Meet Connor Krukosky - the "Mainframe Kid." At 18, Connor bought, disassembled and rebuilt a 1,500-pound IBM mainframe. Now he's an IBMer. Watch to learn about his inspiring story.
I watched the original video where he presented his work - I recommend everyone watch it. The sheer amount of hard work and research the kid put in, and the wonderful assistance he received from the computing community, makes for an amazing story. I'm glad he landed his dream job!
Agreed. I thought it was gonna be like 'idiot kid buys ridiculous computer that he has no idea about just like... because'. Also not my thing but I agree about the job security. Lots of large organisations I've worked for have mainframes for all their records.There's always a few people who are printed out blank paycheques every month to source parts for them, update the software and keep them running. We're talking global systems here that would cause chaos if they went down. Well done to him! IMO the title almost discredits how much work he's put in. He's a good presenter too.
I applaud this kid. I'm in my mid-60's now, and when I was 20, I went through Control Data Institute Computer Tech program. We trained on a CDC 3300 discrete transistor "supercomputer". In the late 70's I bought an IBM 370/145 mainframe from a local University, installing it a bedroom in my own house. It was a blast to play with.
Kudos to IBM for recognizing talent in someone who was unabashed in his interest in all things computational, particularly his ability in making the IBM mainframe operational.
Hey Connor , boy you really bring back memories. I use to work for Stanford Research Institute in the 1970's and we had IBM mainframes, then I went to work in silicon valley, and mainframes were the rage ...lol Eventually I ended up at Apple, yep, mainframes there as well, who would have thunk it huh ? Thanks for the memories , and good luck in your career, never stop doing what you love... :-)
@Ho Lam There was this famed encounter we heard about in the 1980's tech community where Seymour Cray (the godfather of supercomputing) was told that Apple had just used a Cray to design the new Macintosh whereupon Seymour Cray replied, (something like) "That's funny, I just used a Mac to design the new Cray".
When I was a teenager I threw away my bed, put a server rack in its place, and slept on the floor but this kid puts me to shame. I'm blown away and inspired by what he's accomplished. Connor, you are an amazing person. Never stop learning. You have a wonderful future ahead of you.
m8ur88 I sleep on a yoga mat on the floor. Saved money and space and it’s good for alignment. It started because I sold my bed to move and then ended up to broke to get a new one after I moved. By the time I had the money I couldn’t sleep as well on a bed anyway.
He got a job at IBM! I literally watched that talk he gave last night, wow thats amazing! Well done Connor and now you can get all those parts you needed!
My grandfather worked in Poughkeepsie on the exec level for IBM for many years before retiring. He has several patents that were credited to him. Passed away last year around this time. IBM will always hold a special part in my heart because of him :(
That's how powerful support is. Especially if it's from parents. I saw a lot of grown-up kids doing exceptional things on what they are good at just because these parents are in full support.
It was about 300~ USD extra a month with the mainframe running for a full month. It consumes about 2.2kW Electric is expensive where my parents live though.
@@Conmega1 your parents are lucky you didn't get an IBM 3083 E with 20 tape drives, numerous 3330, 3350 and 3380 DASDs, three StorageTek high speed chain printers, like what I was lucky to start out my job career with in 1983 ... they'd have a pretty solid central heating system for the house that way, I remember opening a door on a rack and being shocked by a water pipe with a man's diameter ...
What a pair of absolutely amazing parents.. We all could only dream to be this fortunate, or looking at it another way, we could strive to be those parents.
Back in the 80's it was my C64 that kept my interest launching me into technology before it was cool. The C64 was quite a bit smaller, less complex and a fraction of the power consumption of any mainframe yet a ton of fun. Whenever I could sneak on the single home phone line and connecting to local BBS's going 300 Baud, the experience a gift and has lasted a life time. This kid has a cool future ahead of himself. Good to see his parents and people praising his passion.
It sounds like your story is similar to mine. I started on a Timex-Sinclair 1500, but quickly switched to a c64. 300 baud shoved in the wide slot in back. I was so cool. No acousti-couple! I even ran a BBS for a short while on an IBM PCjr.
I started on an Apple II E in HS, and the next year, my parents surprised me with with a TI-99/4A for my birthday, which is in the summer, so school was out. I would spend Hours in my room coding Basic. they also bought me the speech synthesizer module. Man, I was totally in my element! 😀
Followed this story and completely amazed. I've spent almost 10yrs in the IT, infrastructure and seeing this level of interest renews my own into keep learning.
Great job!!! Another follow your passion example with IBM in the story. Working for IBM was one of my goals and following my passion led to it happening as well.
I watched the video of Connor's talk at SHARE and I have to say it was impressive. That kind of tenacity and initiative to basically teach himself about incredibly complicated topics that corporations spend big bucks learning is just amazing and inspiring. He's the kind of person you want on your team. Good job, Connor! Good move, IBM.
Wow, I`ve just watched his video on Share, really glad to see him getting endorsed by and get a job at IBM. Now I say we'll be hearing more about him in the future.
Just stumble on this video. Saw the original one and was wondering what ever happened to the kid. Glad to see it's working out for you. Keep up the work.
Great story Connor! I had the privilege of operating IBM mainframes in Boulder, CO in the 80s after testing 9" magnetic tape and assembling 8" diskette drives for many years. What a workhorse the mainframe was and still is.
It not "faster" it's just different. Most computers (super and consumer grade) calculate floating points much better than any mainframe can. But mainframes exist to calculate decimal floating points. They are also far more reliable. That's why most financial transactions (stocks, flights etc..) are calculated via mainframes.
The talk was intriguing and this video just completes it for me. Great work Connor. (BTW, there's an Apache 500 error when connecting connecting to your website, might want to fix that ;))
If he is into legacy hardware and legacy programming he can make millions as a government contractor. A lot of government agencies specially military still use 70s era technology and the support system is depleted.
@@nojatha4637no. It’s because when you have a critical system that works reliably you keep using it. There’s no point in incurring the cost of rewriting that mainframe software to run on anything else as long as there’s a mainframe to run it on.
Awesome story and great video. Connor and I are in the same vintage computer club in NJ and I never knew about this video intil now. Go Connor! Congrats man!
Great project! For those of us who don't have the space or time to rebuild the MF hardware, you can run licensed copies of VM and MVS under Hercules under Windows or Linux..
@@AliGameZz wasn't commenting about that. I was commenting on the fact that the dad had to stop himself from saying "investment" to say "opportunity for Connor" instead. It's him first 100%. That's just how people think and that especially seems to be how most parents think.
ilusions4 Well raising a kid is expensive and probably the mainframe is costly. They will sell it at a higher price later, when the kid has studied it all/is bored with it... I don't see a problem. Money keeps the world spinning.
@@kristiyanivanov7414 If you have the excess money to throw at your kid's interest, it's extremely scummy for your first thought to be "how can I get this money back?". It should be thought of as a sunk cost, not an investment. An investment is education.. not a piece of tech you know nothing about that your child is interested in.
@herbert first sort of problem: IBM mainframe is usually PowerPC I think, which isn't x84/amd64, so lots of programs don't run without getting the original developers involved. Yes, I do believe you can turn part of it off. No graphics I think. Best thing a mainframe can do is pushing data around. It has the best I/O paths of it's time and good system for when hardware fails it will continue doing what it did before. So it's great for databases, etc.Games, not so much, not even number crushing really. Well, if you pay a lot you can have a lot of cores.
My Cousin Scott Murray worked for IBM and was picked up when he was spotted at 11 years old for his programming skills in Aylesbury area. Very proud of him and now he lives in America. I personally went for more all types of electronics pulling them apart and making something completely different. Still do it to this day. My favourite is communications and do it all solely on my own.
@@tripplefives1402 would pci passthrough be possible at all in this, I really dont know much about mainframes or how the hardware interfaces with the os
In this shitty little world : "It is better to be lucky than skilled". "You have to stand up and proclaim yourself a master/genius/special". Actually the opposite of what a responsible parent should teach their children. Ofcourse history might prove such a person to have been a fraud. However even decades later their supporters are likely to have more power than their opposition, so they will just change the history books just a tiny little bit ...
It is a thinkpad! A T61p. IBM actually used Thinkpads for SEs until they sold the brand off to Lenovo and when they requested a laptop that can run 24/7/365 Lenovo said they were crazy, no laptop can run like that... Has something to say about how IBM made Thinkpads and how Lenovo makes them...
I used OS/2 for 10 years on my personal computer and compared to MS-Windows at the time it was amazing. Sometimes my PC ran for 9 months before needing a reboot. I can't say that about any modern PC operating system sadly.
Reminds me of one of my old friends from my teen years. His parents were well off and indulged his hobby of collecting second hand computer gear. His particular specialty was also mainframes -- 1980s Cray Supercomputers, in particular. He was also fluent in Unix back when most kids my age barely knew our way around MS DOS.
Cool video IBM, thanks for showing more. I hope to one day get some kind of mainframe aswell :P Cobol, Fortran, some other OS, uni* :D Keep supporting these kids, they grow up and youll be still in business :D
There was a kid a decade or more ago that was younger than him that bought a mainframe that is older than this one and set it up in his basement. I can't find anything about it online, but he was the original mainframe kid, not this guy!
I like the dad in the end saying: "It was a fantastic inve... opportunity for Connor." Freudian slip, maybe? ;) Regardless, fantastic that they supported Connor throughout and equally fantastic that he's gotten to where he is because of it!
10/10 parents though, the whole, no idea what he's doing but he's not hurting anyone and he's passionate about it and it could become something.... and it did!
I really want to be like him! I already got a vintage computer collection so, somewhere I guess lol. But also, how did he get the mainframe down there?
