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Date:      Sun, 9 Aug 1998 20:06:41 -0400 (EDT)
From:      djv@bedford.net
To:        grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey)
Cc:        djv@bedford.net, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <199808100006.UAA07079@lucy.bedford.net>
In-Reply-To: <19980810083046.K11095@freebie.lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "Aug 10, 98 08:30:46 am"

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> No, Stretch was the 7030, and predated the 360/<anything> by a number

Ah, yes.

> of years.  Supposedly the first machine to achieve 1 MIPS, but it
> didn't quite make it.
> 
> > was quite snappy in its time. The apps I ran (numerical) were by
> > definition CPU bound, anyway. This was a 2 of a kind unit (one for
> > NSA, one for Los Alamos IIRC), with a hotrod CPU and a big load of
> > memory, how much I've forgotten (128MB?  More?), which IIRC was made
> > of discrete transistors.

Small ICs then. Oh well. I don't even know if it was air or water
cooled. What would you estimate for bits/chip?

> I've never heard of discrete transistor memory of any size.  The
> System/360 was the first machine in the world to use integrated
> circuits in a serious way, but it's possible they made exceptions in
> strange machines like the 360/195.

When they broke up the /195, I had a chance to get a memory board
as a souvenir, but I was sick of it by then. Should have got one!
There were /lots/ of them. The thing filled a very large computer
installation. (disk farm, rows of tape drives, line printers,
(I think they even had a page printer of some kind on it), terminal
equipment, card readers/punches).

> > I think it was faster than its contemporaries in the 370 series. The
> > Navy kept it running until ~1986, I believe the power bill was why
> > they shut it down. :-) (It was at the PAX NATC in S. Maryland).
> 
> Yes, the 360/195 wasn't really a 360 (all other 360s had model numbers
> under 100, all 370s over 100).  I've forgotten the details, but for a
> 360 it really moved.  It probably had over 1 MIPS.

Oh, more than that I think. It was definitely faster than a VAX
11/780.  It may have gone through CPU upgrades while at NSA, too.
(I didn't meet it until around 1980, when it had gone to the Navy.)
It's also possible that the original specs were deliberately
understated, too.

Dave
-- 
"Today, machines sit on our desks and spend the overwhelming majority
of their cycles doing nothing more important than blinking a cursor."
                            --William Dickens
   http://www.feedmag.com/html/feedline/98.07dickens/98.07dickens_master.html

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