This brings back lots of great memories! Worked in a data center much like the one in your film. Loved the part about the mainframes needing clean power. Most folks today don't realized that clean, "conditioned power" was a vital requirement back in the day. We also had a "motor generator" combination that delivered clean power. Great tour and explanations you gave here. Thanks very much for posting this! ~ VK
I started on my computer science degree using VM/CMS on a 370, and spent countless hours sitting in front of a 3270. PCs weren't released until a year or so later, and it was a couple of years before we got a lab full of them.
Oh wow. Such great memories. My mom used to drag me into work with her when I was a kid. That company was all IBM. I think they went from a 360 to a 4341 to a 4381 to a 3090 and finally to the Z Series. I interviewed at that company 20 years later just to see what the computer room looked like now. Didn't want the job but the walk through the building was fantastic!
Started my career in an mvs/360 jes3 shop as a print pool operator, on 1980, and worked in many departments over the years. it was a different world back then, when work was fun. Troubleshooting hardware errors or job abends was the bomb.
My laptop has 16gigs of memory. However the IBM 360 mainframe I programmed in college had 32k. Even with 96meg mainframes are very good with managing memory. Programs written back then tended to be smaller. Our datacenter at work is mostly Blade servers rack mounted. The apps are cloud based and run through a browser. That video brought back memories.
Man, I wish I was around during the heyday of mainframes like this. I would love to say I was one of those guys who knew how to handle those beasts. Some people don't really understand how far we've really come in computing and technology to really appreciate it. Most just take it for granted. Thx for posting this vid.
One thing these monsters were good at was real time transaction processing. Hundreds, if not thousands of IO operations per second was the order of magnitude.
Thanks for uploading! I really LOVE this oldschool stuff. I think that more people should video-film their datacenter. It really gives i good impression of the time back then.
Wow! DASD Gods were being nice to you, allowing a video recorder in the site. Must be in Ontario, given that you call power "Hydro". Around that time I was working on Sys/38 AS400 after being in Sys/36 & Sys/3 shop. Always had problems with those "automatic" reel loaders, never used them. After that I went to VAX/VMS, said goodbye to 5250 protocol converters. Always had a secret love to have my own 36 some day. Funny, one of the 4 3340 units was called R2D2. Naaahhhhh
I used to work at a data centre with cartridge tapes like that. Also I used the 6250 tape reels. I started using mainframe computers in the 90's as a system operator. Wish I did a video of some. Would love to share the System/38 and AS/400 system set ups I used to work on. I also used WANG VS systems, RS/2000,HPCAD,SWIFT,DEC &other systems that people have no idea what they are these days.The WANG VS system had massive disk platters that held 72Mb on them. I'd love to be still working with them.
I remember taking my son to work and being afraid he would hit "the button" that powered off our whole system. It was located about 3 feet off the ground. He was and is still a very good boy.
The fire supression system is impresssive! "It will put out the fire and any human near it"(3:24) They would rather you die than risk the $5,000,000 computer!
It's not the computer they're worried about. It's business continuity and data they're preserving. In practice there is substantial time for staff to vacate the area before the Halon is discharged.
I doubt a single high end computer replaces these. High end pcs in my opinion necessitate modern high end data centers to complement them. Remember people that the Internet is growing.
I really like these computers you can program them alot and they are so cool. Wish i had a computer which you could talk to and ask anny question he could answer and program him to perform alot of tasks
Nowadays computers are more programable. Well actually i'm living arround manny computers so i've the knowledge of alot of different systems. For examole: a group of computers that are having connections to each other and you can program them to perform tasks. Well i don't know which operating systems are being used as yet I'm 12 years of age
isn't it "raised floor", not "suspended". at least, i never heard the term suspended. the floor you walk on is 15-18 inches or so above the actual cement floor.
@SoldierDDR Ugh I hate when people say that too. Mostly because I know they have a shit ton of viruses and random programs running in the background. :(
"This mainframe computer has 96 MB of RAM". My desktop has over 6000 MB of RAM. It is truly amazing how far computers have evolved over the last few decades!
@@EberKlaushartinger Just for comparison in the early 1980s our office got a IBM XT PC with a 10MB hard drive for storage. I clearly remember about 6 of us crowding around this thing asking each other how were we ever going to fill 10MB. Back then most of us could get by with two or three 5.25-inch floppies (capacity of 360KB each).
