Mailserver
Riding the retro
Noting the continued interest in old machines (see LXF323, Mailserver, Fortran II), I have the following contribution from 1970.
The photo (below) shows the inside of our data acquisition system caravan parked in the middle of Thetford Forest in Norfolk. This system collected data from around 120 individual sensors on three 30m-high towers in the forest and were interrogated at 15-second intervals by the instrument panels at the top of the left and middle racks. The HP 2116B (called a mini-computer at the time) is in the right-hand rack. This contained 16K of 16-bit individually wired ferrite-core memory locations. It was built to US military specifications that claimed it could be dropped from several feet on to concrete without damage – occasional removal of it from the rack could easily have tested that claim as it weighed a ‘ton’.
Program input was via the paper-tape reader below the 2116B. The boot-strap tape had the following message on the box: “You can put this away – you won’t need it again.” Of course, we always did. The switches below the display had to be set to 37700 (011111111000000) and then you’d press START – 54 years later, I can still remember that.