Computer dating

[Sp!ke]

Well ok, more like hard disk drive dating.


I saw this recently and though it highlighted how technology has moved on ...

Below is a picture of a disk, its just under one metre across, and probably weighs as much as a small car engine. Its capacity is 300Mb.

What date would you put on its manufacture? Top marks if you get the year correct.

 

[television]

1964

 

[verytalldave]

1971

 

[MikeL]

1876

 

[ROBB]

1954








and i bet it still works (and more reliably than mine )

 

[Dryce]

1980

 

[Howard]

1983 ...

Initially , i thought you were looking to pick up some tips on online dating .....

I thought ' What about Mrs Sp!ke ? '

 

[Sp!ke]

Surprised that your so far out Television... Thought you'd be closer just from the components.

no one there yet.

 

[television]

1983 ...

Initially , i thought you were looking to pick up some tips on online dating .....

I thought ' What about Mrs Sp!ke ? '

Why do you think that I was the first to answer, I thought at last, something warm and sof that smells good

 

[Venomous]

1985 HP 7933 by chance? But they were 404MB...

 

[Sp!ke]

getting close...

 

[BTB 500]

When I started in IT (1970s) we were using IBM 2314 disks; they were just under 30 Mb per volume I think.

The mainframe (System 360 running OS/MFT) had 360 kb of memory, but the maximum you were allowed to use normally was 90 kb. And I was involved in migrating from paper tape to punch card input

We also used two ICL 2904 mainframes running EXEC II for an online sales ledger, which I think had only 48kb of memory each! And an older 1904 running GEORGE 2 for batch work.

The ICL machines used octal, the IBM hexadecimal. And they used different character codes on the punch cards. So you were in trouble if you used the wrong machine ... we had two Sperry Univac punches side by side, one set up for IBM and the other ICL.

We had the first "desktop" computer from Hewlett Packard in the early 80s - it actually covered the top of a desk!

And later I remember installing Lotus 1-2-3 on a twin floppy IBM PC (the original PC - no hard disk, green screen).

Eeh lad, them were t'days ...

 

[Benzowner]

1986, weren't these the disks that had to be manually spun before hitting the on button?

 

[kjay]

Is this thread not about Polish brides then?

 

[kjay]

Anyway, in answere to you question......



2003 - I know this cos I've got one similar in my glove box

 

[Venomous]

Anyway, in answere to you question......



2003 - I know this cos I've got one similar in my glove box

What a Polish Bride? How Handy!

How about 1984?

 

[Sp!ke]

What a Polish Bride? How Handy!

How about 1984?

Venomous hits the nail on the head - well done. Not that long ago in the scheme of things, hell my cars older.

Actually a Hitachi unit.

So you remember the old drives that looked like curling puks then that you had to physically load in to the mainframe depending on what data you were after?

Amasing really when you consider there are 8GB pen drives out there now or when you see each box below has around a petabyte of storage...

yup, thats 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes

 

[Howard]

That room looks like it should be in Area 51

Cool though

 

[BTB 500]

Yes you had to put SETUP control cards in the JCL to specify which disk volumes you needed mounting for each job. We had hardcopy VTOC listings in binders so you could look up where your files were, if necessary

 

[Sp!ke]

That room looks like it should be in Area 51

Quite close to the mark actually...