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Article #621046Re: Why so many 6s and 8s in the 70s?
From: hanc...
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2018 19:50
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2018 19:50
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2857 bytes
On Saturday, March 17, 2018 at 8:15:27 PM UTC-4, Dan Espen wrote: > If I ever read that the bits in my brain must have flipped. > I only encountered a 1400 character 1401 after I'd worked on them > for a few years. I was surprised they made them that small. > The small machine also had no index registers, but by that time > I'd stop using index registers anyway so no big deal. The IBM Early Computers history talks about the development of what eventually became the 1401. One of the goals was to develop kind of a 'super' 407 tabulator. For that, not a whole memory was required, though I would think only 1,400 characters was awfully low. The 407 manual is on bitsavers and it is amazing how much functionality that machine had. I wish I remembered the exact numbers, but the history said memory would be very expensive. So, a lot of customers would want the lowest amount they could get away with. The 1401 evolved. Tape and disk support were added, which greatly enhanced its value. I suspect that as IBM ramped up its core production in that era (early 1960s--they came up with better ways to make and string cores), the memory costs went down. [snip]
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