[rescue] Yessssss!! OT:- Big Iron

[Mike Meredith]

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 10:52:02 -0500, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:
> When I was working on big iron in the early seventies, the bank got a
> new NCR Century 200 to replace our 315.  Putting the new computer in
> involved closing a main street in downtown Atlanta, and using a
> construction crane to lift off the removable roof of the data center
> and drop in the new boxes.

Something similar happenned at work during the late 70's (? ... I wasn't
around here then so the timing could be a bit off). When the ICL2960 was
delivered, some of the units had to be craned in through the windows of
the computer room which also involved shutting a major road.

I'd imagine it was quite common during the 70's and earlier. Who knows ?
Perhaps some uber-traffic controller finally said to the computer
manufacturers "That's it. Make the bloody things small enough to fit
through the door".

Interestingly the previous central computer (an ICL19xx) was sold to a
college for more than the original cost because of an intelligent
terminal system built locally. The most useful feature was a screen
editor that run on the terminals, offloading that task from the main
CPU.