[cctalk] Re: Odd IBM mass storage systems

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Apr 14, 2024, at 2:50 PM, Van Snyder via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> 
> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 2024-04-14 at 13:15 -0400, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>> The printer I was describing sounds a lot like the Versatec ones you
>> mentioned, including the funny paper and smelly toner.  But it was
>> actually made by Varian, and the driver tells me it had 1408 pixels
>> across the width of the paper, so at 11 inches wide that would make
>> it 128 PPI.  I wonder if I still have a sample page or two from that
>> printer.
> 
> American Geophysical had a fleet of trucks fitted with hydraulic
> "thumpers." They would go out to a potential oil or gas field, lay out
> a few thousand feet of cables with geophones on them, and drive around
> thumping the ground. Within the truck, they had Varian V70 computers
> with microcode to do Fast Fourier Transforms. 

I remember a Varian computer sitting in a corner of a lab at U of Illinois 
(computer science department).  It looks similar to the ones shown in Bitsavers 
but not quite the same -- it had a front panel that had mostly brown coloring, 
and the panel was totally flat.  It used membrane pushbuttons for operation, 
with the button positions marked by circles on the flat plastic front panel.

Does that ring any bells?  I remember being told it had user programmable 
microcode, but I never used it, in fact I never heard of anyone using it.

        paul