1956 Computer Hard Drive

[Ron61]

Bill,

I think I know but won't guess as I may be wrong. Also the term bug came from a moth getting between the contacts of a relay in one of the old computers. I think, but am not sure that one was in the fire control system of a navy ship but it could have been down at one of the early computer companies.

Bean Counter,

Boy do you guys bring back some memories of stuff that I have completely forgotten. I remember my first real, not replica, computer and it had the monitor and keyboard all in a single unit with two 2 1/2" floppies that ran it. I had to solder and wire in all the cards and then I got a blazing fast modem that set on the desk beside it so I could connect to bulletin boards. I think the computer had 16K of memory and the modem was around 300 bits per second. The first had drives we even had in the big computers were about 5' in diameter and were mounted vertically with a steel cover that bolted over them. One for each processor and no way for one processor to access the others drive until I got the labs to come up with a crossover system so if one processor went out and the other drive was bad, which was a very common occurrence in those days you could switch the processor that worked to use the disk that still worked. By wire of course.

Edit: If it lightens up today I will see if I can get a good picture of those two modern memory cards that I saved out of one of the old computers that we junked. Far superior to the old punch cards.

Ron