OT- First HDD

We can do better than that on this major bit of history!

The device in question was the 305 RAMAC, (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control)... is that 50's or what? I'm probably the only person any of you will run across that actually knows what RAMAC stands for.

When I first started working for IBM I worked on later versions of the RAMAC, (if you watch the video it's the blue and beige box, that was actually the controller, it worked with another box the same size that was full of hard drives).

That first RAMAC weighed a ton (yes, 2000 lbs), and held a whopping 5MB on 50 24" disks, the ones I worked on would hold about 500MB or so depending on configuration, but you could fire a shotgun into the thing and still get your data out (after some repairs!).

This IBM Video is a bit cheesy but it's pretty good.

Here is the website it's from:

We've come a long way in the past 50 years, my big desktop has 500GB of storage and the modern DS8000 holds 193 TB (that's Terrabytes, 193,000GB!)

Jeff DeWitt (yep, I'm a geek!)

John Kunkel wrote:

I remember the big magnetic core memory towers at the Missile Site Radar (MSR) on Kwajalein for the dedicated intercept processor. Software analysis was performed by duo IBM 360's. Other system computers included two Control Data 7600's along with their 6600 interfaces...

JT

(Who at the time has a lowly HP-45)

"The Geek shall inherit the Earth"

Freddy

Jeffrey DeWitt wrote:

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