Very nostalgic. My early education and professional careers were “punched out” on systems such as this. Unix systems became my bread and butter later and remain so. Thank you for the nice trip down memory lane. It’s amazing how many important systems were birthed on this type of hardware.
Agreed. When you program in machine language and optimise every single step, you can do amazing things with low resources. Sadly, today much of the software we use seems to grow to take up all the resources, with terrible optimisation. That said, the software is far more complex I guess. My first computer at 1k of RAM... was amazing how clever some people got writing code for it!
3270 terminals were _highly_ intelligent,_ having their own CPUs and "display programming language". Combined with CICS, they were an early form of client-server web computing, where the end user types everything into the terminal and then pressed the XMIT (aka Send) button. That transmitted the whole block of data to the mainframe. Until you pressed XMIT, the mainframe completely ignored you. This is in stark contrast to minicomputer OSs like Unix/Linux and VMS, where the OS must process each and every keystroke and cursor movement. Bottom line: web-based client-server computing is just a new and horribly inefficient version of a programming paradigm that's been around for *55 YEARS.*
The IBM mainframe does not have to keep an separate active program for state for each user. When I used to program CICS, back in the 1980s, you could store context in hidden areas on the user's terminal and/or in something call TSQ - Temporary Storage Queues. When the user pressed SEND, the CICS program would fetch the context based on the data from the user, do the work and return a new screen image back to the user. I do some PHP web programming these days and my programs are designed very much like a CICS program since there are cookies that come from the user and I can thus restore the context, do the work and return a page back to the user. The web server needs to remember little of a particular user's transaction. The web server has the equivalent of TSQs with session info. The comment about OS processing every keystroke is possibly true for a UART connection but I think Ethernet sends info in blocks(?) It is definitely not "... horribly inefficient ..." Computer folks are not going to make badly designed web servers.
Thanks for the wonderful film of old computer tech. Today, a $15 "Raspberry PI zero 2 w" linux computer can run IBM MVS 3.8 at the same performance level of a 1979 IBM 3033.
@@jblyon2 honestly, I think "They" expected operators to all run out, and press the Bid Red Halon Button _as they were leaving._ Of course, sometimes idiots put the halon button deep inside the room, far from the door.
@RonJohn63 Lots of bad designs out there. I saw someone with a story posted somewhere that the halon button at the loading dock entrance was next to 2 other buttons, one of which was also red and commonly used. Naturally it got hit by mistake one day and everyone had just enough time to get out, but they all got out thankfully. I've also heard of similar bad designs for the quench buttons for MRIs.
@@jblyon2oh, they still use fire suppression systems with similar properties to halon in new installs. They are just hcfc or hfc based not CFC based. I have to deal with one at work.
In this day and age of solid state storage, are spinning rust disks considered sequentially accessed media? You still have to wait for the disk with the correct data to rotate and pass under the read/write heads, whereas solid state truly is random access, as there is effectively zero latency for access.
I’m curious about the crossfeed that happens at the last couple minutes of the video. It’s very faint and sounds like someone is speaking in reverse. What kind of medium did this come off of?…..or is it imprinting from the tape closest to it?
It is mainfram storage so yes RAM. 8 MB was expensive. The 3033 was at its launch in 1977 100 % faster than the previous fastest processor. Expect the leasing cost over 4 years for 8 MB to be millions.
Noisy and slow, took ages to get something done, only high trained personnel was capable of operating these molochs. And then the costs, a hard drive costed something like a mansion on a tropical island mainframe costed something like that tropical island itself.
Very nostalgic. My early education and professional careers were “punched out” on systems such as this. Unix systems became my bread and butter later and remain so. Thank you for the nice trip down memory lane. It’s amazing how many important systems were birthed on this type of hardware.
I was there, worked as an operator in martin Hall. Breagan terminals and 3033's with 8MB of storage!! This was the main building, as I remember it.
It's amazing to think that a computer with 8mb of memory could do all those things and support all of those agencies.
Agreed. When you program in machine language and optimise every single step, you can do amazing things with low resources. Sadly, today much of the software we use seems to grow to take up all the resources, with terrible optimisation. That said, the software is far more complex I guess. My first computer at 1k of RAM... was amazing how clever some people got writing code for it!
3270 terminals were _highly_ intelligent,_ having their own CPUs and "display programming language". Combined with CICS, they were an early form of client-server web computing, where the end user types everything into the terminal and then pressed the XMIT (aka Send) button. That transmitted the whole block of data to the mainframe. Until you pressed XMIT, the mainframe completely ignored you.
This is in stark contrast to minicomputer OSs like Unix/Linux and VMS, where the OS must process each and every keystroke and cursor movement.
Bottom line: web-based client-server computing is just a new and horribly inefficient version of a programming paradigm that's been around for *55 YEARS.*
... there was a lot of swapping and let us not forget "initiators", job batching and job prioritization
The IBM mainframe does not have to keep an separate active program for state for each user. When I used to program CICS, back in the 1980s, you could store context in hidden areas on the user's terminal and/or in something call TSQ - Temporary Storage Queues. When the user pressed SEND, the CICS program would fetch the context based on the data from the user, do the work and return a new screen image back to the user. I do some PHP web programming these days and my programs are designed very much like a CICS program since there are cookies that come from the user and I can thus restore the context, do the work and return a page back to the user. The web server needs to remember little of a particular user's transaction. The web server has the equivalent of TSQs with session info.
The comment about OS processing every keystroke is possibly true for a UART connection but I think Ethernet sends info in blocks(?) It is definitely not "... horribly inefficient ..." Computer folks are not going to make badly designed web servers.
@@ablebaker99it's not the web servers, but the slow and bloated JavaScript fed by the web server.
The singing printer is awesome
And it was stunningly loud (even under the insulated box).
Lol of course it's Tiger Rag
🤣
All I could think was "This is a pretty nifty music box, it even prints...oh...oooooh...that printout is the demonstration...ahhhh"
I remember seeing pictures of a 3 MB hard drive from the 1960s that was being carried by a forklift! We’ve come a LONG way!
Wow drum style memory still existed in 1980. Ahh the 2305 was already end of sale by 1980 it came out in 1970. The last of the drum era.
Thanks for the wonderful film of old computer tech. Today, a $15 "Raspberry PI zero 2 w" linux computer can run IBM MVS 3.8 at the same performance level of a 1979 IBM 3033.
Fantastic! Takes me back to the mid 70's
Just like the Cray supercomputer, it also uses a motor-generator that boosts its frequency from 60Hz to 450Hz.
Very cool.. we have come along way..
I think some current kitchen appliances have more computing capabilities.
11:51 Will suffocate anyone who's stuck in the computer room, but won't damage the computers.
Funny how halon stopped being permitted when the computer equipment became less valuable than the average lawsuit payout for wrongful deaths.
@@jblyon2 honestly, I think "They" expected operators to all run out, and press the Bid Red Halon Button _as they were leaving._
Of course, sometimes idiots put the halon button deep inside the room, far from the door.
@RonJohn63 Lots of bad designs out there. I saw someone with a story posted somewhere that the halon button at the loading dock entrance was next to 2 other buttons, one of which was also red and commonly used. Naturally it got hit by mistake one day and everyone had just enough time to get out, but they all got out thankfully. I've also heard of similar bad designs for the quench buttons for MRIs.
@@jblyon2 "I saw someone with a story posted somewhere".
lol
@@jblyon2oh, they still use fire suppression systems with similar properties to halon in new installs. They are just hcfc or hfc based not CFC based. I have to deal with one at work.
I burned my eyes out on those monitors for many years LOL
And now my phone has ten times the capacity of that entire room.
If you want one of these for your own, just fork over 4.5Mil$$ - or run Hercules and install TK4- a pre-configured MVS 3.8j for free.
6250 BPI does not mean bytes per inch it means bits per inch
The "UPs!" system!
Oh, 1980. You so crazy!
Well explained in detail😁
When I was a little kid, my mom worked from home and had a big machine in our basement and she entered data on punch cards, kind of like a typewriter.
That sounds like a Telex machine... the channel CuriousMarc has a great look at one
In this day and age of solid state storage, are spinning rust disks considered sequentially accessed media? You still have to wait for the disk with the correct data to rotate and pass under the read/write heads, whereas solid state truly is random access, as there is effectively zero latency for access.
There is always delay caused by capacitance so it's never zero even if drives are solid state.
The way he said modem!
I’m curious about the crossfeed that happens at the last couple minutes of the video. It’s very faint and sounds like someone is speaking in reverse. What kind of medium did this come off of?…..or is it imprinting from the tape closest to it?
This is 2024.... Runnnnnnn
I'm old cus I remember this. 🤣
Is 8 megabytes the ram or the CPU’s cache?
Kind of sounded like cache,the way it was described
Cache memory was measured in KBytes back then. I recall working on a Honeywell mainframe back in 1982 that had 4KB of cache memory.
It's basically main system RAM. The CPU will have a very limited instruction cache.
It is mainfram storage so yes RAM. 8 MB was expensive. The 3033 was at its launch in 1977 100 % faster than the previous fastest processor.
Expect the leasing cost over 4 years for 8 MB to be millions.
3033 was announced I believe in 1977 and was a big deal back in the day.
Will it run crysis?
11:27 A motor generator, changing electricity from 69hz to 415hz jeezemabob
For only 7 million… no wonder the Apple II and soon IBM PC took over
8MB memory and 6 gig storage ? who would ever need that much? 64 k and a Datasette are more than enough.
PL/1 is the language of the future!
Might want to edit down the tail end a bit. Great stuff otherwise.
Why ? Why the beard and the glasses ! 😂
Engineer chic of the day.
Noisy and slow, took ages to get something done, only high trained personnel was capable of operating these molochs. And then the costs, a hard drive costed something like a mansion on a tropical island mainframe costed something like that tropical island itself.