Thanks, Mark. I actually did solder pins, crawl through ceilings, thread the tape drives by hand, etc, but I enjoy computer hardware as much as I enjoy car engines (not at all) except as props for related stories.
I got the gig because I recently moved to a city of 7,000 with lots of cows & pigs and also a small college. There are not a lot of special guest speakers for the CS club at the college among the pigs and cows. It isn't going to be a history lesson, but a discussion about the "seams" in the fabric of our systems (quoting Gates from his seamless computing speech at comdex last year). I'll look at how these seams changed in going to "the network is the computer" infrastructure. But I'll carry with me a "portable disk pack", this board, and my Pr1me Oracle 9-track tape 'cause I can weave in some fine stories. Smiles. --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Johnson Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 9:25 PM To: U2 Users Discussion List Subject: Re: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question My guess is that it is a Serial Port Controller Board. I used to know what all the Royale/Reality/Sequel boards were. NIC's surely saves a lot of space now. my 1 cent. P.S. Howja get a gig like that. Is it the History Channel aspect of the CS program. I and i'm sure others could talk hours on the hardware issues we had to deal with. My favorite exercise was having to put my finger against the 1/2 inch tapehead of the open reel-to-reel Microdatas when reading tapes from one system to another. The tape would stream back and forth trying to catch its parity until just enough pressure by my fingers would cause those 8 tracks (not to be confused with 8-tracks) to line up. Jurrasic Pick at its best. Then along came Cipher drives and i put my fingers to better use. My oldest piece of nostalgia is a 1972 Microdata manual pre-Pick. It was a process controller looking for something to do. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 10:00 PM Subject: [OT] Pr1me Hardware question > I'm doing a talk tomorrow to college CS majors (name of talk is: IT is How > it Seams -- at least I'm able to entertain myself with the double double > meaning) > > I thought I'd bring in some of the odds and ends I've acquired over the > years and one is a board from a Pr1me computer I worked on. It was gifted > to me when the machine was retired. However, I'm a s/w kinda "guy" and I > don't know a cpu board from a memory board from anything else. I figured > this was the best place to ask about prime hardware, but sorry for being a > little off-topic. > > It is an 18 inch-ish square green board with black chips and few white ones > that say "Bechman" on them. The black ones are at least three different > sizes. Along one side it has stickers that say "LINES 0-3" ... "LINES > 12-15". That seems like a big clue, but I figured someone here would know > what such a board might have been called. > > Thanks in advance. --dawn > > Dawn M. Wolthuis > Tincat Group, Inc. > www.tincat-group.com > > Take and give some delight today. > > > > -- > u2-users mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
