Re: All Software Sucks at the worst possible time.

"Mike Andrews" <mikea@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
There may be some small number of you who have yet to be exposed to IBM
3380-series storage. I'll fix _that_. Lege:

This is IBM's initial entry into the Big Dis[ck] market. The very first
3380-series storage, called simply "3380", no suffix, came in a Big Box
with only an EPO switch, and requiring a special key to get inside the
covers. This was OK, according to IBM, because they recovered from power
failures, sequenced themselves up automagically, and so on. Great theory.
We got our cover keys and some instruction from the CE on how to power
up or down about 3 days later, after OG&E dropped the load several times
during a storm, and IBM got tired of coming out to turn the Gods-damned
things back on.

In a 3380-series box, whether unsuffixed, -3, -6, -9, or -K, one finds two
_BIG_ dis[ck]s, about 18 inches across, each in its own enclosure, one
accessible from the front, and the other accessible from the back. Each
enclosure has two Muckin' Big Voice Coils, each coil with an access arm
sticking through it and onto a head comb in thge enclosure. Thus we have
two head combs per dis[ck], or four per box.

Is each box about the size of a washing machine? *googles* Ah, no
that's the 3370 and earlier. Chalmers Computing Society had a row of
them, back in the early nineties. I think there was a gaggle of six
3370 series 2. That was a LOT of disk space back then, for us.

//Christer
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