[GreenKeys] Fw: Re: Teletype and electronics........

[COURYHOUSE at aol.com]

YES Drive sequencers!
the old  days!
 
what model pdp-8?  or  perhaps  a PDP-11?
 
In my  young days  our HP 2000 had 2 of the washing machine  drives and the 
heat  just poured off  them!
 
see photo of gaint  disc pack and yours truly
 
http://www.smecc.org/ed_sharpe/index-2883-1.10.gif
 
 
 
below  is whole system   with  2 hard drives
 
http://www.smecc.org/hp2000_1.jpg
 
 
 
 
ed#
 
 
 
In a message dated 4/11/2013 6:16:06 A.M. Mountain Standard Time,  
rokumoncat at yahoo.com writes:



--- On Thu, 4/11/13, Rokumon Cat  <rokumoncat at yahoo.com> wrote:


From:  Rokumon Cat <rokumoncat at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys]  Teletype and electronics........
To: COURYHOUSE at aol.com
Date:  Thursday, April 11, 2013, 6:06 AM

    
Good lord...
 
I had a PDP-8 once. Won it in a GSA sealed bid auction...  for five 
dollars. I did not realize it at the time, but the 5  foot rack that held the PDP-8 
and "floppy drives (8 inch) was  not the only thing that I won. Seems the 
GSA in their generosity  failed to advise the bidders (me) that there were 
ten of these  things that looked like washing machines in size and weight came 
 with the PDP-8. They were hard drives... along with a  multi-hundred pound 
box called the "hard drive starting  sequencer" that would start the hard 
drives one by one, so that  the starting current of the motors would not blow 
the mains.  They (the GSA) advised me that I had 48 hours to remove these  
treasures or that I would be fined 25 dollars a day for  storage.
 
To make a long story short, I rented a flatbed truck with a  tommy lift, 
got the (deleted) things home and stashed them in my  basement. I actually 
started several of the hard drives. Though  I never was a line boy at a 
passenger airport, I suspect that  the sound of a 747's engines spooling up was 
quite similar to  that of the hard drives both in tone and SPL. The heat that 
came  out of those things was also similar to the jet's engines.
 
With my basement stuffed with antiquated computer junque, I  decided that I 
needed to use this stuff for something. That was  in January of one of the 
coldest winters of the 90's. Then on  one of the coldest nights of that cold 
winter, my furnace  naturally suffered from a burned out blower motor. 
Fearing the  specter of frozen pipes and catcicles, I turned on three of the  
drives. Kept my basement uncomfortably hot, and my  first floor nice and 
toasty, and the second floor  bearable.
 
That was the only and best use that I ever came up for the  thing. That 
spring, I gave it to a kid for the hauling it  away.
 
 
Best,
 
Joe







 
...had it hooked to my  PDP-8 
 







______________________________________________________________
GreenKeys  mailing list
Home:  http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys
Help:  http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post:  mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net

This list hosted by:  http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list:  http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/attachments/20130411/1c1d7ed4/attachment.html>