The Hobo Camp Fire Is going well #VI.. Stop In!!!

[ezdays]

... It was an ancient five ton monster of a Honeywell called Norman. It was originally equipped with a paper tape reader/punch but he upgraded it to 70mm video tape like those ancient computers you see in some old movies. He also expanded the memory from 4k to 12k. We played with that thing during the winter months. He didn't have to heat his house while it was running.

He programmed it to play music. His masterpiece was the William Tell Overture (Lone Ranger theme) in it's entirety.

Uhhh, don't call those machines ancient, I worked on some that had rows of mag tape readers.... oh, that was over 50 years ago, I guess they are ancient.

I walked inside of a Univac II and all those rectifier tubes put out more heat than a furnace. Yes, I said "walked inside" since it actually had a small room where the tech worked. The processor of the system I worked on was about the size of three refrigerators side-by-side and opened like a book to work on.