1960's COMPUTER HISTORY: REMEMBERING THE IBM SYSTEM/360 MAINFRAME Origin and Technology (IRS, NASA)

[@Journeyman-Fixit]

I was a Computer Operator / RPG + COBOL programmer at Computer Management Inc. Cleveland, Ohio 1976. We ran a 360/40 and 360/20, both ran all types of software and all types of jobs. Amazing machines. I went on to write RPG for 45 more years, what a ride!

[@marcmckenzie5110]

My uncle, Robert Nelson, was an IBM Fellow and a principal architect of the 360. He was my first mentor in the field, and was instrumental in my career in hi-tech. He convinced my folks to send me to the first ever computer camp in the four-state area of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska in 9th and 10th grades, and I ultimately got undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Engineering. That led to a 30 year career at Hewlett-Packard Co. He was a brilliant, and also a kind and gentle man.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @marcmckenzie5110, thank you very much for sharing that bit of your history. An "IBM Fellow" was a prestigious title. IBM's web site says: "The title of IBM Fellow is the company's pre-eminent technical distinction, granted in recognition of outstanding and sustained technical achievements and leadership in engineering, programming, services, science, design and technology." Very cool, and your 30 year career at HP sounds like quite an achievement as well. Thanks again! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@tf6168]

In 1969 IBM wouldn't hire me to repair computers because I had a mustache and side burns. I ended up starting my own company servicing and installing data systems. I retired after 45 years and never looked back. What a great career working in that field.

[@Dogleg1957]

True. My father in-law had to shave his. But back then they financed or guaranteed his mortgage of 27000$!!!

[@chacal5844]

To be fair, no one will hire you today with sideburns and a mustache...

[@peterparsons7141]

In 1978 I got hired out of high school by one of the first service bureau’s selling time on these machine. I had done some programming in grade 11 and that was good enough. Lots of work just getting to get some punch cards to do their thing. 45years later, I never had less than one job and have done so many different things and watched the world grow. What a wild ride and just non stop change and work. Fun to watch these films because I know these machine very intimately. It just fun to talk to folks that were there at the start and enjoyed the ride as much as I did.

[@Tuckerslam]

Boomer crap.

[@davidedgar7338]

unless you female, duh. 😂​@@chacal5844

[@comeandtravel1]

My aunt, Patricia Gogins, worked for IBM and won the Thomas Watson award for developing the control system for OS360.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

That sounds like a wonderful achievement for her! Very nice. ~

[@rayfreedell4411]

She should have been fired.

[@johnmckown1267]

So I can blame her for JCL? I actually worked with Herschell White, who did some sort of extention on JCL with the COND parameter, but I don't remember exactly what.

[@stevensmith5626]

I was an operator and systems programmer while going to college in the late 70's. We had a 360/40 with tape and removable disk packs as well as one old drum unit, along with a 1403 printer and 26 and 29 card readers. What a piece of iron! I loved every minute of it.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Steven, sounds like you have some great memories of those days! Nice machines! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@tropicaldoodad]

I didn't program but was an operator on a 360/40 at DeGolyer MacNaughton in Dallas in the late seventies. Had the coolest (temp wise) office in the whole building.

[@peterparsons7141]

I occasionally have a feverish dream,,, the 1403 has a paper jam, the print chain has chewed through the ribbon and there’s paper jammed full inside the hood and out the back,,, as the hood lifts the 1403 disgorges itself... haha lots of good years running all that gear.

[@JD-dm4lo]

@@peterparsons7141 And how about all the mess the ink made !

[@stan.rarick8556]

@@peterparsons7141 Don't forget the legendary coffee cup (full, of course) that someone put on the top of the 1403

[@JD-dm4lo]

The 360 series was a supercharged powerhouse in it's day. After computer school and the army 67->69, I got an operations job at an insurance company running older machines. My friends were working at the University of Pennsylvania having fun writing code for whatever they wanted on a 360/75. I loved coding so I quit my job after 5 months and joined my friends at Penn for Less Pay. We were in operations but could do all the coding we wanted. That set me on my path to later work in Banking, Airline, Publishing and Telecommunications(VZ). Having coding experience and thorough knowledge of running the machines, I moved on installing operating systems and networking software. Then moved on to designing and managing network projects for hundreds of thousands of users. For ten years I was a team lead for a 125 mainframe network. 40+ years in IT. All from a free two year Public Trade School that taught computer hardware basics and coding. Never went to college. And neither did the IBM SEs I worked with when Alpha testing the first MVS install in the 70s.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi JD, that sounds like a fantastically interesting career! I can imagine the fun times and challenges as well, associated with the early days of coding and systems operations. A "125 mainframe network", that sounds quite impressive. Thanks very much for sharing a bit of your history. Glad you found our channel too. Hope you will enjoy some of the other bits of history we have here. Thanks again! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@marcwolf60]

I did the same but for desktop computing. Started 76 just after leaving Highschool, skipped uni, and had a fascinating career implementing and programming desktop systems. Would have loved to play with Old Iron mainframes

[@robertgilhooly341]

I worked for IBM as a final test technician on the 360-50. If a machine in the field failed the field engineer would go to work on it. If he couldn't find the problem a field specialist would be called in. If he could not determine the problem a call would go to the factory and I would get on a plane and fly to the site to fix the problem. This could take several days before I was on site. I did manage to fix them all. It's not that I was smarter but the field engineers had to work on a whole range of equipment so didn't have as much time on the mod 50 as I had. It may appear that IBM became the number one in the industry by building better machines but I can tell you from experience that it was the field engineers who made IBM the number one data processing company. I was working on a customers mod 50 and they were uninstalling a competitors machine in the facility. I said to the customer "So our machines are better than those" The customer said "No theirs work about as fast as yours. The difference is when one of yours fails and we call the IBM field engineers they are on site quickly. That other company may take days to respond to a fail.

[@HERNAN-ORTEGA]

Computer test Technician rules

[@ZagiBob]

I programmed the 360 and 370 systems from 1972 till 2009. I still miss it.

[@baileyreport.]

Did you use RPG, FORTRAN, COBOL, or BAL?

[@ZagiBob]

@@baileyreport. Mostly BAL, Rexx and Cobol, some C and C++, all on mainframe banking systems. Fortran in college only. No RPG. Started as an Application programmer, then Systems programmer. Lots of JCL and operations support. Software company onsite and phone tech support for the last 10 yrs of career, including Jan 2000. Laid off at age 57 in 2009 so I retired and bought a little airplane. Life is good 😎

[@marcusjaybrode2129]

@@baileyreport.- I’m not the guy you posting to, but I worked on these… COBOL… IMS… CICS… and later on… JAVA, ETC..

[@jim2lane]

The cool thing I like about the old mainframes was the visual and visceral interaction you could have with I/O. You could physically watch the data being read in, or output from your programs via the tape machines, paper tape, and punch cards. Yes, it was exponentially slower than today's solid state storage, but it directly connected you to the code that was running, and was very satisfying in that regard

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Jimbo 0117, that's a great observation. One really could connect with the processing. Sounds, vibrations, and even the smell of the printer lubricants. Those were the days. ~ Hunter

[@martincox4520]

I can remember trying to sort out byte multiplexer channel by writing a channel program via the front panel just to read cards from a 2540. I still have my System 360 green card! CCB and CCW just 50 years ago!

[@paulmorley1225]

I get sort of that same feeling when firing up a Win98 PC then hearing the drives spin and heads moving around in conjunction with the CPU/HDD activity lights, just knowing that the machine is crunching some numbers. Even those PCs have a sort of personality to them. Today pretty much all new PCs are pretty fast and I suppose an activity light is rather useless since it would be a solid light the entire time anyway.

[@martincox4520]

Yes. But it was lightyears ahead of sorters and tabulators. Unit record systems. The memory was small and slow in comparison to later system but you could still run a 8K supervisor!

[@peterparsons7141]

Really good observation. I found that the things you describe do in-fact give one a better feel for how data processing happens. I found running my programs from the console was like watching the game “mouse trap”.. or a complex Domino setup. Watching each step complete, from initial card input, getting some stuff off tape,, more cards next step,, more lights as processing moves forward.. to the long pause last few cards... pause and then the printer starts chugging. It’s just not like that anymore..... thank dog.

[@CuriousMarc]

Very nice narration and compendium of IBM computers footage! When we get my IBM 360/50 going, I might pick your brain about some of your footage sources. Keep up the great work!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi CuriousMarc, Thanks very much for the kind words! Yes, of course, would be happy to discuss film sources. Would be happy to get your input also. I have enjoyed your YT channel for years, it is quite an impressive collection of vintage tech! Very well done too. ~ VK

[@FunFactFreaks]

Oh my goodness. this takes me back. This was the first machine I worked on. Brilliant for its time.

[@Corgipaw_Films]

Thanks for this excellent documentary that brought back some fun memories when I worked as a computer operator and programmer on IBM 360 mainframes and FACOM mainframes using Job Control Language (JCL). We still used those mainframes into the mid 1990s. The tape drives and 720k disk drums were fun to use. The whole mainframes only had 1GB storage but took up the space in a whole room. Good times.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Peter, very glad you liked the System/360 film. Thank you very much for your feedback and info on your experience. The FACOM name is something I have not heard much about. I think you are the first viewer to mentioned having used them. An interesting line of mainframe machines by Fujitsu of Japan. I guess that is one more target for future research. Thanks very much! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@Corgipaw_Films]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Hi Victor. Yes, the FACOM mainframes weren't as widespread as the IBM 360 mainframes. I think by 1990 there were only about 6 FACOM mainframes in use in Australia. The large companies were using them for payroll processing, data storage and manipulation. In the later 1990s, they were replaced by a smaller PC network configuration. That was the time when I changed careers!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Peter, interesting! Thank you. : ) Victor

[@paulrowan1501]

Fast forward to 2023. I recently purchased a smartphone with 256GB of internal storage.

[@cornknight]

Oh, those magnetic tapes! With them, a computer looks literally alive. You see how much information can be stored and used and computed and processed. They are rolling, stopping, rewinding, searching, writing, and erasing right in front of your eyes. And what's the magic in a modern SSD that can store a million times more? A tiny soundless gadget inside the box on your table. Nothing but pure pragmatizm.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Oleg Zaidullin, and someone once said, only real computers have blinking lights and spinning tape reels. Shows they are alive. Great comment, thank you! ~

[@awuma]

The capacity and data transfer rates were so small compared with modern storage systems. Using a 9-track on a minicomputer, I wrote some code which used the tape as a streaming memory, doing calculations on the fly, byte by incoming byte. Those big reels held only a few megabytes, the final maximum being 2400 feet at 6250 bytes per inch giving less than 180 megabytes (there were gaps between blocks). In the 60's, the best density was 800 bytes per inch IIRC and the tapes were shorter.

[@Olgasys]

I keep wondering whether something like an old high-end SCSI disk sound simulated can be coded for fun. Imagine you are hearing realistic drive sounds while drive being accessed etc.

[@cornknight]

@@Olgasys I'm far not sure I'd like that, although it's possible in theory. If to add appropriate vibration, this might be realistic enough. But I don't think it would make the work more comfortable.

[@Olgasys]

@@cornknight We had a very rich friend who wanted "best of everything" e.g. the most expensive and he bought a 15K RPM SCSI to his bedroom computer. It took 24 hours to give it back 🙂

[@johnopalko5223]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I've always had a soft spot for the System/360. My very first paying job in IT was operating the 360/75 at my university. This was in 1972. I was 17 years old. I adored the 360 and 370 families until 1980. That's when I discovered Unix* and never looked back. *Unix is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories. Remember when we had to always include that footnote?

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

The 360/75 was one of the big ones. I bet you had an interesting time with it. What University was that?

[@johnopalko5223]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject University of Illinois- Urbana.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi John, ok, thanks!

[@MarquisDeSang]

You walked the earth amongst giants. I was not even born. Lucky bastard.

[@marcusdamberger]

@@johnopalko5223 Ahh, my home town of Champaign-Urbana, or rather Urbana where I grew up as a kid of the 80's mostly. Had fun times going over to CERL to play/work on PLATO IV system running on a CDC 6000 series. Our middle school had a computer lab with about a dozen PLATO IV terminals to do our course work, and after school hours they would often let us play on the systems. One of my older brothers was a systems op at CERL usually on overnights, as a student at the U of I on the PLATO IV system. My other brother in collage was a student programmer over at NCSA where they worked on the Mosaic web browser, before Netscape came out, he didn't work on it directly, he worked mostly on Apple related stuff. Both are computer programmers (career) that trace their early learning of programing (TUTOR??) on the PLATO IV system during the summers; as the U of I had classes to introduce kids to programing. They did that for many years over the summers. One of my best friends from growing up rebuilt several PLATO IV terminals, a few went to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (unfortunately no longer on display) and another went to the Seattle Living Computers: Museum + Labs that has since closed..

[@jackwt7340]

Probably the best documentary ever made about IBM

[@stephenbrinckerhoff3510]

That's insane! In 1968, while I was still in high school I went to a computer programming school after dropping out of high school. I had all of my graduation requirements met but delayed graduation for the whole class. The computer we had on hand was an IBM System/360. We had all the associated equipment to go along with it. Sorter/collator, printer, keyboard console, tape drive, etc., even the punch cards. Tons and tons of punch cards.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Stephen, sounds like quite an experience. Hope this brought back some good memories. ~ Victor

[@tomgates316]

Great fun seeing this video. The community Tech College I attended mid 70's had already moved up to a 370/35. But they had some old 14xx equipment around with the wired control boards. We spent the very first week wiring those control boards to run a punch card printer and a tabulating machine. Wires moved punch card data to print areas or calculation areas. After moving bits around via wire - we dove head first into 360 assembler to move those bits around. Then on to Fortran, RPG II, COBOL was last year and a half of the 2 yr program (no summer break) First programing job was with the airlines. Worked with the team that built their aircraft maintenance planning/tracking system. IMS database system that took pieces from the Apollo/Saturn V program for parts tracking. (some of the IBMers that consulted on the beginnings of the system worked in those areas) I've since retired, but that maintenance system lives on today. Has had a lot of web and mobile app hooks bolted to its outer edges to make use of the graphics capability that the 3270 displays lacked. Still using those IMS databases. Many moved up to HAL versions. System was sold to other companies. Not all were airlines. Could plan/track maintenance on most anything. On company was a sheet steel foundry that planned/tracked all their mill equipment within their production buildings. Got an Apple II in 1978, coded in BASIC and dabbled in the 6502 assembly language, but very different environment from 360 assembly code. Was totally excited when the ORCA/M (macro) Assembler software package came out. Old IBMer created a development package that essentially used 360 instructions for coding and then assembled that into 6502 code. More fun. Attached to 360/370/zOS my entire career. Like a friend. Old mainframers never retire. They just IEFBR14.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Tom, thank you for the great memories! Working with the old wired control boards must have really been something! I have seen videos of companies having many shelves of these boards to keep "programs" on hand. If one plug became loose, what a nightmare! You have got quite an impressive history here. Your "IEFBR14," made me laugh (but I had to google it first, to refresh my memory). Thank you for laugh too! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@tomgates316]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Totally backed into this career by accident. Trying to find one last class to fill a slot to finish my first year at U of MN. Was fed up with politics between the various internal colleges. Just wanted out after the one year. While hanging out at the registration office, a guy tacked a recipe card on the “New Offerings” cork board. It fit my open slot. Took the card down, went over and signed up for “Introduction to BASIC Programming”. Whatever that was. Turned out I loved it. Ended up as one of the lab rats moving from teletype labs in one building to another as each building was locked up. One night we hit pay dirt. A lab with CRT terminals and 300 baud modems. First day at class at the tech college, instructor asked who had written BASIC or Fortran programs. A few of us raised our hands thinking we had an ‘in’. He said to “forget we ever saw them”. He handed out a wiring board to each of the students and a box of colored wires with banana plugs. Then said “we’ll learn programming starting with these”. We looked at each other and wondered just what mistaken class we’d signed up for. 😂😂😂 And so it began. 😄

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Tom, that is very cool!! I have never met anyone else who worked on the actual wiring boards. A very unique opportunity. Something to tell the grandkids too! Starting at the basics, gives one a great foundation for an IT career. thanks for sharing this! (I remember my first programming teacher was a 60 year old former Israeli tank driver. He taught RPG with an Israeli accent. I barely passed that course...) ~ Victor

[@garyadair2164]

I wrote Assembler for the 360 Models 20, 30, 40, 65 and 195 between 1967 and 2009. I still think in Assembler after 15 years of retirement.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @garyadair2164, fascinating! Happy SRDA, BAL, SVC, to you! : )

[@jimdigriz3436]

I still have my books on IBM 360/370 series assembly language. Amazing machines at the time.

[@1944GPW]

Great video, can never get enough of System 360 footage. My dad was a 360/40 CE instructor. After retirement his house driveway had the 360 compass pattern in large tiles across it which can still be seen in the google maps aerial photo :) 10:34 Honeywell console? Interesting that the mid and smaller models were phased out the last.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Thank you very much for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed the video. I bet your dad had some interesting times as a 360/40 CE instructor! Thanks for sharing. (not sure if that brief clip is a Honeywell machine or not... good question.) ~ Victor, CHAP

[@rty1955]

That was an IBM. Console

[@1944GPW]

@@rty1955 Not an IBM console. Check Google Images, It really is a Honeywell H200 console.

[@rty1955]

@@1944GPW Ahhh I see the confusion. I thought you were referring to the console image right before the image of a front panel. On mainframes the term "console" was the typewrite type of interface (and later years a 3270 type terminal) The blinking lights & switches were called the "front panel". The image that was used could have very well been a Honeywell as the narrator refered to a NAS AS/6 (an IBM mainframe compatible) @ the IRS. I only used a Honeywell mainframe once and it was not the one depicted in the image.

[@OldDogNewTrick]

I recognized that too. I worked for Honeywell during this era on the H200 product line. The H200 was really just a newer and better 1401. And we called this the control panel. Have a look at it in action. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n2m1p2qZoaiSd5Y

[@captaindunsell8568]

I worked as the manager of CPU development of Andor Systems for Dr. Amdahls last mainframe development effort …

[@larrynixon5979]

Makes me feel old that I was a 360 operator. I can’t remember how many tapes I changed

[@r.kellycoker9387]

I worked as a technician for the FAA in the early '90s and my main system was a 360 derivative called the 9020. It was on its last legs and suffered from corrosion and cabling problems but troubleshooting the system was extremely easy as you could troubleshoot down to a component on the SLTs. Thanks for the memories.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi R. Kelly Coker, thank you for the info on your work with the 9020 IBM system. That sounds like a fascinating story. Can you tell me a bit more about the "corrosion" you refer to ? I am not sure I understand what part of the computer would suffer corrosion, that sounds fascinating. Thank you. ~ Victor at CHAP

[@captaindunsell8568]

This was a Dual Ported 360 in that two CPUs shared channel sets and memory segments. You could leave one machine is stop state and run on the other. To swap. Stop the running one and do a restart psw on the other placing it in run mode.

[@r.kellycoker9387]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject The cables were silver plated copper and the ends were bare for about 1 mm. Why? I have no idea. The bare silver would grow microscopic silver whiskers between the wires under certain temperature and humidity.

[@akhilpitla6670]

Thanks for uploading the transformation of mainframe computer. It's very helpful.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Akhil, thank you very much for the kind words. You are most welcome. I hope you will enjoy exploring out channel further too! ~ Victor

[@jamesslick4790]

This was a cool compilation that really shows the System/360's wide range of use. Nice video! 👍😊👍

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi James, thank you very much for the kind words! Could not have done this without help from IBM Archives. They were extremely helpful in providing high-quality and somewhat rare photos of 360 history. ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@fluxfaze]

Born the year the first “personal computer” (the 800 lb LGP-30) was released, I’m so glad desktop PCs emerged just as my interest in software engineering sparked. I only had to do one semester of batch coding via punchcards and only one semester of Assembly and PL/1 via ASCII terminal. Bought a PC and never missed the mainframes one bit. Used PCs running Pascal/C and C++ Borland compilers through remaining semesters of university studies, then enjoyed using RISC workstations after college including DEC AlphaStation and VaxStation running VAX and ULTRIX, Apollos running AEGIS, IBM/AIX, SG/IRIX, and SPARCStation/SOLARIS writing in C/C++ with a small bit of JAVA. A perfectly-timed university/career path. Now retired, it’s fun prototyping app ideas using the Gemini API with Swift on a Mac Studio M2 Ultra.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @fluxfaze, thank you for sharing some of your background experience! It sounds like you had and still have a great career in computer technology! Very impressive. That is quite a variety of machines you list. DEC and SPARC were some good machines too. The "Gemini API" tool sounds fascinating! ~

[@HansBladby]

1978 After one year at a kind of IT college I was hired as an operator at a service bureau, but I also did some cobol programming sometimes. They had a IBM 360/50 and we worked a lot. Later started to learn about networks, SNA, SNI and so on. Moved to a telecom company and started to learn about MVS, more networks with 30k 3270 terminals. The company were very generous and I were sent to IBM school several times per year. There were other educations too. Then there managerial positions, sales, other companies. What a career, nearly 40 years. So much opportunities so much education and experience. Today you need a master of science if you want to work with these things. Fantastic and I'm so grateful... and it all started with a IBM 360/50

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @HansBladby, thank you very much for your feedback and experience. From what I recall, the training back at that time was very, very good. The company was proud of their technical accomplishments and it was a company to be envied in the computer field. Others were good also, but IBM set some high standards in the early 1960's to 1970's. I bet it was great to be a part of it when much of the tech was new. Thanks again for the memories! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@janinsweden8559]

I worked as Operator / Programmer from 1980 and remember these big rooms with tape machines and printers. Cold and noisy due to air conditioning systems.

[@johnh1001]

Very interesting video . I use to operate an IBM System 1130 . That was my first computer when I was a teenager .

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi John, yes, the "1130." Way back in the mid 1960's. Sold for around $32,000. Glad you enjoyed this 360 video segment! ~ Hunter

[@johnh1001]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject As I remember the cooling fans in the 1130 were so pronounced that you had to have a stone on every piece of paper in that computer room or they would all get blown around into a mess . L O L .................

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

I learned "Computer Concepts"/BASIC, on an IBM 360, the printer(covered) was loud. Thanks, Pathfinder Regional Vocational H.S. and Springfield Technical Community College. The course, 1983. I received a TI 99 4A as a Christmas gift, I learned more BASIC programming, and it was 16K, and, in color!

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

It was blue, instead.

[@jamescobban857]

One summer while I was in high school (1967) the only computer I had access to was an IBM System/360 Model 20 with 8KB of memory. This model was basically intended as a migration path for users of the IBM 1401 or of older IBM plug-board controlled punch card equipment. It only supported unit record devices: card reader, card punch, and of course the ubiquitous 1403 line printer. It didn't really have an operating system, simply running the Basic Control Program whose only capability was to load and execute a program from an object code card deck. It only supported a tiny subset of the System/360 instruction set: 16 bit binary arithmetic and decimal arithmetic and only 16 bit addressing. Instead of the 16 32-bit general purpose registers it only had 8 16-bit registers. For example in place of the Branch and Link instruction of normal /360, which at that time stored the return address into the low order 24 bits of the link register (by convention GPR14) it had the Branch and Save instruction. When the S/360 was designed nobody could imagine why anyone would ever need more than 16 megabytes of RAM. One reason was that a megabyte of core memory cost several MILLION 1965 dollars. Memory was so expensive that the original IBM 2260 text display terminal used the vibrations in a taught piano wire to hold the contents of the display. When the IBM customer engineer came out to maintain it he brought a tuning fork! My university had a S/360-65 with 4 megabytes of RAM running OS/MVT, a S/360-44 with variable microcode (a popular idea in the 1960s), and an IBM 7094 scientific computer with 256K 36-bit words (1.125 MB) which had been the most powerful computer in Canada when installed. One of the engineers who designed the IBM 700 series computers explained that the reason it had 36 bit words is because that is what he needed to implement his checkers playing program efficiently.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi James, that is a fascinating story. I did not know about the IBM 2260 and the "piano wire". That is quite unique. The 360/65 was a nice machine too, and the 7094 was a monster. I think NASA had several in this class. Thanks for sharing your memories on this! ~ BTW, later this week, we plan to upload a new video on the IBM 7070 mainframe, a pretty rare piece of film. Hope you will tune in for that one also. ~ Victor, CHAP

[@awuma]

Fascinating account regarding the 360/20. In the 1970's, I did quite a bit of cross-assember programming for standalone Interdata minicomputers. They were 16-bit machines modelled after the 360 (e.g. with 16 general-purpose registers), with a quite rich instruction set. Memory was 8 KB on the Model 4 (a very heavy cabinet!) and 16KB on the later 7/16, ferrite core of course. They were also fast, with a memory cycle time of around 1 microsecond. Probably equivalent to the IBM 360/20.

[@ZagiBob]

Very interesting! I did sw dev on 360 and 370 systems from 1972-2009, mostly Assembler, Cobol and Rexx. For contrast to these IBM stories: In the Navy in 1972-1978, I was a Data Systems Technician on shipboard Sperry-Univac gear, specifically the Univac 1218. It was a transistorized 2nd generation computer about the size of a refrigerator. It required external cooling and power. It had 16K of memory in four aluminum cube boxes, about 5 inches on a side, Each box held 4k words of actual magnetic donut cores, each about the diameter of pencil lead and each threaded with 4 copper wires: Read, Write, Sense and Inhibit. It was the first piece of hardware that I learned and eventually knew well. It taught me basics of how digital computers work, knowledge that still serves today.

[@iratashman7202]

After the mod 20 was obsolete, they put them inside of new bank check sorters to be their ‘brains’. I worked for a company that was developing a third party printer for IBM mainframes in the late ‘80s that had PDP 8 inside them as their ‘brains’ the could get them for free so they wouldn’t go to the landfills

[@jlelliotton]

Of note, the S/360 67 was the 1st IBM with virtual storage. While TSS was the “official” operating system, CP/67 from the IBM Cambridge Scientific Center was more popular and the direct descendant of that is today’s z/VM.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Jim, interesting historical note! Thanks very much. ~ Victor

[@exxzxxe]

Jim- you know your subject very well. I rarely encounter anyone who knows this history. My first programming was IBM 1401, 1620, 7080, then to RCA 301, 3301, then RCA Spectra 70, then to 360's. Thanks.

[@jerseybob4471]

When I first started working for IBM, Princeton University had a360/67. They ran TSS for time sharing during the day and OS/MVT at night for batch processing. Eventually, the 67 was replaced by 360/91. Then they got another 67 to run CP/67. Later the 67 was replaced by a 370/158 running VM. I supported their IBM mainframes for a lot of years.

[@jimelliott3912]

@@jerseybob4471 Fond memories of working with Melinda Varian at Princeton on their VM systems

[@jerseybob4471]

@@jimelliott3912Melinda was a VM guru. When she called IBM with a problem alarms bells went off. I heard from Melinda about 5 years ago, when Bill Easton died. Melinda and Lee had retired and were traveling in Europe.

[@mandolinic]

No-one mentioned the advanced optical sensor built into every terminal. This prevented any man not wearing a tie from using the system.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

I like that idea. : )

[@kenoliver8913]

Not true. The first 360 I ever saw was operated by men in white coats (well, it was a medical research facility). They probably had to have a special module installed by IBM (just another upgrade sold by those men in blue ties and a crewcut ...).

[@Jose_Altuve_]

Excellent.....this brings me to my IBM startings in 1979......my first Mainframe to interact to was a S/360 30 in Caracas Venezuela

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Enix, as in the computer game?

[@PeterHonig.]

The first computer I ever used was the 360/67 when I was a student at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) during 1975 to 1979. I clearly remember late nights using keypunch machines to write Fortran code and feeding decks into noisy card readers. Ah, those were the good old days.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Peter, sounds quite interesting! Rensselaer has quite a reputation too. Keypunching card decks, yes, the "good old days." : ) Thanks very much! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@PeterHonig.]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Hi Victor, it is I who thank you for bringing back the memories! All the best, Peter.

[@donjindra]

Same with me, only a couple of years earlier.

[@dorsetdumpling5387]

This brings back memories of my student days in the late 70s. The university computer was, to say the least, unreliable, to the extent that we had a system to avoid wasted trips there - a green card in the window = working OK, amber card = only come if your work is really necessary, red card = don’t bother! I remember those punched cards - one line of program per card: our lecturer repeatedly telling us that shuffling the order of cards was NOT classed as an acceptable debugging method, and a colleague with a project program about 500 cards long, dropping the whole pack on the floor - luckily, he had safeguarded against this contingency by drawing a line with a felt pen diagonally from top left to bottom right on the side of the stack so putting them back in order was relatively easy!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Dorset, thank you for this fascinating bit of history. The trick of drawing a diagonal line along the card deck to help re-sort them is great! I don't recall ever seeing that used, but it sounds like a very simple yet helpful trick to help recovering from a "card drop." Thanks! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@pjchris90]

I worked on the first FAA automation project using computers to drive the data displays for the air traffic controllers. Our team of engineers installed "Common Digitizers" out at each radar site to digitize the analog data coming off the Korean War vintage radars then in use. The digital data then flowed to the 9020 computers installed in the basement of each air traffic control center. Each common digitizer had to be carefully adjusted to compensate for variations in data returns from each radar, thus preventing a controllers screen from putting up a boggy in the wrong position. Some radar's had blind spots as well and some had severe false reflection problems due to farm silos, tall radio towers. All of this had to be adjusted for. Teaching the software how to handle the SR-71 aircraft at Mach 2 and above is a story in itself, as no one on the project was kept informed of where and when they would fly and the software would get a hit, project (based on maximum airliner speeds) the maximum distance out to look for the next hit, and then not get another hit because the aircraft had flown far out side the box! Every miss would trigger a "Lost Target" alarm. Chaos until the military admitted it was their's. Solution? Treat the airplane like Bomac missle and "ignore" it.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Paul, that is a great story! Farm silo interference. Never heard of that one before. The "common digitizers" sound like quite a piece of equipment too! ~ Hunter

[@geckoproductions4128]

In the early 70's when I worked in Crew Training & Flight Simulation in Bldg 35 at NASA in Houston, we had 8 Honeywell CCC computers running in parallel talking to an IBM 360 with a DEC PDP 8 as the interface. This was to drive the Apollo Command Module simulator which the SkyLab crew used to get back and forth to SkyLab. It was left over from the Apollo mission stuff, as was much of SkyLab, so all the gear was still there to make the Command Module fly around the moon. This was very handy on weekends when there wasn't a mission on for taking your date for a ride!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi GeckoProductions, wow, that sounds like a fascinating time. Now, I am a little bit jealous. Can imagine that you had lots of fun playing/working with that technology back in the 70's. ~ Nice. ~ VK

[@geckoproductions4128]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject doncha know

[@jerryrusinko1219]

Learned to program on a 360/30 at my community college starting in 1976. Cobol, Fortran, Assembly Language. Started as a student work study operator later on but it was not my first time as an operator as I landed a job as a weekend operator on an NCR Century system the same time as I started college. Really loved the 360 though. (5) 2311 drives, 1403 printer (loud as could be), a couple of tape drives, card punch and a whopping 128k of core memory. Wish I could remember all the model numbers. That 360 job got me more than a couple of dates with girls desperate for an extra compile or 2 at the end of the semester..... The 80 column cards really do remind me of simpler times. Thanks for the video.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Jerry, thank you for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed the video! Sounds like it brought back some good memories! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@cliffordkiehl3959]

I joined IBM in July 1968. In December of that year, on the last day of the Johnson administration the Justice Department filed suit against IBM. For the next 10 years IBM worked hard trying to win that suit and remain a leader in the Computer Business. The suit was finally dropped by the Reagan Administration, but by that time IBM and the industry were completely different. After 33 years with IBM I worked for another high tech company which bragged about their hiring wemon. I couldn't believe that since at IBM women were treated the same as men, all you had to do is perform. All were paid according to schedules that were base on performance and nothing else. A great place to work.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Clifford, thank you for the great bit of history. IBM in 1968 must have still been in its mainframe heyday more or less. Lots going on globally in that time frame as well. I bet you saw lots of fascinating changes in your 33 years with IBM (!) Was IBM pretty strong outside the US at that time also? ~ Victor

[@cliffordkiehl3959]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Approximately 50% of the revenue was generated outside the US.

[@67daltonknox]

I worked for IBM from 1969 to 70 at Respond in the UK. I recall that our 360 had less memory than my watch but we were multitasking on it and they wanted us to use PL/1 which wasn't much good. When I left to go to medical school, IBM was at its peak and my colleagues thought I was deranged. Twenty years later they were mostly out of a job.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Dalton, Interesting story. Sounds like you made a good decision back then. : )

[@Alan_UK]

Hi Dalton. I worked at Respond at for exactly the same period. I was recruited to maintain the world wide (ex Americas) production scheduling program written in Cobol. I was pleased to have the opportunity to learn PL/1 - it was a refreshing change after the strictures of Cobol. I wrote a reporting sub-system in PL/1 and did a trial installation in Mainz. But overall I found the work boring, there was no documentation for the massive monolithic program of many 1,000s lines of code. And if I made an error management from above would descend. Plus the constant change of line managers was irritating. So I left to work for LOLA, a new local government consortium building a real-time on-line database system using the then new IMS/2. That was a really interesting and challenging. IBM were surprised I was leaving as people generally saw a job at IBM as one for life and one with prestige. Looks like you and I made the right move ;) Alan

[@teekay_1]

Dalton, I did work for a consultancy using PL/1 and at IBM using PL/1 and I rather liked it. Like most languages of the time, it didn't have strong type checking, but it did support pointers so you could do some C-like structures for linked lists, and it had optional run-time checking that you could run through to debug your code for memory leaks, or arrays going out of bounds. It also gave me the ability to call assembler language which was handy on VM/370 to allocate a virtual disk within PL/1 code to store output files and do other tricks by calling system routines via some stub code. Yes, if you refused to learn windows and C/C++ coding in the late 80's you were doomed career wise, but you did get a brief reprieve in 1999 when people were fixing mainframe COBOL code.

[@ernestsmith3581]

​@@teekay_1I suspect Dalton was referring to the early version of the PL/1 compiler. In 1973 while working as a FORTRAN and assembler programmer at a US Army S360/44 equipped facility I decided to learn PL/1. The compiler came with the purchase of the machine on a removable disk, so after hours I replaced the FORTRAN disk with the PL/1 disk and wrote a simple program. After a week of playing, it never would compile and make it to the link stage. I gave up. I've heard others complain that the first iteration of the PL/1 compiler was buggy, and strongly suspect it was. That being said, it IS a beautiful, well thought out language.

[@ProfessorNordheim]

I find it interesting that the name Victor Kaminsky appears in the credits seeing that in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, Victor Kaminsky was one of the members of the survey team onboard USS Discovery in hibernation.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @ProfessorNordheim, We were very lucky they were able to recover Kaminsky and revive him in the 2010 mission. He is an asset to our team.~ Thanks for the astute observation! ~Dr. Charles Hunter, CHAP

[@c0t0d0s7]

When I was younger, I remember watching the Olympics on TV and saw what looked like people sliding removable disk packs down a sheet of ice. I thought to myself, “that can’t be good for the disks.” I eventually realized it was the sport of curling. 🤪

[@rhkavli]

That was a really good one! I've handled my share of disk packs, mostly RP-06's from DEC, but never have I associated them with curling. But when you mentioned it, it is spot on!

[@c0t0d0s7]

@@rhkavli I ended up working on a Data General system during college, and I had to remove disk packs from several Zebra drives every day so Brinks could pick them up. That was our offsite storage solution.

[@keithowen3599]

I joined British Airways in london in June 1985 and was trained as a TPF (Transaction Processing Facility) programmer on a mix of IBM s/360 and S/370. The maximum programme size at the time was 1K, and you would not believe the excitement amongst the programmers when IBM expanded this capability to 4K! I moved to Amadeus Data Processing in Munich in Feb 2000 and BA was still using S/370 as was Amadeus. It wasn't until around 2015 that Amadeus got rid of the last of its mainframes, transitioning via HP-UX to Linux. The mainframes were still faster and more reliable than anything else, but the cost of hardware/OS and a lack of experienced programmers killed them off. The cost of rack servers running Linux (10s of $thousands vs $millions for IBM) was a convincing argument, but the mainframe was never beaten for availablity - we used to recycle our mainframes once every year to just clear out any memory leaks. And it took less than 60 seconds to come back up

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @keithowen3599, that is quite an interesting story about the mainframes at British Airways, and then at Amadeus Data Processing! Thank you for sharing that info. I did not realize that the systems could come up so fast after being re-booted. ~ Victor, CHAP

[@geosin1945]

When I started as a programmer in 1970, working for Royal Army Pay Corps in UK, they had a newly delivered IBM 360/50, having retired their old IBM 705s. We were one of very few government establishments that used IBM as most were forced to use ICL.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Geoff, that is very interesting. From your comment I take it that the UK Gov't wanted computers made by UK based companies (e.g. ICL), but the Pay Corps. got some sort of exemption for that. Wonder how that happened. Did you also program on the ICL machines? ~ Hunter

[@Conenion]

Very good narrator.

[@kennethmoles4643]

I always wanted to get a chance to program a IBM 360, but the closest I ever I got to a big mainframe was a Buroughs B6930. One of my Mentors worked for IBM in NY and was part of the design team for the power supply of the 360. He and his Wife were so enjoyable to spend time with.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @kennethmoles4643, too bad you didn't get your hands on with the 360, but the Buroughs B6930 must have been quite interesting too. Never saw one up close, but it sounded like quite a machine from what I have read. Thanks for sharing a bit of your history! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@renefrijhoff2484]

Never operated the 360, but I did operate the midrange systems S/36, S/38 and AS/400. Great machines for relational databases. The OS of these machines were specifically build for handling these databases.

[@rickardroach9075]

I was an RPG programmer on S/38 and AS/400 for 19 years. Loved it!

[@frankcohen8662]

Fun memories of the 360 mainframe. I was in middle school in the 1970's and learned IBM 360 Assembler and Fortran (WATFIV). I failed Cobol in university in 1980 because it was so archaic compared to the 6502 and other microprocessor systems I was coding on. I wish this video explained the applications being run on these mainframes, or at least explained the software inventions like CICS. -Frank

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Frank, thank you for the excellent feedback. Assembler and FORTRAN are powerful tools to have. I take your point about the interest in applications and software utilities as well. That is something we will be looking at for the future as well. We are always on the hunt for good material that we can rescue, restore and share also. ~ Victor

[@frankcohen8662]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject I'm 61 now and eyeing the day when I work on documenting what I've seen and done. I'm glad to contribute to your effort when it helps you. -Frank

[@richardhole8429]

Smiles. You must have tried very hard to fail Cobol.

[@camgere]

Excellent video! As you alluded to, there was a progression in digital logic technology. From vacuum tubes, to discrete transistors and resistors, to Small Scale Integration semiconductor circuits (Texas Instruments famous 7400 series)., to Medium Scale Integration and then Large Scale Integration. The "Bit Slice" LSI chips could be used to emulate the IBM 360 Instruction set at much lower cost. "Bit-slice Microprocessor Design" by Mick and Brick had great information on building "Harvard Architecture" computers. 12:00 is a great example of "blinking lights and whirring tape drives" that was the iconic computer meme for decades.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Camgere, thank you very much for the kind words. Sound like you enjoyed the video. Thanks also for the "Bit-slice Microprocessor Design" recommendation. Looks like it is on Amazon too. Thanks! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@jamesrawlings8493]

One of my first jobs was programming on a 360. Wow have things changed in a short time

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

... a nice feature...

[@maximumentropy1863]

In the 1970's I operated - brought the IBM 360 30 up from power off to IPL and prorgrammed and ran Cobol, Fortran IV, Basic, Assembler, APL and RPG using punch cards to initially load the programs and data. The system had 3 hard drives removable platters and 3 tape drives. I punched cards on an IBM 029 and later on other punch card machines. I ran a line printer and a burster for multiple part paper. It was a government contractor and the programs were classified. I worked in a bulding isolated by myself from 12 to 8 AM and attended College in the daytime. I later ran a computer business and sold MITS Altair Microcomputers, Cromemco, and other personal computers and equipment. Great fun.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Thank you! ~ VK

[@frankowalker4662]

All that equipment and not a mains lead in sight. Go into an office today and they have a small computer far more powerful and wires everywhere. Ha ha. Great little film, thank you.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Glad you enjoyed it! Worked in a data center back in the day, there was one person who's job was to keep track of all the under raised floor wiring. It was a nightmare. Fiber, coax, power, etc. Thick cables too!

[@frankowalker4662]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject LOL. Happy days. :)

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Not only more powerful, but with better power regulation. Unless you had an UPS, the merest little brownout and the big machines would immediately crash. Whereas the little machines would keep right on running.

[@frankowalker4662]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 Very true. I wonder how many brown outs caused a head crash in the hard discs. LOL.

[@rty1955]

@@frankowalker4662 nome actually. If the drive sensed a power drop all data would cease to be transferred and the heads would slam back in the resting area These platter were big and had tremendous inertia, so any power issues would be caught and no damage would occur. Remember these are mainframes not PCs

[@PascalGienger]

It is weird when you load the /360 operating system on the Hercules emulator and you write your batch requests that back in time that whole machineries of tapes and huge disks actually were started with loud noise after you entered the command....

[@jerry3890]

10:40 2860 selector channel for 360 65 and up. 1,2 or 3 channels in one cabinet. Lots of hidden switches and lights.

[@jcak552]

Had a single channel model 2860 (x2) and the 2870 Mux (x2) for the two 360/65 we had. Ahhh those were the days. I was an Air Force Tech that was part of the Maintenance team. And there are no photos of the computer that was at the site I was at. We also had Two 360/40 in different configs. The Model 65s were identical..

[@jerry3890]

@@jcak552 A 360/65 with only one selector channel would be quite unusual. Even on a small system you'd usually have the console typewriter (1052), a card reader/punch, 1403 printer on channel 0 of the 2870, and at least two selectors. Channel 1 normally the disks, and channel 2 for the tapes. If you put disk and tape on the same selector it's gonna run like a pig. The 65 and the 40 were my favorite 360 models to work on.

[@jcak552]

Yes, we had a single selector and a single mux on each of the two 65s we had… We also had direct control enable on both… 512 MB of memory with a 1 GB large core store attached to each 65… a 5 drive string of Mohawk data 2700 ( replaced the 2311s ) a 1403, 1403N1, and a 1443, plus Card reader, SDA, PDA, 2403? Tape drives ( 5 string set )… oh and 5 3270 type VDT ( free standing, with light pens ), plus 3 1050 typewriters that operated until 1990 ish… from 1968… Pretty sure the tapes drives where on the mux… Specialized application for the Spacetrack Radar at Eglin’s site C-6

[@jerry3890]

@@jcak552 That is quite a specialized system, built for a task I suppose. I think you mean 512KB and 1MB of memory. Maximum memory from IBM was 1MB main storage in 4x2365 storage units (256KB each) and 8MB LCS. Some third party memory manufacturers extended main storage to at least 4MB. Main storage ran at 750 nanosecond cycle time, while LCS was a very slow 8 millisecond.

[@jcak552]

@@jerry3890 yeah, it was an 65I with a 1MB LCS not from IBM… look up AN/FPS-85.. they replaced the 65 with a 3031 or a 4331… each 65 had two memory cabinets attached… I actually got to do the memory schmo on them to fix a long standing (6months) problem…

[@peterhill7846]

Thank you for reviving a few memories. Although my base was mostly ICL 1900 I worked with an IBM 370/165 for a while. I did wince a little at the loading of the disk pack.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Peter, thank you for the kind words. ICL had an interesting computer line and history. I'd like to find more information about them also. Yes, the 370 disk packs were something to deal with! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@TheEulerID]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject what ICL also sold, was a licensed copy of the RCA Spectra, the System 4, which was an IBM 360 clone at the non-privileged instruction level, but had some differences at the privileged level and in the details of channel control programs. RCA nearly went bankrupt in developing the machine, and it was never a great success. In my case, I worked on an in-house OLTP operating system called MONITOR which was developed in the early 1970s to automate air cargo management and customs clearance for Heathrow Airport, and later for airports and seaports across the country. It implemented message passing interfaces to cargo agent and airline systems, so also acted as a communications hub. The first implementation was called LACES and was true 24/7 operation, with mirrored disks, dual logging, buffered, atomic transactions, automatic recovery etc. When I joined the team in the late 70s, it was supporting around 1,000 terminals on a machine with just 768 kB of ferrite core store. The OS got used for some other applications, including RAF stores, telecom data collection etc. Later, we ported it to run on actual IBM mainframes, and maintained operating system source code compatibility through conditional assembly and run-time channel control program translation. We even sold a version of the updated cargo handling and customs clearance interface to Miami Airport who were seeking to promote themselves as a major Air cargo gateway. I think the whole enterprise went rather awry, so never achieved what it was meant to. In any event, a bit tangential to the IBM 360 story, but the RCA Spectra, and the first attempt at an IBM mainframe clone is often forgoten

[@strayling1]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject A good place to look for ICL history is the Manchester University MU series of experimental machines. If I recall correctly (and I might not!) the ICL 2900 series was derived from the MU5.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Steve, that is a fascinating bit of history! The "LACES" implementation sounds like quite a complex system. Using only 768 kB of core sounds amazing. When you say "atomic transactions" what are you referring to? The giant RCA machines didn't stay on the market long, but they seem to pop up in interesting places when exploring the history of large scale data processing. Thanks very much for the look back. Some fascinating times, to be sure! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Strayling, thank you, this sounds like a very good source to explore! ~ Victor

[@tpobrienjr]

In 1965, I spent summer as operator of an IBM 1620 computer at Corn Products Corporation. I keypunched data from the plant's labs, processed them through an application on the 1620, then printed reports from the resulting punched card decks. The reports recommended adjustments throughout the plant. All this was on "graveyard shift", from 11 pm until 7 am. The 1620 could read and punch cards, but had no printer.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Thomas, sounds like some very interesting times. I remember graveyard shift very well. Lots got done during that period. Thank you for sharing some of your experience with the 1620. That was quite an early machine! ~ Hunter

[@JD-dm4lo]

Yeah but how bout that typewriter !

[@tpobrienjr]

@@JD-dm4lo The user/operator terminal was a teletype, I think. I had a card deck I could load and run a slot machine game. My first contact with a computer game! Sense switch inputs made for the bets.

[@jat41]

Wow. The 360 was the first computer I programmed on. I was in 8th grade at the time, and this was what the local university had at the time.

[@jangelbrich7056]

Thanks. Very informative

[@Alan_UK]

I don't recall the UK having any/many of these larger 360s (80s, 90s etc). In 1969 my first job was a trainee programmer for a large UK bank. They had model 50s (and later 65s I think). It was a rule that all programs had to be able to run on a model 30 (less memory) and for this purpose the bank kept a number of model 30s in reserve and switched off (only a bank could afford that!). Writing and testing programs via batch processing was slow and tedious - e.g. one comma in the wrong place meant waiting another 3 hours or more (write the correction, get it punch, put the program in the out-tray, wait for a courier collection etc etc ) We programmers then discovered a dark room with a model 30. We would sneak in, turn on the lights , insert those 2311 disk drives, power it up after setting the boot address on the main console, and then run our programs. All stopped when we had to move office and then it was back to the courier :( The bank also had a room of model 20s running with TOS (tape operating system - i.e. the OS was on tape). These were used to run cheque reader / sorters. These were run by loads of young girls in teams, competing to sort the most cheques per shift. The cheques went through so fast it was a blur. They were not happy bunnies when was a jam (e.g. a missed paper clip) and the cheques had to be extracted from the machines. As our prime minister said at the time: The white heat of technology! Fun days :) Alan

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Alan UK, great story about sneaking in to run programs on the Model 30 you found in the dark room! Sounds like exciting times! Yes, I think only banks, governments and NASA could afford to have extra System/360's around as needed.... maybe a few rich universities too. ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@keithowen3599]

Airlines were running them for the processing speed and availability. Started with Airline Control Program (ACP) which became Transaction Processing Facility (TPF). A Swiss Air development called ACPDB/TPFDB added rudimentary chained-records database capabilities, eventually taken over by IBM themselves

[@martincox4520]

I started in 1970 on s 360/40 running DOS with 2401 tape drives and 2314 disk drives also a 2701 supporting a remote site with a real 2780! The telecoms software was written using. BATS Basic (British) additional telecommunications support. This later replaced by POWER (priority output writers and execution readers). It was an ELP program then. My experience of this got me a new job as the new company was struggling to get POWER/VS to work Happy days

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Interesting. You taught me some new terms! Thank you! Victor,

[@geoffcrisp7225]

I started in the UK computer industry in 1964 and after a spell in engineering moved to a large bureau in the city of London running the 360 / 50's managing the data centre hardware and environment. Soon after they were replaced by 2 x 370 155's running OS ASP. 6 banks of 2314's, tape, 6 x 1403 ptrs all running 24 x 7 x 365 days per year. There was nothing else on the market then to match IBM in the commercial sector. Great machines with excellent support right back to the factory in Montpellier. I spent my whole career until 2011 in the IT industry and whilst IBM weren't always the cheapest they gave brilliant after sales support.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Geoff, sounds like you have a great deal of experience with some of the big IBM systems, especially having started back in 1964(!) I bet you have some fascinating stories from so many years in the tech field too. Glad you found our channel, and thanks for your comments! ~ Victor

[@TheJstewart2010]

What a weird coincidence. The System 360 was announced the day after I was born. Really interesting story - thanks for telling it.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Thanks. You are very welcome. ~

[@alanstrong55]

IBM hired a man named Jim, who finished the electronics program at DMCC. He moved to Rochester, MN and did fine with the job. The higher cost of living in Rochester was tough on poor Jim. That did not stop him from moving forward.

[@winstonsmith478]

Would love to see a documentary about the truly art deco SSEC.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

I believe that machine was set up in a showroom with large windows visible from the street. So the public could get a good view of this newfangled “electronic brain”.

[@scottmiller2591]

I got a chance to use a DUAL 360 in the early '70s. Very interesting machines. Manually mounted disk drives, fantastically loud chain printers.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Scott, Sounds very cool! ~ Hunter, CHAP

[@jonrutherford6852]

I operated and supervised System 360, and later 370, use at a government agency and have tactile memory of those tape and disk drives, and of the big line printer. My main memory of that period is of the frequent system crashes, calling IBM service in the dead of night, and writing up paper documentation of the incidents. It was a relief to go to a different job! But those systems were great, and historically important all the same.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @jonrutherford6852, sounds like you have some great first-hand experience here. It does seem that lots of crashes would happen after normal hours. That's when the night shift has so much fun. : ) Thanks very much for your feedback! ~ VK

[@timstone3441]

Worked on both the 360 and 370.. Remember HASP? System console was a modified selectric typewriter.

[@gregorylatiak3333]

Nice memory. Missing the well-thumbed recovery procedures manual at the console. Never saw a single production machine without it.

[@wallychambe1587]

I took a computer class with the IBM 360 in college in 1968, learned COBAL!

[@TheAlanSaunders]

You missed out the IBM 9020 Air Traffic Control System consisting of six to twelve IBM/360s (e.g.3x 65s and 3x 50s). Twenty FAA and one CAA (UK) locations. Maybe a seperate video?

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Alan, yes, several folks have reminded me of this. It definitely needs its own video. I'd love to get a few feet of film footage of one of those installations at work too. ~ Victor

[@johnwarren1920]

I was a programmer on the Pentagon Telecommunications Center, that Pentagon 360/50 system shown in the video. It wasn't in the basement when I was there, though--it was on the fifth (top) floor, on the A ring. The code was all written in ALC, IBM 360 assembly language. At one point in the video, we see briefly the security badge (red and white diagonal stripes) of a GI sitting at the console. Photographing the badge was a clear security violation, I'm surprised it slipped by. The 360/50 was eventually replaced by a 360/65, then by a 370/155.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi John, wow, that is quite a coincidence. We have that whole Pentagon video posted on our channel as well. The reason I was able to determine the date was that they filmed a calendar on the wall too(!) I thought they were a bit loose in security especially for middle of the cold war. Great color scenes. It must have been very interesting to work at the Pentagon in IT back in those days. What years were you there? (if you can say). Thanks! ~ Victor

[@johnwarren1920]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject I was working as a programmer on computerized telecommunication systems in the Pentagon from 1971 to 1980. In 1971 I worked on the Joint Chief of Staff's message center, which was implemented on a Burroughs D825 (something of an antique even at the time), and then from 1972 to 1980 I worked on the Army's telecommunications center with the IBM 360. The Army Signal Corps had the job of developing the consolidated telecommunications center that eventually absorbed many of the other message centers in the Pentagon. It was indeed interesting and challenging work, but frankly I do not regard writing assembly language code as a fit job for an intelligent human being, and I'm glad I got out when I did. ;-)

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

John, Understood! : )

[@oilman1758]

I started at IBM is the late 80's. My Dad worked on many of the systems in this video. He took me to work when he had call outs at night. Brings back old memories. You wonder how any of the old machines even worked. Very complex, big and very heavy. They talk about KB and MB of memory and tape drive capacity. Today we talk about GB in memory and hard disk storage. I was always interested in the tape drive's. We think about cassette tape where the spools spin in the same direction. Back then the spools went back and forth in opposite directions at the same time. Very complicated system. If you watch the video again you would see it.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @oilman1758, thank you for sharing some of those memories. I bet it was fun to visit the big computer systems at work. Old data centers had their own aura of technical mystique. Bet your dad had some good stories to tell also. ~ thanks ! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@dimbulb23]

Tapes drives access their data serially. If they couldn't reverse they be rather worthless for data storage. Most of the time when you see them spinning back and forth, there are multiple drives working together and sorting the data in an order that's more useable. I never worked on them myself but others called that back and forth "shoe-shining". IBM '68-'98.... Callouts... I took my wife with me on a callout only once. She was not CE material.

[@mYmUSICmILL]

In 1969 I started as a trainee programmer in an insurance company. The company's computers were an old IBM 1401 and an IBM 360-50 (as well as an IBM 360-40 for the life insurance department). From 1971 until the end of 1982 I worked as an organisational programmer and then as a systems programmer for different IBM 360 computers as well as Honeywell Bull 6000 models. From 1983 I worked for a consulting company specialising in performance analysis and management. A lot has happened since.

[@michaellu8879]

WOW! I mean look at that color options! Those serious business machines are ironically much more colorful than what we had now...

[@chriscaprio6944]

Brings back a lot of memories. I started in 1976 on an IBM 1401 with 8K of memory and when I finally moved up to the 360/40 I thought it was paradise…and then we got our first 370/158 and that was pure heaven compared to the prior gen.

[@SiouxsieCat]

My first job was an operator on a System/360. I would run day-end batch jobstream from 11pm - 7am. Circa 1985.

[@brucemiller3012]

I did Autocoder on a 360/30 with 16mb of memory and 3 tape drives and we did it all...buddy of mine had a card deck that created 'TILT' on the light-display of the '30... Still in IT today and its been a great ride.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Bruce, "Autocoder" on a 360/30. Sounds great! I can imagine it has been a great ride in IT and still challenges ahead! Thanks for visiting our channel, hope you will explore more of our ancient Tech films. ~ Victor

[@awuma]

7:35 University of Michigan developed the Michigan Terminal System (MTS) operating system. We had a 360/67 using MTS as the campus mainframe at the University of British Columbia in the late 60's and the 70's. It was a superb dual-processor timesharing virtual memory system, very easy to use, unlike the gobbledegook native IBM job control languages, such as PS on the 360/44, which was the first computer I used, in 1967.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @awuma, very interesting, thank you!

[@basilbcf]

I was a maintenance man on maybe the largest computer (in physical size) ever made - the IBM AN/FSQ-7, the heart of the NORAD SAGE computer system. The Air Defense computer system grew out of the MIT-developed Whirlwind computer. The Q-7 was all vacuum tubes, and discrete components (resistors, diodes, capacitors) and used a magnetic core memory.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @basilbcf, thank you very much for your comment and info. The AN/FSQ-7 was certainly a historic machine! (actually a collection of machines) What was it like to work on a computer system of that size?... and, I assume it was highly classified at that time, so secrecy was a major concern as well. How long were you in support of that system? ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@basilbcf]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Hi Victor, it was the best job I ever had. Unlike today's computers, where you change a card with millions of components on it, when the Q-7 had a problem, you had to ultimately figure out exactly which component was bad (e.g., which leg of which AND gate was failing). You really had to understand how the computer worked down to the gnat's level. I worked on this system for about 6 years and it was my first assignment right out of Tech School. I left when I was accepted to the Airman's Education and Commissioning Program (AECP). Some parts of the system were classified, but most wasn't and we used to give tours to local VIPs.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

15:40 Re MFT versus MVT -- I don’t think it was the number of tasks that was fixed or variable, but their memory size.

[@alias9025]

Wow, my intro to the IBM 360, card decks, and PL-1 was nearly 50 years ago at the TUCC in Chapel Hill. I later spent 5 years as a software developer on 370 with MVS. My last experience on a 370 was in late 1982. I missed the transition to the 31 bit extended address.

[@falkgottschalk]

Nice video, but regarding the beginnings: Herrman Hollerith created the 1st usable calculator which has been used for the US-census in 1890. Charles Flint bought the patents from Hollerith ... so, the real origin of IBM is Herrmann Hollerith.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Falk, good point.

[@johnmckown1267]

I got to work on a 370/168 running VM with Amdahl's mods. Ran MVS and DOS/VS on it. Company would acquire other companies & run their OS as a virtual machine while porting the code and data to the main MVS or DOS guest.

[@zaxchannel2834]

I'm reading through an old ANSI COBOL book and need to see what an IBM 360 looks like for some stuff to make any sense. I suppose I'll have to wait for VR or something to feel like I'm really using one

[@missyd0g2]

I started programming on a IBM 360. Moved up to network 3705/25 NCP with VTAM and SNA.

[@uploadJ]

Do you remember ROUTE XEQ cards and BDT (file/dataset) transfer products?

[@teekay_1]

The funny part of looking at that gigantic computer complex is that most of it was I/O peripherals... tape drives, printers, disk packs. The Central Processing Unit and operator console were a tiny part of what you see.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

very true..

[@patrickcannell2258]

Interesting reading of COBOL and FORTRAN..

[@JulieCarney-em8jb]

Hello! Could we speak about this video please? I'd love to use a clip of it in a internal film we are creating?

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Julie, thank you for your question. The IBM content is owned by IBM. It would be best for you to contact IBM Archives directly and ask for permission for the segment you wish to use. From our perspective, we have no problem with your using a small portion of this for educational purposes. IBM would be the one to check with for any official permissions. I hope this helps. Good luck with your project. _~ Victor

[@oilman1758]

NYC traffic lights were controlled by the IBM 1800 series. The punch card machines were all over the room. One of the operators would collect the waste from the punch cards and use it as confetti for new years eve. The cards came in different colors. What fun we had. IBM 590 Madison Ave in NYC had a museum with some of the old equipment to display them.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Yes, true (I think you mean "confetti" instead of "graffiti", but yes, it was fun to save and throw it!

[@oilman1758]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Wow I missed that one. TY. I fixed it. How embarrassing.

[@timcoyle50]

What I first learned to program back in 1971, on the 360-60 using Cobal, BAL and RPG.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Tim, sounds like a good foundation! I learned those three languages about the same time (maybe a few years later). My RPG instructor was a former army tank driver, with a very thick accent. That made RPG tough for me to follow. ~ Did you stay with programming for a long career? ~ Hunter

[@timcoyle50]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject No I didn't, But in the late 80's I got into PC repair and helping people with DOS then Windows until Win 98. Still do some but my son's business is PC repair in Oregon and does well.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Tim, very cool! Sounds very rewarding! ~ Hunter

[@dont99999]

I worked on 1401, 360 model 30 and 50. Back in those days, when you bought one, IBM supplied your company with a dedicated Systems Engineer.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @dont99999, yes, I remember that too! Often, you got to keep the same SE for years too. They got to know your business, it was a great customer service tool. ~ VK

[@bthomasx]

I grew up in a computer room with a 65, 40, and a 30. I love that job

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

BT Boy, sounds like the good old days! : )

[@spacekitt.n]

its crazy that you would need a whole room in the 70s to store just a few seconds of this video

[@8BitNaptime]

You have no idea how badly I want one of those giant tape drives or cartridge drives or whatever large and noisy machine !!

[@b43xoit]

When I first saw tape drives, I thought they must have some fancy servo motors to turn the reels in response to the signals from the tape levels in the vacuum columns. But recently I found out it was done with clutches.

[@8BitNaptime]

@@b43xoit Yeah it looks like it could rip an arm off in there!

[@Aethelwolf]

WoW, I worked on one when I was a young engineer.

[@jerry3890]

At 4:47 there is a statement that six models were announced. If I recall correctly only three of the announced models were actually released. The model 30, 40, 50, 60, 62 and 70 were announced. The 60 and 62 were essentially identical but the 62 had faster memory. 2 microseconds compared to 1 microsecond. The machines actually released were 30, 40, 50, 65 and 75. The two larger machines now had 750 nanosecond core memory. Other smaller, and larger 360 models were released later.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Jerry, good points, thank you for the feedback on this. We included a slide at time index 15:11 that has the release dates of all the 360 models. That might be helpful as well. It is true that some announced were not actually released. Thanks again! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@jerry3890]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Hi Victor, I thought your video had ended and didn't watch it to the end. Indeed that slide shows announcement and ship dates. This video prompted me to go through some drawers that I haven't opened in years and find a system/360 Reference Data "green card" GX20-1703-9, a yellow System/370 booklet, which originally came out as a card, a couple of leather think pd notebooks, and even an original IBM CE key for the key switch on the 360 / 370 front panels. Great video!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Even the Key, that's very rare! Thanks again for the kind words too.~

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

IBM also promised a 360/90 model to try to head off customers thinking of buying those superfast CDC machines. They kept claiming it would be better than the CDCs, but I don’t think it ever actually shipped. An early example of “vapourware”, and the power of FUD to kill your competitors’ sales.

[@jerry3890]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 And CDC successfully sued them for it. From Wikipedia: "In the meantime, IBM announced a new System/360 model, the Model 92, which would be just as fast as CDC's 6600. Although this machine did not exist, sales of the 6600 dropped drastically while people waited for the release of the mythical Model 92. Norris did not take this tactic, dubbed as fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), lying down, and in an extensive antitrust lawsuit launched against IBM a year later, he eventually won a settlement valued at $80 million.[22] As part of the settlement, he picked up IBM's subsidiary, Service Bureau Corporation (SBC), which ran computer processing for other corporations on its own computers. SBC fitted nicely into CDC's existing service bureau offerings.[23]"

[@teekay_1]

For those of you interested in these computers, I highly recommend the book "IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems" by Pugh, Johnson and Palmer. I wish they made this in ebook format, but alas, no. Second, at this time, IBM was lauded for it's remarkable ability to jump computer architectures with creative destruction, essentially knowing when to cash in on an accepted architecture (1401, 360, 370) and then move to the next architecture while bringing your customers along. The IBM post PC, but especially in the early to mid 80's lost their way by not understanding why people chose the IBM PC and trying to take their customers in a proprietary direction with MCA. They made it worse with the unworkable SAA architecture, and finally they missed the boat by getting a late start on the cloud long after Amazon and Microsoft had the market pretty much cornered. They also hung onto the System 34 architecture much too long without a reasonable alternative, even though they had the ability to shift their customer base to AIX. And let's not forget how IBM's weak initial foray into mobile computing made they largely irrelevant by the 21st century. Seems like they had some smart technical and marketing people in the 50's, 60's and 70's and those people likely retired to be replaced by bean counters. I suspect IBM is still dependent on the mainframe revenues to keep them afloat, even after that architecture is now completely irrelevant.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi TeeKay, very interesting comment. I can comment briefly on the last paragraph at least. I think that people in the 50's, 60's and 70's were generally very sharp technically. Many (or most) probably came from an engineering or mathematics background. Most colleges didn't have "computer courses" or "data processing" courses till later. I know some older folks who were extremely bright and could put many of today's workers to shame. Also, the Pugh, Johnson and Palmer book on IBM is a very good resource, as you say. Thanks! ~ Hunter, CHAP

[@farpointgamingdirect]

Between my Jr and Sr years at vo-tech they replaced the System 360 with a System 36 with all of the bells and whistles. I learned RPG II and Fortran IV on those machines

[@jlelliotton]

In 1917 the Canadian subsidiary was created as the “International Business Machines Co. Ltd.”. CTR changed their name to adopt the Canadian name in 1924.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

That's true! Good point!

[@Nobilangelo]

The first computer I ever worked with was a 360/30. 32K of memory, two 5MB disk drives, a card-reader, three tape drives, a paper-tape reader, an 1100lpm printer, and a 1419 MICR reader: $NZ1.5 million. Fifteen years later I bought 32K BBC Micro for 600 pounds in London (powered by the same 6502 chip as the Apple II, but it ran it twice as quick, and had a far better OS).