On Mon, 2014-03-31 at 18:33 -0400, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: > In <1396291333.20291.63.camel@localhost>, on 03/31/2014 > at 02:42 PM, David Andrews <[email protected]> said: > > >I believe that the OEM for those (as well as the Telex-branded ones) > >was ISS/Sperry. > > Could that have come later? I don't recall any connection between > Sperry and Itel/NAS in the 1970's or 1980's.
I'm thinking specifically about the 3330 compatible top-loaders. Itel and Telex were badging the same machines, and I have an indistinct memory of ISS/Sperry engineering doco that came with them. > >The Mohawk 200 bpi (!) tape drives weren't much of a joy to work > >with either. > > Was that one their small data-entry computers? Mohawk did some key-to-tape systems in the early '70s, and the drives I remember were attached to a timekeeping system - badge readers where employees clocked in and out - and writing unblocked records. Awful mechanical spring tension reel to reel devices, where a quarter of the tapes were guaranteed not to be readable in their entirety. We learned to "fat-finger" those tapes when trying to read the bad spots on our Honeywell drives - open the cabinet while the bad block was thrashing back and forth and depress the moving tape on either side of the head with our thumbs. I suppose that it moved the tape a fraction of an inch from the head, and the drive would skip over the bad record/block. Amazing how we savages lived in those days. -- David Andrews A. Duda & Sons, Inc. [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
