[ale] FTP files

[Jim Lynch]

On 01/23/2013 07:32 PM, Mike Harrison wrote:
> Jay:
>
>>> What's a punch card?
>> Ouch, I remember them. How about punched tape?
>
> I used to boot (with a hand operated paper tape crank)
> an HP system used for nursing/heart monitoring.
>
> It got upgraded to a system with an electric motor for reading the 
> paper tape.. much smoother than my trying to do a boot by hand..
>
> And then.. A Miracle, that got upgraded to a Data General Nova II with 
> an 8" floppy boot, that would read a 5mb "hard disk". Wow!
>
> (Yeah, I'm old...)
> _______________________________________________
The strangest system I ever worked on was a Link system  From the same 
people that brought you the Link Trainer flight simulator (1929-195x).  
It had no ram.  The programs and data were on a drum drive.  What was 
the most fun was that you had to place the next instruction on the right 
place on the drum based on the amount of time it took to execute the 
previous instruction, otherwise it would take an extra revolution to 
find/execute the instruction.  IIRC the distance to the next instruction 
was part of the current instruction.  I didn't last long at that, it was 
a bit tedious. It's interesting that this was the control computer for a 
nuclear reactor control room simulator.  It about got worn out after 3 
mile island.

Jim.