Monster IDE Drives

[Leon A. Goldstein]

David Bandel wrote inter alia:

> My first hard drive was in another state, but I understand it was the
> size of a stack of phone books (drum memory anyone?).  What I used for
> local storage was punched paper tape (wound in a figure 8 and hung on
> the wall).  I had a six foot wide wall for hanging tapes on and thought
> I had enough storage capacity for all eternity.  The computer terminal
> had a roll of paper on it (the CRT was just a Television mounted above
> the terminal that had nothing to do with the operation of the system, it
> was so we could watch TV while the paper tapes passed data over our 75
> baud acoustically coupled modems to the mainframe).
>

OK, beat this: 1971, Fort Sill, OK.  I got to play with the FADAC field
artillery ballistic computer.  It was about the size of a steamer trunk.

It had  magnetic mass storage.  Output was digital through incandescent
"nixie" tubes or text to a Schmidt Labs teletype.
Input was also by punched paper tape.  Picture at
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-0254.jpg
Tech details at http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-f.html

Despite the glowing language about its speed, we could usually beat the
machine using old-fashioned "charts and darts" and slide rule firing
tables.

--
Leon A. Goldstein

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