hear about how your grandfather serviced core memories back in the day. Honeywell core memories had spare bits built in which made is…
I do not remember any transistors being inside the core house but sometimes the welds inside the house would break loose and if you could find the broken weld you could resolder it. IBM core units did not have spare positions. Sometime the entire core house would have to be replaced. - Grandfather