1963 Sperry Rand UNIVAC FASTRAND Magnetic Drum, Computer History Archives, Unisys Educational

[@jasonb4370]

Thank you to whoever made this video we need to remember our heritage in the computer fields. One day certain people of our younger generation might want to understand where we came from. Some of the best Engineers study the old and the new.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Jason, thanks very much. You make good points. ~ Victor, CHAP

[@roachtoasties]

Thanks. I'm sold! I'm heading to Best Buy to upgrade my PC home network to Fastrand storage. I might have to throw-out my furniture to make room for my new Fastrands, but that's OK. My living room couches are getting old anyway. We'll just sit on top of the Fastrands. ;)

[@drof2th]

Thank you! This is now my go to computer leaning source!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Ron, your feedback is very much appreciated. I am very glad you found our channel helpful! ~ Victor

[@jamesburke2759]

I'd love to have one of there for when my customers ask me for the biggest hard drive i have

[@martinroe6770]

There was a Fastrand unit at the Pacific Fleet Data Processing Service Center in Pearl Harbor, HI when I was stationed there from 1974 to 1976.It was used with 2 Univac 1500 computers.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Martin, that sounds interesting. I have only met one or two people that have ever used these monster machines. I can imagine they were quite something to power up and down. Hope this brought back some good memories. ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@willynebula6193]

Down the rabbit hole i go thanks to usagi electric. Great video btw. I found some interesting history, very close to home. I think i might be able to see one irl.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

(A viewer comment from prior version) - “I was an on-site FE at Bell Canada's MSDS system in 1971-75. We had two Fastrand IIs! Although I had to take the training on them, I never worked on them since they ran continuously for the four years that I was there. We were on the 12th floor of 76 Adelaide Street, Toronto. When they were demolishing the old Toronto Star building across the street, they sent people with seismic measuring devices to see if the our building was being harmed by vibration from the demolition. They said they could not get any readings two floors on either side of ours because the vibrations from the Fastrands were off the scale on their instrument! They guys that worked there before me told me that they had to use the emergency stop once, it took 30 seconds to stop and blew dozens of transistors. We just let it run!” (Nigel J. )

[@Levelworm]

Working on some sort of Mainframe has always been my dream. But then again I can regard modern distributed computing architecture as another kind of mainframe.

[@scottallen4212]

I was a student at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. ~1970 a Univac 1108 with Fastrand II, FH-432, Uniservo 16s, and 1004s was installed in the basement of the new Stuart Building. They didn't plan well - no loading dock and no freight elevator. I used to get free computer time by hauling paper and card box deliveries down the stairs. The lobby of the library above the computer room had a large oriental rug which covered a "trap door". Heavy riggers came in with monstrous equipment to span the hole in the floor. They lifted the heavy floor panels like man-hole covers, and used a crane to slowly lower and raise the equipment. A real project, and quite expensive: I heard that the basic trip charge was $5,000 plus union hourly rates and equipment rental. I returned to IIT around 1978 when the computer was upgraded to 1100/80. I ported some 30k lines of local code in Exec-8. I watched as the 1108 was shut down and hauled away. They had to reinforce the computer room raised floor as they moved the Fastrand to the access hole. Sigh ... the 1108 was my first ...

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @scottallen4212, thank you very much for your detailed account of your experience with the Fastrand and the Univac 1108! That is quite a fascinating story. That must have been quite a sight to see during installation and removal. Wish we had some video of that. Great memories to share. Thanks again! ~ Victor at CHAP

[@ElPasoTubeAmps]

I worked on many of these beauties starting with NASA at MSFC in Huntsville, AL, transferring to WSMR, NM in 1976 where we still had Fastrand II. What a monster - I was with Univac/Sperry/Unisys from January 1970 to the summer of 1994 as a FE/CE. We had a 3X2 1108 at MSFC. Truly great companies. At WSMR, we had Sys-A, Sys,B, Sys-C, Sys-D, Sys-E and lastly Sys-G which was an 1100/90, and TRASANA with two 1108's (notice we skipped Sys-F...). We had a 1100/80 across the hill towards Las Cruces, NM at NASA run out of Houston. One thing I saved when the Univac 1108 left System-A, at Bldg 300, is the aluminum block letters from the side of the CPU that says, UNIVAC 1108. I think it is beautiful. I mounted these letters on an oak board that is hanging in my work room. I still have the PC board pulling tool for the U-100 terminal and a gauge to check if the holes in the punch cards line up properly. Wish I could do it all over again. Thanks for taking the time to post such good computer history for posterity.

[@jimhealy4866]

I have the UNIVAC 1050-II name plate as shown in the video.

[@scottallen4212]

I have a metal sign from a cpu or memory end cabinet "UNIVAC 1108 DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM". And I still have my UP-4144 from ~1970 (shigh school) printed on a 1004

[@WintonMc]

If this doesn't stop you taking your external USB3.0 2Tb SSD for granted, nothing will.

[@Nighthawke70]

You think the gyroscopic forces were THAT bad.... Burroughs had a fixed head hard drive that was a buffer for their mainframe, which was about 250MB. The hub and platter weighed in about 150lbs. It had heads for each track, at that time was the fastest way to access data. It used dynamic braking to slow and stop the platters for maintenance or moving the drive. Well, one crew forgot to switch on the braking so it was still spinning when they put it on the moving truck. When the truck made a turn, it broke loose and preceded right out the side of the truck!

[@guylavoie1342]

I was a Sperry Univac CE, from 1978 to 1980, in Montreal. I worked on the 90/30 and 90/60 but did get to also work on some of the older units like the 9300 series. I still remember the 8414 disc drives, with their hydraulic head actuators and 14 MB capacity. It's been a long time!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Very cool! ~

[@bobdavis4192]

I was a tech for Univac from April 1966 to the fall of 1970. Spent most of this time at Misawa ABB, Osan ABB and Offutt AFB the left to work for Digital Equipment Corporation for 21 years. Then On to General Dynamics IT. Retired on January 1, 2009.

[@KrisRyanStallard]

You show a person at a master control console flipping switches. I'd love to see a video that explains what the switches do.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Ryan, yes, that would be fascinating to find out what functions the switches on the control panel to. There is a user manual at www.bitsavers.org/pdf/univac/1050/UP-2590_1050ref_1962.pdf (page 119 onward) that gives some hint of what is being done, but it quite technical. (PAL Assembler language). Hope to find a more detailed video at some point. Thanks! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@scottallen4212]

The vast majority of the switches were never used, or only by CE during certain problem analysis. Commonly used on 1108 were the channel number for the boot image (tape, drum, or Fastrand/disc). There were 15 jump keys (white push-push buttons that lit when set) detectable by the program. During Exec-8 (OS1100) boot, JK4 meant reload SYS$*LIB$, JK9( (I think) meant erase all symbiont queues (batch runs waiting to run and print files), and the infamous JK13 meant erase (like format) ALL DISCS and DRUMS (except removable packs in later years). User programs could read thse switches, but operators were reluctant to use them.

[@jimmcconville]

I love seeing stuff like this, it reminds me of an analogy I heard that if the motorcar had advanced at the same rate as a computer then a mid range station wagon would now be able to travel at supersonic speed on a thimble of gas.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

James, thanks. Glad you enjoyed this bit of history! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@wlanman99]

I was a computer operator at Wright-Patterson AFB in the 80's and one of the "Old Timers" told me of the time one crashed through the wall. Don't think he witnessed it but was one of those Urban Legends at the time.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Wlanman99, thanks very much for your comments! I am very familiar with the Wright Patterson AFB and it has a great reputation. It was involved in many key projects for the U.S. defense for many years. It must have been an excellent time to be involved with them. Glad you found our channel. Hope you will enjoy watching some of our other vintage videos as well. ~ Victor, CHAP

[@nigeljohnson4547]

I was trained to service this, as well as the rest of our 418-II installation at Bell Canada in Toronto, in 1971. A couple of years afterwards, they were demolishing a building across the street, and sent engineers into our building to take seismographic measurements to determine if the blasting could do any damage to our building. They could not get any readings two floors on either side of ours because of those drums. Once we had to use the emergency stop, and it took 30 seconds to stop and blew dozens of driver transistors in doing so. Naturally we were not allowed to wear ties in that area :-)

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Nigel, that is fascinating! It must have been awesome to work directly on these giant machines. I think they are somewhat of a legend now. If you describe them to younger folks today, they are amazed by the size and power of these rotating beasts. Would love to see one on display today. Thanks for sharing your experience! ~ Mark, at CHAP

[@nigeljohnson4547]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Indeed it was! Real hardware troubleshooting! We had a slew of drawers full of parts, all indexed, and we would replace a card with a spare to get the machine running and then repair it and re-test before putting it back into stock. Lots of time to do projects on the night shift - I wrote a database of members of my ham club and did sorts with two uniservo tape drives. We were not allowed to write to the Fastrand, that was for live data only!

[@Levelworm]

@@nigeljohnson4547 Ah, really wish I could use one of those mainframes someday. Nowadays I log into my AWS free EC2 instance and imagine that it is a mainframe (it IS in certain way...)

[@raymond1248]

We had one of these Fastrand II at F.E. Warren AFB, in Wyoming. It was tied to the UNIVAC 1050-II. I was night operator on the machine from late 1969 to Feb 1971. Trained on the 1050-II at Lowry AFB, in CO. The thing I remember about the Fastrand II was that whenever it crashed the resident Sperry Tech always called in outside repair people. He never wanted to work in these monsters. I must add that it rarely crashed when I was there. The main thing they taught us at UNIVAC school was to always take the Fastrand down properly. It had three buttons on the back that you used to take it offline. You had the bring it online or offline in the correct order or it would crash. As I remember the buttons were labeled “1, 2, and 3”. To bring it up you pressed button 1, waited for a determined period of time, pressed 2 button, and waited, then the final button 3 was pressed. The reverse sequence was followed to take it offline. I remember taking it offline every night after my job was done, and I left for the night. This was 50 years ago so I may have forgotten some of the details, but those machines were interesting. Oh, bye the way, when I left F.E. Warren AFB, I was sent to Vietnam where we had several 1050-II. Each having a Fastrand II attached to it. I remember one time when the Vietnam Cong were reported to be outside the building, and we got behind the Fastrand to be protected if a firefight broke out.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Raymond, thanks very much for your info on using the Fastrand! That's quite fascinating. The instructions for powering up, and powering down are something I hadn't heard before. Makes sense considering the size and speed of the drum. Sounds like you had some unique experiences! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@donmoore7785]

I started at GE in 1983, and a I recall an engineer telling me that our E2C radar system had magnetic drum memory in the early 1960's (when the aircraft was an E2A or E2B). That comports with the technology shown here. Doubtless it was probably a smaller piece of machinery.

[@Parakinese]

Very interesting huge thx for the upload!🥸❤️

[@Vic-qi4bs]

I was hired by Sperry/Univac in 1978, first class company, having been a cobol programmer previously on IBM 360/40s and 50's, I was hired to sell against IBM, which was difficult to say the least. If you sold an 1100, you were a rock star, In oklahoma city, 90/30's, 90/40s and the Cade were the main units sold.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Vic, interesting! Sounds like it was quite a competition back then. Did you ever work with or sell the Sperry\Univac 1900-32 CADE? ~ Victor

[@Vic-qi4bs]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Yes, I sold a Cade to a local company that had an IBM 370/xxx, at that time IBM did not have a good competitor to the CADE for data entry, we replaced 10 IBM 129 keypunch machines, the girls loved the Cade..

[@pawe3554]

To flip heavy truck on side... just wow... microSD try that!

[@thomthumbe]

WOW! In my first GOVT job, I worked in a facility with one of these. It wasn't my swim lane so I never touched it our "used" it, but I knew what it was in the building. The computer flooring for that system was installed on shock absorbers and large springs, and was isolated from the rest of the building physically. A year or so later, our first "hard drive" was installed and it consisted of several platters coated with iron oxide. The platters were about an inch thick and probably....oh....maybe 4 feet in diameter. I think it was something like 1K per side of the disc. When you hit the start button, it took awhile to spin up and the room would shake during that spin up. In later years the director for that facility had a "coffee" table in his office made from one of the old platters. By then we were really high tech with some 80 MB Wang hard drives (discs about 12" diameter, each platter about 1/16" thick, about 8 platters total). That hard drive assembly was a box about 4 feet high, 3 feet deep and 3 feet wide. Sheesh....we thought it was heaven with each upgrade.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Thom, Thanks for sharing your experience with older systems. Sounds fascinating! (just imagine all the copper and gold in those old machines too...) Thanks again for watching! - Victor, CHAP

[@Levelworm]

Jesus 80MB! That's big data of the time~~ I remembered back in late '80s my father got a brand new IBM PC/XT from his university and it only had one floppy drivers, so I had to insert the boot first, and then the game after system was loaded into memory.

[@douro20]

Bryant Chucking Grinder Co. made even bigger drum stores.

[@eleeco8627]

I have just the MP3 song to fill it with.

[@bombasticbuster9340]

We're these units melted down or are there any still in existence? My goodness; my Samsung Note 20 probably has so much more memory. I am 53 yrs old. I remember the first home tape drive computers hooked to a TV set. Lol.

[@listerdave1240]

To put this in numbers, I have an older Samsung, an S6. Its storage is as much as three hundred Fastrand II units, which would together weigh as much as two fully loaded and fuelled Airbus 380 planes and cost almost as much as one of them. In numbers that is 1000 tons and about 300 Million in today's dollars.

[@listerdave1240]

As another comparison, an ordinary hard disk that you can buy today for $40 has more storage than the combined storage of all the Fastrand units ever made put together.

[@b43xoit]

There was a Fastrand device at Georgia Tech around 1974. It had two drums, so must have been a II or a III. I was told that the moving heads for both drums lived on a single head carrier positioned between the drums, and that pneumatics were involved in moving the head carrier (I rather doubt that last part). There were said to be some fixed heads as well for timing tracks. One could indeed hear an occasional puff of air from the device.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

B. Xoit, cool. Sounds like it would be a fascinating machine to watch, while it was doing its read/write thing. Thanks for watching and sharing your knowledge!

[@b43xoit]

Come to think of it, I seem to remember there were two of the devices there, connected to the 1108. The system had notoriously little random access mass storage online in comparison to the demand and need. The console was always saying "ROLLBAK RUN"... indicating the start of an automatic job to move data from the drums to mag tape and/or in the opposite direction. In effect, the operating system maintained a virtual file system and tried to keep the frequently-used files on drum; the rest were archived on the tapes. The operator would always have to mount the appropriate tapes. The tape library had tapes for normal use by user programs; all those tapes had "U" numbers, then there was a series of tapes with "BAK" numbers that had to be mounted for the rollback operation. The system included a text editor with its own programming language, accessible from timesharing terminals. The language included commands to pester the computer operator and demand a response. The six-bit character code in general use in that operating system was called FIELDDATA. I think after a while they started experimenting with an ASCII-based code that probably used a quarter word (9 bits) for each character. That would be used for word processing, while the 6-bit code continued in use for programming, system commands, etc. A system call was known as an "executive request" (ER mnemonic in assembly language). The target name always had a dollar sign. So an abort, for example, was triggered by ER ABORT$. Students would make jokes by referring to common human operations as though they were atomic computer operating-system calls. So, for example, if a passenger in a car were urging the driver to park, already, the passenger would say "Do an ER to PARK$!" (pronounced "park dollars").

[@b43xoit]

The 1108 was as I'm sure you know, a word-addressed computer with 36 bits. But there were instruction modes to make it easy to extract a half word or a quarter word.

[@b43xoit]

The file system didn't have arbitrarily deep folder hierarchies like modern file systems. It had one level of folders and one level of files under those. An asterisk was used to separate the names. The system common library was called SYS$*CLIB$ (pronounced "sys dollars star see-laib dollars").

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

B. Xoit, Fascinating info. Thanks very much!

[@DanielHaanpaa]

What is the music playing at 11:56?

[@rickstandal626]

I built those drums.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Rick, really? That's fascinating. Did you work for Sperry Rand or a subcontractor? Thanks! Victor, CHAP

[@chicoroth8679]

very cool!

[@trek520rider2]

I never messed with the hardware but in 1972 I programmed a Univac 1107 in Birmingham England working for a Texas company University Computing Company (UCC). The 1107 had a magnetic drum, probably one of these.

[@supernanotech1]

They should rebuild it with nanotechnology and see how much data can be stored on it.

[@neves5083]

Mobile computer truck? Tell me more about it :v

[@TheTwick]

In high school, about 1966, I used a time-share computer that was located somewhere in Philadelphia, PA. We had an electric typewriter for I/O and a modem/acoustic coupler for a phone line connection. I think we used FORTRAN as a language but I can’t be sure. Could anyone guess the computer I was connected to? I really don’t remember.

[@guymarentette2317]

Could have been an IBM 360/67

[@bombasticbuster9340]

You had dial-up internet! You are a pioneer! I had a TRS RadioShack computer with 5.5 in floppy in my high school in 1984.

[@AsbestosMuffins]

you know your computer is big when it flips semis and sends ships off course.

[@thecarl168]

at 14;12 the picture on the lower right is from an RCA tv video !

[@saultube44]

lol good one. '70s mobile computing :D

[@ElPasoTubeAmps]

Imagine the storage you could get on the FASTRAN if it was a Thumb Drive... 🙂 I don't remember the storage on the FASTRAN II, but it seems like it was in the modern-day equivalent megabyte range (although the 1100 series did not use bytes) - it was a 36 bit Word with four parity bits - a parity for every nine bits and as a scientific machine, the 1100 series CPU was double precision to 72 data bits with two Word transfers. I posted a comment a few minutes ago and remember those stories about the model one gyroscopic nature but I never knew it turned a semi over but I did hear it made ships hard to control. I never worked on the FASTRAN I, just the model II. I was very happy the day they got replaced with disk drives... when the flying heads would hit the drum, they would quickly raise (they were lowered and held down by air pressure) and it sometimes was a terrifying chore to repair that area where the head(s) hit and "bad-spot" that area so it was never used for data storage again. (actually, the full name was called a, Flying Head, (FH), FASTRAN II). We sometimes use a credit card (the plastic tip) to try to touch-up and smooth out the "hit" area. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I remember there were tests we were told to not run on it as the test procedure was so brutal it would damage it slamming the heads around so hard. A lot of memories.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi ElPaso TubeAmps, great story, thanks very much! (sorry about the delay in responding, we were out of town.) Glad you found our Channel too! ~

[@sledz8604]

We had one on the USS Holland in Holy Loch Scotland in 1977. It failed and was not fixable so Univac brought in a new one. Since it could not pass through the hatches we had to cut a hole into the side of the ship and load it with a crane into the side and position it into place.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Steve. Sounds fascinating! Can you tell me more about the USS Holland? I tried to learn more by a Google search, but don't think I found the correct one. Would like to learn more. Thanks for watching and thanks very much for your comments.

[@sledz8604]

Sure, the ship used more "modern" Univac Data Processing equipment compared to all the other Supply and Carrier ships. Not sure why. The other ships used the AN/YUK 5 systems. Here is the Wiki page for the Holland. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Holland_(AS-32) Seems like there may have been another ship that had the Fastrand but I can't remember! The thing with the Submarine Tenders is they rarely went out to sea for very long since they needed to be stationary to service submarines. I would think the Fastrand would have been susceptible to crashes out to sea?!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Fascinating! Thanks so much for the reference link. This helps quite a bit. : )

[@marcse7en]

It's one hell of a hard disk crash, when part of it smashes through a wall! 👎😂

[@bernie2108]

Takes me back 1970's Lucas car parts used a rotating drum ( not Sperry) on a PDP8 I hated working on the damn thing It was so unreliable and NO training on the bugger!

[@MrKillswitch88]

A college I used to go to had one of these machines until someone forgot that one had to wait half an hour after powering down the drum for it to cool otherwise the heads would scrape up the drum which eventually happened and the college dumped the machine in a field somewhere outside of town.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

MrKillswitch88, that's an awesome story! And some day, future archeologists will dig up the drum and wonder if it is some sort of alien artifact! .. Thanks for sharing. ~ Victor (CHAP)

[@dennisyoung4631]

“And then, there was the fastrand, deep in the bowels of Karad’dekul…”

[@prestoncheapbtheadphoneste3010]

Amazing those colors look 👀 so plain! Amazing how now, we’re painting 🧑‍🎨 our buildings and cars 🚙 like that, plain! 😕😐 just waiting for, bell 🛎 bottoms to make a come-back! 😕😐

[@nnnttxx]

What Model of oscilloskop is used at 8:54?

[@nnnttxx]

looks like RCA WO-56A

[@jenskirchhoff8139]

One item found its home at Goettingen / Germany (later home of CF Gauss). The GWDG used it with a UNIVAC sammlungen.uni-goettingen.de/objekt/record_kuniweb_906123/

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Jens, thank you very much for that link to the great photo of a Fastrand's internals! Awesome photo! We had looked all over for a photo like that, now we can see the greater detail. Your help is much appreciated. ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@jenskirchhoff8139]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject ... so now look at www.c-c-g.de/fachartikel/344-fastrand-iii-mit-univac-1108-in-der-gwdg with more pictures. You will try to translate with an online software ....

[@the_jcbone]

Just flip the thing vertical… *sigh*

[@AliasUndercover]

Serious potential havoc just doesn't apply to modern computers enough. It's a bit of a shame, really.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Dropped on old IBM PC monitor on my foot once... that was enogh havoc for me. : ) Thanks! Vincent, CHAP

[@bandiras2]

WOW.

[@dzee9481]

Amazingly enough to see this old technology has lasted this long and being replaced with newer technology with probably less MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) compared to the over engineered implementation of the past. What I see is America building and manufacturing these computers and they where implemented all over the world that could afford and use these sophisticated computers. We have world commerce back in those days. Sadly America has this sort of creative and manufacturing sucked dry including the intellectual property along with it.

[@GodEmperorSuperStar]

In Soviet Russia storage drums you!

[@bobcharlie2337]

Haha haaa!! System crash. World's most deadly-est hard drive.

[@scottallen4212]

In the 70's Univac 8414 (or one of its cousins) disc drive had multiple platters with read/write heads that would move inward/outward to the different "tracks" of the drive. If power dropped unexpectedly, the heads were immediately retracted to clear the disc drives. Unfortunately if the drive was writing data at just the wroing time, the write would spiral over many tracks of data, corrupting a lot of data. This was fixed in a FCO, but the bulletin to CE's said "Until this FCO is installed, be sure to spin the drive down before dropping power".

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

"spin it down" first. Yes, that is great advice! Thanks for your feedback and stories! ~ VK, CHAP

[@humbertothebeliever2443]

How technology advances! Just imagine if the human race was to collectively unite for the better of humanity! This, what seems to be impossible, will be done under the rulership of Jesus Christ in his kingdom here in the New Earth..