Mark J. Blair wrote: > I also seem to remember an operator's console with two round CRTs on it, > but I might have fabricated that memory from whole cloth. > I think that you were remembering the console of one of the Control Data 6000/Cyber-70 series computers that you may have seen somewhere. This series of Control Data machines were famous for their consoles with two large, round, green-phosphor monitors that used vector drawn-characters (generated by one of the Peripheral Processors). Most of the normal system screens were all text, but there were some special programs written (including a nice graphical chess game, a little program that would put up eyes on the screens that would look around and blink, and some others that don't come to mind at the moment.
I operated one of these systems (a Control Data Cyber 73 -- http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/cdc/cyber/brochures/Cyber70_Mod73 _Feb71.pdf) at Tektronix in Beaverton, Oregon, from 1977 through around 1980. It had two CPUs, 131K (60-bit words) of core, ECS (extended core storage), and 20 Peripheral Processors, a combined punched card reader/punch, something like 12 "washing machine" type multi-platter cartridge disk drives (that held something like 300 MB each), two 9-track tape drives and one 7-track tape drive. It also had a big chain printer that was noisy, but pretty fast. The machine had a channel interface to a Modcomp communications processor (with communication maintained by one or more Peripheral Processor programs), that provided serial I/O to terminals scattered all over the company by some kind of serial concentrator that I can't remember. There was also a big modem pool for dial-in use. The system ran a locally-modified version of the Kronos Timeshared operating system. The system was used primarily by engineering departments (research and product development) for CAD and CAD software development, circuit simulation (SPICE), cross-assembling microprocessor code, and mathematical modeling. The machine was an all-transistor design, based on the CDC 6600 processor. It was liquid cooled, and had a large cooler unit that sat with the machine that cooled the coolant (water) and circulated it through the chassis, venting the heat (which was substantial) through a special venting system. I remember the CDC Field guys talking about horror stories when there were leaks in the cooling system. We never had any problems while I was there. One day I was at the console when one of the big high-voltage rectifier tubes that were in the console decided to short. I was watching one of the system monitor displays, and suddenly I saw the display collapse into a single very bright horizontal line. I noted that the other display also did the same thing. I also heard a funny noise that sounded kind of scary, so I started to push my wheeled chair away from the console, but not soon enough to avoid a shower of sparks and even some molten metal that spewed out from the console. I had a few small burns on my arms, and one little blob of molten metal burned a hole in my pant leg. One of the other operators in the machine room managed to hit the power switch for the console and shut it off. Then the fire suppression alarm went off indicating that the Halon was going to dump soon, so he ran back and hit the override since the sparking and smoke had settled once the power was off. Despite this, the fire department showed up (the fire suppression system in the computer room had a direct line to the fire department), and we had to tell them it was a (semi) false alarm. The machine kept running just fine, and we were able to keep tabs on it with a serial terminal hooked up to the machine that had a program running that kind of emulated the console displays. The CDC guys were there very quickly, and ended up having to replace two (IIRC) big rectifier tubes, and one burnt up power resistor. When they powered it up, the screens came up just as they were before the event occurred, and all was well. I really enjoyed those days. The machine was really cool, and I have a lot of great memories of those times. The Living Computer Museum (http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org) in Seattle, WA, has rescued a smaller version of a system like this based on the 6500 processor that is undergoing restoration. Sorry for changing the subject (but at least I updated it in the Subject: line). -Rick -- Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
