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Agent Orange

Agent Orange

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Joined
Sep 24, 2008
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SE MI
Guess What This Is?


View attachment 6600


Hint: The picture was taken in 1956.

Answer below...







It's a hard disk drive back in 1956... With 5 MB of storage.

In September 1956, IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, ​

The first 'SUPER' computer with a hard disk drive (HDD). ​

The HDD weighed over a ton and stored a 'whopping' 5 MB of data.​

Do you appreciate your 32 GB memory stick a little more now?​


 
That honestly makes me curious...

Are the individual bits large enough to see with the naked eye? (Or would they be if there was a visual difference between bits?)
 
The 305 RAMAC was physically fairly small by later standards. Even the Bryant 4000 weighed 3400 lbs. and had 39" platters. The big 4-spindle CDC 808 and 821 drives were very heavy and stood very tall. And then there was the Univac FASTRAND drive. Strictly speaking, a drum, not a disk, but big nonetheless (5000 lbs.):

fastrand.jpg


I used one on a Univac 1108. IIRC it held about 100 MB (132M 6-bit characters).

The domain boundaries on the RAMAC when treated with magnetic developer were too small to see with the naked eye.
 
And yet I thought an IBM Series/1 hard drive was big.:)

It was one of the last computer that IBM built with vacuum tubes in it.
280px-BRL61-IBM_305_RAMAC.jpeg

But of course, hard drives were new, so head crashes were likely.
220px-RAMAC_305_disk_.JPG
 
The 305 that was initially shipped with the 350 RAMAC could scarcely be called a computer. It was more of an accounting machine.

The 305 was announced in 1956, but the 709 was announced in 1958, which I believe makes it the last vacuum-tube IBM computer. It was replaced in 1959 by the transistorized 7090.
 
kithylin said:
At fear of hijacking your thread and angering you, I've decided to share a link about the original poster's content I've found.

Further information and original promotional video for the IBM 305 RAMAC is available over here: http://www.ibm.com/ibm100/us/en/icons/ramac/
Click to expand...

Very nice. I just passed this on down - much too lazy to do any further research. BTW, I'm old enough to have used the 'revolving drum' storage device in the early 70's during my Navy days. It was part of the Varian 620I 4-bit computer system used in the ALM-106B MATE, which translates to an airborne ECM threat simulator. You can Google AN/ALM-106B - still some bits and pieces out there.
 
Agent Orange said:
Very nice. I just passed this on down - much too lazy to do any further research. BTW, I'm old enough to have used the 'revolving drum' storage device in the early 70's during my Navy days. It was part of the Varian 620I 4-bit computer system used in the ALM-106B MATE, which translates to an airborne ECM threat simulator. You can Google AN/ALM-106B - still some bits and pieces out there.
Click to expand...

Well i was born in 1982 and my first computer was an Apple IIe my uncle donated to me when i was 6, a Commodore-64 my mom bought for me from the good will store for $100 when i was 9.. (came with 200 game discs, a floppy drive, printer, the base and a screen. Ahhh... Blue Max, loved that game.) And my first computer with a hard drive was a retail store-bought 486 when i was 12, Packard bell... i remember that fondly. So it seems you've got a little bit of a head-start on me technology wise, but i'm researching and trying to catch up! :p
 
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