The introduction of this machine was the reason I got into IBM in 1966. The machines had to be "completed" in the field, in order to meet their shipping commitments. I and 30,000 technicians like me were hired very quickly to install the Engineering Changes necessary to make them actually work!

@RetroJack

2 жыл бұрын

These days that would be called a day one patch! 🤣

@joshr277

2 жыл бұрын

Wow! Thanks for sharing - it’s amazing how these pioneering innovation changed everything

As someone born in 85 I find computer technology from before I was born so fascinating. Thank you for the uploads.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

Жыл бұрын

Hi Steven, you are very welcome! ~ Victor

@knightwatchman

8 ай бұрын

It was an amazing time. I began my IT career at 20 years old operating a 360/40. I left a college liberal arts program to take that job. I then go into systems work, meaning I installed operating systems, subsystems, applied maintenance and tuned systems for performance. All this work to ensure the applications programmers could code and test applications and operators could run them. I did this for 14 years and was hired by IBM in 1987. I retired from IBM with 32 years of service. All totaled I had a 46-year career in IT. All because of mainframes.

@garyclouse7234

18 күн бұрын

Ever held a magnetic core memory array in your hands? I have! Obviously I am an old person. Punch cards, teletypes, tape drives etc. Now I have a smart phone I could never have conceived in those days!

"....up to eight million characters of storage. Eight! Million!" Reminds me of when I got my first hard disk: it had a whopping 10MB of capacity. No more swapping floppies! "Ten megabytes!" I thought, "I'll never fill THIS up. I'm fixed for life!" Now a single file would be too big for it, and a 8GB of RAM is only until I get more.

@EnergeticWaves

8 жыл бұрын

Nothing short of amazing. A single video file can easily be 8gb!

@peterr1088

7 жыл бұрын

Roy F. "Ill never fill this up" i cant find an app smaller than 10MB

@cyrex686

6 жыл бұрын

I used to know what every single file was for on my 10MB hard drive :/

@snow6937

5 жыл бұрын

@@peterr1088 just for example - sumatra pdf (and more types of files) with 60 langs and hotkeys - unpacked disk space - 'bout 7 mb

@scottcupp8129

3 жыл бұрын

It really is astounding how quickly technology has advanced. I, too remember my first hard disk. It was 10mb as well. And my thinking was the same: I will NEVER fill the drive to capacity :) Now I have a machine that I built for music production. It has 3 internal hard drives and I have 4 external drives for storing my sample libraries. I have a total combined storage of 52 TB. I have 64 GB of DDR4 RAM and dual i7 processors. It is a beast!

My first job after I graduated in 1970 was as a Trainee programmer for Barclays bank (London). 360/65.....main memory was 500k in rows of cabinets...:)

@johnlister

4 жыл бұрын

1978 NatWest at Goodmans Fields. 370/178 & 3033s with 4MB each. And my phone...! Those were the days!

@computerpro123abc

3 жыл бұрын

back in thbe 1980's when i had jobs that my system 3 and 370/135 could not handle, i woud have to rent time by the hour on other machines. I paid $40 per hr for a 360/40 and $100 per hour for a 360/50 operator labor included. Now i run every thing on dell servers and laptops for a cost of $2 per hour + labor. Thats progress!!!

@neo214

3 жыл бұрын

Wow, was it anything like working with computers today?

@allanrichardson1468

3 жыл бұрын

@@neo214 You didn’t “talk” to computers, except on remote terminals using time sharing systems or business remote applications. You wrote the computer “letters:” programs, data files, job scheduling and control files (really programs in their own right), etc. Originally you typed these “letters” on 80-character punch cards (later, by creating or modifying files on disk devices using a time sharing system and terminal), submitted them through a card reader (usually to an operator) or with a “submit” command on a time sharing system, then waited for the job to run and its output to print (later, you could read a copy of the printed output on a CRT screen before, or instead of, printing it on paper; or print it on a remote printer if you could wait that long). Some of these procedures are similar to development on personal systems today, except the processing and storage took place on a shared large machine, not inside the device on your desk!

Found out my 74 yrs old grandpa was one of the guys programing these early machines. What a trip.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

3 жыл бұрын

Black Sheep, sounds pretty awesome. Very cool. ~ Victor, CHAP

@reverenddick8562

3 жыл бұрын

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject not as cool as him knowing about the hidden Code in the IBM 5100. 😉

Those who live in the Bay Area and want to see one of these in person, I encourage you to visit the Computer History Museum, that happens to be very close to Google HQ

@taylorp535

2 жыл бұрын

Yes!! This place is super cool!!!! They have all kinds of vintage computers and all this history, totally worth a visit ❤️❤️

Thanks for loading this video! I started my career in computers with a 1401, then when I moved to a 360 it was like moving into the realm of magic! Thanks again, you remind me of my mis-spent youth. Regards

@rty1955

4 жыл бұрын

I began on a 407 -> 1401 -> 360/30 with only 48k of memory. The things I could do with such little memory! I ran BPS & DOS

@jordanzish

4 жыл бұрын

If you haven't seen it already, check out Curious Marc's channel. He works at a computer history museum and has a series on the restoration of a 1401 system. I think you'd definitely get a kick out of the final video where they have it run a FORTRAN program off punch cards.

"One system to meet every application need." "One ring to rule them all!"

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

8 жыл бұрын

+Thread Racer LOL! Great quote, and so applicable! : )

@batlin

7 жыл бұрын

Or a few hundred thousand "rings", in the core storage wiring... :)

@michaelmoorrees3585

6 жыл бұрын

In the early 80s, we had a project that used 16K bytes of core, on a single Multibus card. Multibus was common board form factor from the mid 70s into the early 80s. Core is non-volatile, which was its only useful feature, at that time. In a year, or two, EEROMs (not EPROMs) became common, and killed that last use. Seeburg jukeboxes used core memory, for a time. Its a perfect app for core. In a jukebox, the entries in the play queue are erased, when that song is actually played. With core, the process of reading erases, the read location (destructive read), so that step, is automatic.

@oldguy7402

3 жыл бұрын

Or IBMs token ring network...

@AliasUndercover

3 жыл бұрын

That's the CORE memory.

The ram looks organic almost futuristic, like a woven blanket that moves - so cool

Brings back a lot of memories (no pun intended). Got out of the Navy in 1966, and after a time got a job as a computer operator with a bank. They were using an IBM 2010 (running 360 emulation), a 1401 for data capture, a 360/30, and a 360/50. All great fun with blown programs, unbelievable backlogs, jamming OCR check readers, rubber band fights with the key entry people, and whisky bottles found under the raised floors--oh, and absolutely no security. Anyone could walk off the street and right onto the computer platforms. The bank ran three shifts a day, probably 20 operators, updating customer files during the 12a to 8a shift; all it took was an error on one of the master file tapes to set us back several hours while we reran the previous night's update. Once management decided to purchase less expensive Memorex disk drives, and that equipment almost crashed them out of business. Finally got out of there, after 10 years (and several system changes) to go into tech writing.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

6 жыл бұрын

Great memories. "and whisky bottles found under the raised floors--" that one made me laugh. Thanks for sharing!

@madezra64

5 жыл бұрын

Lol at the whiskey bottles. I think a lot of people underestimate substance abuse among hardware and software engineers as a whole. NOTHING beats staying up for days programming all stimmed out... ANYWAYS that's my modern whiskey bottle hidden away moment :P (Used to stash meth under my office desk drawer for those long ass binges where sleep was impossible to get cause of all the constant calls I had to support...)

@rty1955

4 жыл бұрын

Haha I worked at the nations largest bank and even though we had security guards and our data center was locked, the combination was 1234!! One data center I worked in was 200' x 200' with (2) IBM 370s, a few series 1s, and lots of other vendors. The ops always had beer under the floor! They used to shut off the lights at night and have ring toss fights (the write rings from tapes) in the morning I would come in (I was the systems programmer) and see the rings all over the place!

@samsungtelevision695

3 жыл бұрын

@@madezra64 you’re not wrong. Usually these days it’s adderall (so I hear) but they can fill the same niche for sure

Although I was a S/360 and S/370 programmer for decades, I just now noticed the symbolism of the original System/360 logo! Prior computers grouped bits in triplets and multiples of 3: octal (base 8) digits to display groups of 3 bits; 6-bit text character codes; 6 characters per 36-bit binary “word,” etc. Just like the 360 degrees of a circle (thanks, ancient Sumeria!). But IBM showed by its compass rose logo that those 360 degrees of data representation would hereafter be grouped by 4s, 8s, 16s and other powers of TWO: 4 bits displayed as a hex (hexadecimal; base 16) digit, using the letters A through F as the extra six digits; 8-bit characters, also called “bytes” (an IBM-invented word), divided into 4-bit “nybbles” (also IBM-invented); 2-byte (16-bit) “half words;” 4-byte (32-bit) “full words;” and 8-byte (64-bit) “double words.” And the four cardinal points and four secondary points in the logo, eight in all to complete the circle, represents this shift in thinking!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

3 жыл бұрын

Hi Allan, that is a fascinating analysis. Never saw it broken down like that before. Thanks! ~ Victor, at CHAP

I currently work as an operator on the z/OS system, this is a cool history lesson!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

7 жыл бұрын

Cool! z/OS is quite an advance over the early giant machines. What release?

I learned programming on a 360/30 with 32K of memory. It was in 360 assembler with DOS/360. Later went to a company with a 360/65 with 512K running under OS/MFT - still mostly assembler with some PL/1. Fun days!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

8 жыл бұрын

+mike klaene Very cool! I consider anyone who could program in assembler, a highly talented individual. "Shift RIght, Double Algebraic" - those were the days!

@usnay12345

8 жыл бұрын

+mike klaene Wow, I didn't realize I was living so high on the hog -- we had two 360/30's with 64K each. DOS/360. COBOL shop. Started teaching myself 360 assembler ... finished that on 370/138 with 512K. Got to spend 6 years FT assembler work, early 90's. Most fun language I ever knew! Wanted to try PL/I, but we never had a compiler. If I can find all the pieces, maybe do something with Hercules ...

@mikeklaene4359

8 жыл бұрын

usnay12345 It was at a dept store in Cincinnati where I got my start programming. No degree at the time - pure OJT via some good mentors and the green and white IBM 'Programmed Instruction' books. The HQ for our parent company was across the street from our store and they had a 64K 360/30 which we had to use to do the COBOL stuff. These days there are a lot of coders but very few programmers, IMHO.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

8 жыл бұрын

+mike klaene Hi Mike, Assembler on the 360 must have been quite interesting. I did a little Assembler on the IBM 4341. "SRDA, BAL, etc." Brings back memories. Thanks for watching!

@royf.9034

8 жыл бұрын

I'll bet those were the days! You were there at the invention of modern computing.

This is so interesting! Solid Logic Tech sounds like it was a bridge between discrete components and integrated circuits; they couldn't quite make true ICs yet but you could tell it was going in that direction. Thanks for posting!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

8 жыл бұрын

Great observation! Thanks for your feedback!

@michaelmoorrees3585

6 жыл бұрын

Those are early hybrid circuits. Think surface mount components on a ceramic substrate, instead of a PCB. I saw my first MLCC "chip capacitors" on 60s vintage hybrid modules. Resistors are sometimes painted on with resistive inks. The 360 came out in the 60s. Early logic ICs were available, but IBM was very "vertical", and used their own "in house" semiconductors, almost exclusively. Also those early ICs were pretty pricey, too, and used mostly on government aerospace projects, with deep pockets.

@LMacNeill

6 жыл бұрын

Yeah, the first CPU-on-a-chip wouldn’t come out until Intel created the 4004 in 1969 - and then it was only a 4-bit processor. Far too small for any real work. It’d be the mid-to-late ‘70s before CPUs on chips would be popular in mainframe computers like this one. The big companies continued to make their own CPUs similar to the one in this System/360 - the CPU chips were relegated to small, desktop-only machines for a long time.

@bertoid

6 жыл бұрын

That's correct. And System/370, released about 6 years later (in 1970), used very similar looking packaging, but the modules in S/370 had true integrated circuits on the ceramic substrate. The only obvious differences were the module packages were usually larger, and circuit cards were about twice the size. My page on IBM circuit packaging evolution: members.optusnet.com.au/intaretro/Packages

@rty1955

5 жыл бұрын

bertoid the 4381 was designed so that each module had the same thermo design and was cooled with two automotive fans. The therory being that you can cool a house with just one fan if all the rooms had the same design and temp. It was call "impingent cooling" IBM was always looking to improve cooling. They wanted to get away from big room that needed tons of air conditioning

This brings back memories. During the middle to late 80s I worked for Spencer Gifts, Inc. at their 5150 building in Linwood, NJ as a laser printer operator. Spencer would mail out catalogs with personalized covers which we would print from magnetic tapes running from a mainframe. It was all so "cutting edge" then working with an industrial computer system. Seems archaic now when one box the size of a toaster can do the same thing and more, faster. But I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. I can still remember the smell of walking into the printing center for the beginning of each 12 hour shift. Ozone and ink. Ahhh.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

7 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the cool comment. Wow, a 12 hour shift. I hope they let you bring plenty of snacks onto the raised floor. Nothing helps pass the time like Cheetos, Pringles and coffee...

Reminds me of when I bought a 20 Megabyte Hard Disk for my IBM PCjr (around 1986). It was $700 and was the size of a toaster. I remember thinking "I'll never use all of this space!". I fly drones now and less than 2 seconds of 4K video from my drone is more than 20MB.

@mrs7195

2 жыл бұрын

It is kind of uncanny to realize that despite how much storage space you have, you can always find ways to fill it up somehow. I'm just a regular computer user with a 1 TB hard drive, but I have less than half of it free anymore and I have no idea how that happened.

I worked on an XDS computer in the 1970s that had ferrite core memory. We can all laugh at the amount of memory that seemed "large" back then, but core memory was extremely FAST.

Oh my goodness! My highschool science club went to Waterloo University in, probably, 1968, did a short introduction to Fortran programming, and marveled at the IBM 360 75 in its sunken glass-walled room. So many changes.....

@michaelc1148

5 жыл бұрын

The closed 'the pit' at U(W) back in '99. (I was an undergrad there at the time). It's now a bunch of lecture rooms.

@supercompooper

3 жыл бұрын

I have a tile from the Red Room 🙂

The history of IBM computers is relevant for further prospective, i just love it.

when i was taking computer courses in college, the porp brought out one of those disk packs to show us . they were massive . now the disks are smaller than ur thub.

Most large data centers of that time, and up to recent times, had a "raised floor" with 10 to 15 inches of space under the floor tiles to hide all the power cables and data transfer cables. Alternatively, they use overhead cable raceways to hide all the cables today. Cable and wire management is a true art in itself! Good comment. Thanks!

@rty1955

7 жыл бұрын

the reason you used raised floors was not to "hide" the cables. it was because the air conditioning was forced down I to the floors and up through the equipment. no need to freeze the operator by making the entire room too cold. more efficient to have the a/c flow through the equipment then out into the room where it would be comfortable for people operating it.

@knidhi8993

6 жыл бұрын

Yes, it was known as false flooring like these days false ceiling.In south east Asian nations, false flooring is a normal way of lihome building to keep the insects and smaller animals not coming to usable surface.

@typograf62

6 жыл бұрын

I have often considered that for my home computer installation, but the door opens inwards and makes the idea impractical. Perhaps I should run cables down from the ceiling? They often had a special suction cup device for lifting the tiles.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

6 жыл бұрын

I tend to agree. Under floor electrical power cables and data cables kept them out of the way. Cool air flowing upward into the center of the machines was often more efficient than blowing it around the room. Have also seen newer data centers that have data cables running along the top of the machines, just below the ceiling, that gives easier access to cable changes and fixes, than working under the floor in tight spaces. Progress!

@shmehfleh3115

6 жыл бұрын

The newer datacenters I've worked in tend to run power in the floors and data in overhead raceways. Makes sense, I guess.

7:52 ferrite cores memory... it's been a long way

I used one of these installed in an old dairy-barn. It had a bare dirt floor, with the cables run across it. The CPU and console was in the center, and the card-reader, card-punch and printer were each in one of the cow-stalls. The keypunch machines wire in the hayloft, so you had to climb a rickety wooden ladder. This was at Catonsville Community College (now CCBC) circa 1974.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

4 жыл бұрын

Hi Fred, that is one of the most interesting locations I ever heard of for a 360 install! Thanks! ~ Victor, CHAP

all these concepts still used today !!!

Gotta love that 60s style music.

PLEASE JOIN US in Preserving Computer History with a small contribution to our channel. www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LCNS584PPN28E We get no revenue from Ads, KZread takes all that revenue. Your support is what keeps us going. Your contribution greatly helps us continue to bring you educational, historical, vintage computing topics. Thank you! ~ Computer History Archives Project

Sorry, IBM, you did not herald the opening of the 'Computer Age'. Colossus did that in Bletchley Park UK to help break enemy codes during WW2.

@TechnikMeister2

5 жыл бұрын

So True. Ken Olsen and Digital was doing this stuff in the 1950s. IBM 360 were just simple database machines. They were used for bank account records and inventory management. Very simple but high volume stuff. They were strictly batch processing. It was not complex calculations and engineering solutions like Digital who also had realtime processing. You could update the operating system of a PDP 11 without shutting it down. It was MIT with Digital and Harvard with IBM. That tells you the emphasis.

I love this stuff. My dad’s career grew with computers from the early 1950’s. He ended up in charge of a very large department of around 300 people . It was a fascinating job that he loved. The IBM computer stuff I saw as a kid, the 360 with flashing lights fascinated me. They had a couple of 30’s a 40 & a 50 before upgrading to 370’s.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

2 жыл бұрын

Hi Beagle76, thank you very much for your feedback! We hope you will explore some of our other vintage computer videos as well. Keep well! ~ C. Hunter, CHAP

@beagle7622

2 жыл бұрын

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject I am . Dad would have loved this . I remember the Ramac very clearly, he talked about it a lot when I was in school. I think there is a computer museum in Melbourne Australia. The last computer I saw with him were 2 Armdahl’s. A smaller one controlling the big. He talked about doubling the memory from 8 to 16 Mb on an IBM I think,yes megabyte & how much it cost. He started off with ICL’s I believe.

I remember seeing this computer on one of the Mad Men episodes. Season 7, episode 4.

Lots of memories for a retired chip designer. Oh and those 1.5 inch wafers with only a hand full of good die. We still had a LOT to learn! Yep the Bad Old, Good Old days!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

4 жыл бұрын

Hi DD_Ranch Texas, glad this helped bring back some memories. Thanks for the feedback! ~ Mark

2:17 "A single system featuring unprecedented performance range. New micro electronic circuitry. Over 8 million characters of core storage!" LOL Great stuff and fascinating. Imagine what the IBM of that time would say about the capacity of a single micro XCSD card. Many orders of magnitude more storage in the area about the size of a pinky finger nail.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

4 жыл бұрын

Ron John63, yes, "Channel Capacity." Good point! ~Victor, CHAP

I took a computer course(intro) at a local technical high school, 1983, that had a 360, in blue. There was a plastic cover over the dot matrix printer, it was loud!

8 million bits = 1 megabyte... Wow that's a lot of memory!!

@Bhakti-rider

2 жыл бұрын

1 MB is 8 million bytes, not bits...

@Bhakti-rider

2 жыл бұрын

Oops - 8 MB, I mean

I started my career in supporting processor development for the S/370 and ended it working on emulated System z mainframes that could support lots of users on a regular PC. I find it really interesting to see how people compare the 60s and 70s tech and environment to today's. In those days, when processor innovations like instruction pipelining and memory hierarchies were new, it was a major achievement to get a 10% performance increase or optimize an algorithm to free up cycles or memory. Now we take for granted, and often can't even notice a doubling of performance every few months and memory constraints are a distant memory (hmmm). Those days were fun because the possibilities were endless and you had to know how things worked. Now programming is about libraries and frameworks and fashions and fads and hardware constraints don't even exist. Bleccchh. Great vid. Thanks (oh, and yes... Get off my lawn!)

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

6 жыл бұрын

Hi waltz49, thanks for your comments and thoughts. I agree with your statement on how previous memory/hardware constraints don't even exist today. It is also fascinating to see how the concept of what a "computer professional" is today, vs. what the term meant back in the '60's and 70's. I think back then, it seemed one really had to know math, engineering and related disciplines just to understand and follow the early textbooks. - PS, I promise to stay off your lawn. :)

@Bhakti-rider

2 жыл бұрын

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Nah, mainly logic; a gift for mathematics of course helped a lot.

@Bhakti-rider

2 жыл бұрын

A systems programmer I knew at Stanford Hospital in the early 70s made the comment about some piece of software (it might have been TSO, which I hadn't met yet; we used WYLBUR), "TSO [or whatever it was] may be big - but it's slow." That got a tremendous laugh, from me and everyone else who heard it.

I'm convinced! Where can I buy one? ;-)

@y11971alex

8 жыл бұрын

+Mark Jones I think they're all out of commission now.

@MarkJones-mm3br

8 жыл бұрын

+y11971alex It's OK, I was being ironic :)

@y11971alex

8 жыл бұрын

It's the fact that IBM mostly leased these machines, which means they collected these computers at the end of their leases and threw them away or did something else to them (perhaps someone from IBM can tell us what happened to off-lease computers). There are a few people who collects IBM System/3 (1969) though, and their collections are available on the Internet.

@MarkJones-mm3br

8 жыл бұрын

It's just amazing and kind of amusing to me to hear them breathlessly extolling the greatness of features that, due to the incredible speed of the advancement of computing, seem so paltry now. Also, the idea of someone today falling for the marketing just because it was delivered so convincingly just tickled my funny bone - a little comedic scenario that played out in my head as I watched the video. :-D

@y11971alex

8 жыл бұрын

Mark Jones Mainframe programs of the age tend to be very memory-conscious, which is to say that they achieve the same performance with less memory usage. While raw performance definitely falls short of a consumer-grade computer today, you may still be surprised that it isn't so puny after all compared to today's computers. I understand that these computers can go without reboot for years on end, which puts to shame the most stable Microsoft-based PCs and servers today.

"Online" back then meant "on the processing line".... funny how we see it differently now.

1:32 Like Cortana promo))) 8:22 This type of memory is not obsolete. This memory is resistant to electromagnetic impulses, it is used in intercontinental ballistic missiles, which allows them to take off in the face of an enemy nuclear attack.

Used to program on the 360 in assembler language ! Boy was that machine a real beast of a workhorse !

@rty1955

4 жыл бұрын

I still code in assembly! I wrote complete accounting packages (A/P, A/R, G/L, PAYROLL, PURCHASING) on a 360/30 in 32k!! I would love to see any of todays programmers do that

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

4 жыл бұрын

Roy Yung, Assembly Language is hot stuff. Pretty impressive. VK, at CHAP

@rty1955

4 жыл бұрын

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject yes. To me, its Assembly, then everything else

The Solid Logic Technology (SLT - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_Logic_Technology ) that IBM developed for the System/360 series was used for the Saturn 5's LVDC (Launch Vehicle Digital Computer) that guided the rocket during launch via the rocket's analogue FCC (Flight Control Computer) which gernerated the steering commands for it.

this is great! thanks for posting.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

8 жыл бұрын

+Warren Postma Thanks very much for your kind words. Glad you enjoyed it.

@warp9988

8 жыл бұрын

+Computer History Archives I would love to help make videos like this. I am keeping my eyes open for folks who I could interview who worked in computers long before I was born in 1970.

Real trip down memory lane for me. But this must be very early in the life of the 360. I swear that a number of the things that they showed either never made it to product or looked very different when it did finally become a product. Has anyone actually tried to figure out what was talked about but either never made it to products or looked very different when it finally did.

Really looking forward to all of this coming true. Wait...

IBM (with the 360 family) showed that backward compatibility eventually beats out innovation which eventually also proved true with personally computing.

That mock-up of the 360/30 doesn’t even resemble the earliest mock-up I ever saw.

🎶We've come a long ways, baby!!!🎶

my first machine I worked on was a 1401, then shortly after the 360/30 with a whopping 48k of memory, that's only 48,000 BYTES of memory! I wrote in assembly Lang as COBOL was too slow and too big to run on the machine. it ran 2 partitions or processes at a time a background process (BG) and foreground (FG) process. we always would say "man, what I could do with 4 more K!" the disk drives (IBM -3211 held 5 Meg of data.) ibm called that "external storage" and with memory called "main storage" I used to patch software using the front panel blinking lights and switches, then when it worked well, I would force a crash, obtain a core dump, then correct the original code. sometimes we would use REP cards in an object module before execution. this is a lost art or programming, but what I could accomplish in assembler, COBOL programmers could only dream of. ahhhh I miss those days

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

7 жыл бұрын

Ahh yes, the magic of Assembler language. Only the Guru's of Tech knew Assembler.

@Lazarus0357

7 жыл бұрын

+roy Yung Same here mate! When I moved from a 1401 to a 360 it was amazing, WAAAA, what they will think next! Regards

@Lindsay5137

7 жыл бұрын

ASSEMBLER ? Crikey ANY assembler - even basic was a great advance, the first software course I went on (1964) we had to write what was basically a "Supervisor" (Operating System) in machine language, this was to teach us how that interrupt system worked. all was fine until I discovered a program check in my program check handling routine. Talk about disappearing up your own fundamental. (You are allowed to laugh)

@newjerseybt

6 жыл бұрын

The days of blowing a register after a simple program modifications (adding instructions) or causing a dump because you forgot to subtract "1" from a register before inserting a floating $ sign. Fun days.

@Bhakti-rider

2 жыл бұрын

@@Lindsay5137 Good one. Yes, I delved into channel programming a bit while I was an operator trainee after having studied four languages in a business school.

Looks like a scene from "2001"- fashion and all. 🤘🤖

First computer I ever worked with.

The robotic arms (3:09) seems gentler, from what i have seen in more modern times, these give me the creeps with the how fast, and at the end abruptly slowing down motions, but are more efficient of course.

Damn, my office coulda looked like damn star trek in the 60s

Used one in college. Have things improved!

It’s interesting to see AFAIK, the 360 was the transition from Big Anything to ‘Big Blue’…. The later System 360s shifted to the iconic blue frames, and stayed that way.

@NJMerlin

Жыл бұрын

The 360 came in blue, red, yellow, or gray, but almost everyone got blue unless they had more than one system In the same room. The 370 added white, and the 4300 series added green.

Awesome!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

4 жыл бұрын

Beun007, Thanks very much. `

I worked on a 4381 in early 1990.

@rty1955

5 жыл бұрын

paulanderson79 then you must have run DOS/VSE XP. The 4300 series were meant for DOS. MVS ran much slower than DOS on these machines

I miss the 2741 terminals. I learned to program on them in the early 1970s. APL -- it seemed at the time to be the programming language of the future-- what it turned out to be was explicitly designed for low-baud rate printing terminals. And without such a terminal, it's a bit of an anachronism.

@JohnSGruber

4 жыл бұрын

I loved it too. I remember the domino operator could solve simultaneous linear equations. When you saved the workspace you saved all of the variables values too --so you could resume from exactly where you left off.

The 360/20 was not, I believe, part of the original announcement, and the 360/25 absolutely wasn’t. Early 360 literature mentions the 30, 40, 50, 60, 62, and 70. (The 60 was dropped, the 62 was replaced by the 65 before shipping, and the 70 by the 75.)

The Havard Mark I has 1,600 bytes of RAM. The IBM 360 has RAM of 8,000 bytes to 8,000,000 bytes (8Mb). (8:10)

Damn! Up to 340,000 bytes (characters) per second for a TAPE DRIVE! WOW! That's still impressive! A CD drive at 1x speed is only 150,000 bytes per second.

@jzero4813

6 жыл бұрын

Sean Ramey Well, standard LTO tapes now transfer at 150 MB/sec, so maybe 340kb/sec is not exactly impressive *today*...but still very impressive for the time.

@rty1955

5 жыл бұрын

Sean Ramey tapes were much faster than disk as far as I/o operations

@stargazer7644

6 ай бұрын

These tape drives wrote data in parallel a byte at a time across multiple tracks on the tape unlike today's serial implementations.

Back then, they did sooooooooo much with a computer with less power than a Raspberry Pi. Scientists and engineers, remarkable people. Today, what most of the masses can do with smart phones far more powerful than the 360 is twit and watch cat videos.

@kaioocarvalho

4 жыл бұрын

Well, that is just normal. Back in that time only professional computer scientists and trained company analists had access to computers. The leigh person had no chance to ever use one to do something stupid. Besides, even though as a human activity silly videos and tweets might seem futile, computationally speaking, handling trillions of messages hurdling around the globe through billions of devices in an intelligent and reliable manner, or playing back high resolution and high framerate sharp and colour accurate video with excellent digital sound are indeed absurdly remarkable features. Take twitter and youtube on a time machine and I bet they would prefer to use your phone.

In my early days as an applications programmer when working in the early 1980's at an installation in a Sperry Univac 1100 series environment, mass storage (that is, disk storage) was available at a premium. A lot of large files were written out to magnetic tape. Fast forward to the early 1990's, Fast forward 20+ years, when working in an IBM mainframe environment (mid-range IBM 9370 in a VM/SP OS), still mass storage (in the IBM world called DASD or Direct Access Storage Device), the systems programmer who was the gatekeeper of mass storage was still stingy with allocating disk storage even though there was ample storage available. It was a real pain.

@stargazer7644

6 ай бұрын

I worked on Univac 1108s.

私は日本人ですが、IBM360システムの保守をしていました、故障すると、日本全国のむ、機械の保守をしておりました、とても、なつかしく、思います、その後、NECのACOS1000の開発、および保守を担当してきました、とても懐かしく思います。

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

2 жыл бұрын

Google Translate says: " I'm Japanese, but I was doing maintenance on the IBM360 system, and when it broke down, I was doing maintenance on machines all over Japan, I feel very nostalgic, and then NEC's ACOS1000 development, And I've been in charge of maintenance, I miss it very much." ---- Thank you for your lovely comment! ~ Victor, CHAP

This is so cool

Waaay ahead of its time, but how to run it?

I love this stuff

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

4 жыл бұрын

Me to. ~ CHAP

Anything but Metric: They measured the size of transistors in 'thimble overflows'? Oh, and the music background is totally manic. This was such a monumental machine. You can't read more than a few computer history stories without hearing about the IBM/360. It was everywhere. It was everything. I happened to grow up on Univac, which I thought was a much prettier, more modern name. Hahaa!

In this video @10:10 the narrator spoke of "power of growth" and went into the subject of how this IBM mainframe system can grow with adding hardware to the system. I wonder if any companies back then had issues with electrical power shortages when additional IBM equipment was added without an upgrade with the incoming electrical supply. I worked for National Advanced Systems (a National Semiconductor subsidiary) back in the early 1980s that had a computer room where engineers kept adding mainframe computer equipment similar to what's in this video. It resulted with an overload to the electrical transformer to the computer room, resulting with it overheating and nearly catching fire. As a stopgap measure to minimize the overheating hazard, an HVAC contractor was called in to install an air duct with the chilled air directed onto the transformer to prevent the transformer from overheating. A short time later an electrical contractor was called in to replace the transformer with one that handled a higher electrical load.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

2 жыл бұрын

Hi Bloqk-16, you make an excellent point. These giant machines were massive energy hogs especially for businesses that had no prior experience with big computer systems. Vacuum tub based equipment, electromechanical tape drives and disks, A/C, all drew a great deal of electrical power. And there is the added issue of having "clean power" since early machines could not handle minor spikes in voltage very well. Thanks for raising this observation. It is certainly worth mentioning from a historical perspective! ~ Victor, CHAP

@GH-oi2jf

Жыл бұрын

It would only be a problem if the facilities management was poor. The power requirements of each piece of equipment was known and documented. A new computer room would have been designed to provide a specified amount of power sufficient for whatever would be installed initially, and with a margin for growth.

@stargazer7644

6 ай бұрын

These things didn't exactly plug into electrical outlets. The power supply had to be installed by an electrician.

cool

Back then, Memory referred to storage :)

question: once they had developed secondary storage on magnetic tape, why did they have to keep using punched cards? couldn't they just use tapes to store the programs & data? like early PCs, e.g., Apple II, Commodore, TRS-80 used cassette recorders?

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

3 жыл бұрын

Hi CARL iCON, good question. Punch cards and punch card machines were very prevalent at that time period. Raw data was input from punch card operators (data entry) by hand, to create the data on the cards. The cards were read into the computer system and processed, with output to tape, or directly from card to tape. I don't think one could type fast enough to input directly from keyboard into a tape machine. Cards were used less and less over time, as other faster ways of data and program input were developed. Perhaps someone else can come up with a better explanation. Thanks again for your question. ~ Victor, CHAP

@CARLiCON

3 жыл бұрын

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Thanks Vic, I think I see what you mean now. So before tape, there was only punched cards for secondary storage of programs & data, therefore the infrastructure was all in place to have multiple keypunch operators keying in large volumes of data that way. The keypunch machines were not connected to the mainframe, (only the card reader) so there would have been no way to get that data into mainframe RAM (to be saved to tape) other than the programming console which would have been much much slower. Thanks for the excellent video!

@GH-oi2jf

Жыл бұрын

Hollerith cards were used for input because they were easily edited by adding or changing cards.

How was the transistor conected to the printed contact wires on the substrate?

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

4 жыл бұрын

Hi Christopher, perhaps this may help: see Wikipedia's article on IBM's Solid Logic Technology en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Solid_Logic_Technology

I've said for many years that electrons are too big and the speed of light is too slow. Thus both impact upon computing power and speed.

I start with a IBM-PC XT at 8MHz and 640K RAM + 360K Disk Drive, but, this video is the Begins !!!

@GH-oi2jf

Жыл бұрын

No, there were many computers before the IBM 360 Series.

They have pretty good use at Banks, It was a clone of this system I remember, The Century 200 was pretty much like the IBM360

I've got more computing power than that "wall" in my pocket now!

I've always loved how IBM's brochures (and it now seems sales promo films) had red accents on the equipment. And there were no-cost RPQs for a variety of colo(u)rs. Does anyone know anyone who had a colo(u)r different from IBM blue?

@johnlister

4 жыл бұрын

And here we are 55 years later and there are programs that were compiled for System/360 that will still run now. A great achievement.

@Bhakti-rider

2 жыл бұрын

@@johnlister Banks, insurance companies, government agencies...

7:19 Fitter, happier, more productive

What is the terminal at 14:48 - 14:54 ? An IBM terminal with a round display - that must be their first, but I have been unable to find anything about it.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

4 жыл бұрын

Hi Paul, good question. I did a little research on the IBM site, didn't find an answer yet. Perhaps one of our IBM'ers can point us to more info on the round display terminal you mention. IBM had many, many products in the early days that came and went so fast there is not a lot of info on them, without some digging. Thanks for spotting this! ~ Victor, at CHAP

@paulstubbs7678

4 жыл бұрын

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject I've dug through a few early IBM manuals etc, no joy. Also Google searches for IBM terminal. display station, '360 peripherals etc. etc. same, no joy. I saw it quite a while ago in a different video, just one image, and thought it might have been an early prototype that never made it to market - however being in this system 360 video makes me think it was more than that.

@paulstubbs7678

4 жыл бұрын

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject IBM 1015 Inquiry Display terminal Finally found it - yah - and has this been a loooong search. threader.app/thread/1173829224026628101 - half way down.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

4 жыл бұрын

Hi Paul, fantastic! Yes, you found it! Thanks. Now we have the model number, we can find more info too. Here's some more ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/IBM-ProdAnn/1015.pdf ~ Victor, CHAP

International Business Machine!

@majordenisbloodnok7048

3 жыл бұрын

Commonly called "I'm Bl**dy Marvelous" behind their backs by us users

Pretty soon Intel and AMD won't be able to downsize circuitry any farther, then we wil enter the molecular or optic computer age. Making silicon obsolete.

I wonder if a large core storage like this exists anywhere in the world today.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

8 жыл бұрын

Thanks for your comment. Check out this link for the NSA's giant computer data center. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

@Lindsay5137

7 жыл бұрын

Yep, I've got an NCP from a 3705.

@stargazer7644

6 ай бұрын

I had a customer who ran this technology until 2000.

August 7th 1944 Mark One Specs: 1600 bytes of internal storage. Input output versitility. A modem. Backward compatibility. AND LATER: April 7, 1964 System 360 Specs: Massive tape drives. Punch cards. CRT Displays. Teletype interface. And a pretty girl to operate it (Yes the first programmers were women.) 8 Mega bytes of internal magnetic core storage, no refreshing, no power needed to maintain memory. Solid Logic Technology: the grandfather of the first IC Chips. (Yes the IC makers were women.) Optional Multi-processor systems. Paper Tape readers, high-speed printers, Removable disk pack hard drives. AND NOW: January 7th 2020 a wearhouse full of these computers can be replaced by a single $5 Raspberry Pi zero W in your pocket. WOW! Now that's progress children. Now I am waiting for Superman Crystal Optical Holographic AI computers to hit the marketplace.

Think about it, in 1964 you could get a computer with 8MB of RAM. Think about the first computer that YOU had with 8MB of ram. It wasn't until the mid 1990s that I had one. Also it blows my mind that they're talking about gigabytes of storage in 1964. When did I first have a 1GB drive? Probably around 1996 or 1997 for me. Now here's one to blow your mind. The IBM Z Enterprise which is the current series is directly compatible back to the System/360.

@Awesomeman1987

7 жыл бұрын

I was pretty sure he was talking bits not bytes. it would have been a single megabyte, still remarkable.

@wlellis001

7 жыл бұрын

I was an IBM CE back then, and one of my first 'crises' was when a 360/30 lost all of it's RAM - a whopping 64KB! My field manager had to get authorization from IBM Corporate to totally replace the BOMB (as the memory unit was called) because it cost $64,000! I used to give talks to a Senior Citizens group interested in computing after I retired in 1996 and tell that story, then whip out the latest Best Buy ad and show that several MB of memory could be purchased for about $20

Oh my, how far "solid logic technology" has come. Way more primitive than I remember when I worked in a fab in 2004, which was 15 years ago. Even then the wafers were 8" or 12" I wonder what they are now!

@axizepp

3 жыл бұрын

it depends on the process. if some power/analog components are manufactured they probably still use 12" wafers.but when it comes to cpu's they use 30"

They had me at one thousand character per second paper tape reader, I gotta get me some of that!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

2 жыл бұрын

RWZiggy, me too. But how much paper tape would be needed to hold the KZread video database? ....Charles, CHAP

@RWZiggy

2 жыл бұрын

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Well asking such a question to old computer geek you'll cause an answer to be generated! Since one inch 8 channel IBM tape had ten "characters" to the inch, and youtube database is 45 TB, we have 4.5 tera-inches. Though usually one bit was used for parity which I think is good idea for so many inches of data, so we'll take 8 / 7 of that for 5.1 tera-inches of paper. A roll was 1,000 inches so a mere 5.1 billion rolls of paper. I've only used paper cards back in the 1980s, my mom used the smaller 5 bit teletype tape on a "word processor", one tape with people's data like name and address, and one tape with form letter to send them.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks! You've got some good experience here! It is interesting to remember how many different formats of paper tape and cards there have been over the years too! ~ Victor

So, this was actually the cradle of the digital computer as we know it today...

@GH-oi2jf

Жыл бұрын

The System 360 was not the cradle. Computers were fairly mature in concept when the 360 came out.

I"m sold. Where do I purchase such a mahvulus machine?

Wow I had no idea that networking existed in the 60's at all

@Lindsay5137

7 жыл бұрын

Yes it did

@stargazer7644

6 ай бұрын

We've had national data networks since 1861 when Western Union built its first transcontinental telegraph line.

My knowledge of computer systems has remained consistent at I still don't have clue.

THATS WHAT I CALL A SYNTHESIZER!!!!

I need one of this to understand my wife

OK, I'm sold. I'll get a 360 as soon as it gets a port of Google Chrome.

@bertoid

6 жыл бұрын

I've actually personally owned several IBM System/360's, back in the 1980's. Got them for almost nix, and trashed them for the gold. I wish I'd kept the front panels though.

отличный рекламный ролик для 60 годов!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

7 жыл бұрын

I think this translates to "Nice commercial for over 60 years!" hmmm, hope I got that right....

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

6 жыл бұрын

{Google Translation: "I teach for a class on operating systems. It is necessary to look if the Russians, at the same time, also came up with their systems and transistors"} - Do you know of a good site for history of Russian computer developments over the years? -

More than 7MB on a single disk pack :-)

@johannesthelen7018

8 жыл бұрын

Yes, exactly 7.25Mb if using IBM programming system. There is couple nice details of these early IBMs drives: 2311 disk drive uses hydraulic actuator for the heads! Disk pack size is big: 14" diameter and weights several kilos. Format of that (Model I) is sectorless, it uses track based format. 2311 drive is "stupid", it just has just some simple circuits for heads, etc. It needs 2841 Storage Control Unit to work (which is 400kg cabinet). That 2841 is interface for the CPU, makes format and convert serial-parallel data. Microcode (2841s internal instructions) is put in inductive ROM memory, also known as TROS. I have one IBM system in my collection (and under restoration) with same type drives, these are very impressive things!

8 mill characters of core storage , well that should en sufficient to write a letter to grandma ...

a few megs of storage now we have 18tb hd's

Did they really cut up the floor to hide all the wiring from module to module? There's not one outlet or wiring shown in the pictures--marketing or real? I wish my office were that clean...

@lookoutforchris

7 жыл бұрын

Raised floors are standard in most high performance computing centers. Not sure they do raised floors in your average data center but the big boys still roll like that.

@alexpowers3697

7 жыл бұрын

Sweet--thanks for the info.

@jameshay7247

7 жыл бұрын

The floor is elevated, the cables run underneath. That was the standard set-up.

@z84c00

3 жыл бұрын

Do not belive these stories about "raised floors" and "cables underneath the ground" - IBM used an advanced wireless power and data transfer technology recovered from the Roswell alien spaceship. Later then they revealed what we know now as "WLAN".

@martincox4520

2 жыл бұрын

Moving equipment involved a lot of planning to get the holes in the floor tiles in the right place

Is it just me, or did the section on chip manufacturing remind anyone of the opening to Willy Wonka? I'm reading Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks so I watched this. Some of the terms in the book fly over my head but I am getting the workload and responsibility division. Also, I read that the chemicals used in processor manufacturing could be quite nasty. At MOS they turned the blueprint paper orange and were very bad for the environment.

I have a grand grand grand grand son of these computers, Thinkpad!

@ImNotADeeJay

6 жыл бұрын

IBM or Lenovo?

This is back when everyone wore button ups and ties and dresses

I came here after watching Colossus: The Forbin Project.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

3 жыл бұрын

Scott, ah, yes, one of my favorites! "This is the voice of world control.." a classic, from Control Data Corporation. ~ Victor, CHAP