On early computers program control was still partially under manual
control. Much debugging could also take place. Programs could be
stopped, executioin could be stepped instruction by instruction,
or program control be switched to other memory locations and
restarted there. The contents of all registers, any memory cell, and the
status of input-output channels could be displayed by the operator.
On the Triplex FAA 9020 component computers could also be switched
off-line for repair while the remaining processors still handled Air
Traffic Radars and flight controller displays.
In emergencies a red
pull switch stopped everything, requiring several engineers to spend
many hours to check and restore the systems.
This panel was returned to the CMHC in July 2002.
In August of 2003 we obtained the main control panel of the FAA 360-9020E
Triplex Computer from New Beginnings Antiques [NBA].
This control panel was used to manage a system containing
3 Computing Elements (actually 360 model 65 computers), and 3
Input-output control elements (actually 360 model 50 computers).
More photographs this installation will soon be posted.
Information about the FAA 360-9020E Triplex
Computer.
The IBM/360 architecture was intended to cover the range from modest to large systems, and data-processing as well as scientific computation. The principal designers were
Information about the full range of Old IBM Iron.
Stanford University obtained an early IBM 360-65, to augment and eventually replace its Burroughs 5500 system. Most computing was centralized and operated by the Stanford Computaion Center, which consisted of a `Campus facility', an operation at SLAC, with eventually an IBM 360-95, and a system running on a 360-50 dedicated to real-time computing in the Medical School, ACME.
A 360-65 was the principal campus computer for Stanford University from 1966 to 197x. Its successor mainframes are still (2003) in use at the Stanford Computation Center, but the latest one is due to disappear in December 2003.
Stanford's 360-65 was intended to be the 360-67 version, running a
not yet completed IBM timesharing system, TSS. But TSS never reached
its promised level of performance and was used only at few sites, and
never at Stanford.
Ed Feigenbaum, director of the computation
center at that time: true :"delivered as a 360/65, to be upgraded
later"
EAF: I believe this to be the case. We had initially ordered a 67 but, when
that was very late, we felt that we needed to "get going", so we ordered a
65 and did Orville and Wylbur software as a gap-filler. In fact, did we
ever take delivery of a real 67? I don't know.
Jon Sandelin from Stanford:
**** When I arrived in May 1970, the machine had 3/4 megabyte, and
an IBM imposed limit of one megabyte. My task was to bring it to the
one megabyte limit. Latter, a company (not IBM) developed a way of
going over one megabyte of main memory on the 360/65 series, and we
did increase main memory by something like 1/2 megabyte more (do not
remember the exact amount).
I recall Stanford hired Rod Fredrickson (from IBM) to implement the
time-sharing option, but he left shortly after I arrived, as he
apparently did not get along with the Computer Center Senior
Management. Jim Moore would know the gory details.
Jon
gio: Rod Frederickson had been before at UC Berkeley, heading the compution services for Prof. Sidney Lamb's Machine Translation Project in the early 1960's [gio]
to come.