Volunteers Are Keeping an IBM 1401 Mainframe Alive

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

[H]ard|Gawd
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Think your vintage computer hardware is old? Ken Shirriff, Robert Garne, and their associates probably have you beat. The IBM 1401 was introduced in 1959, and these guys are keeping one alive in a computer museum. The system is reportedly a pain to maintain, as the volunteers have to go digging through historical archives and do some detective work to figure out solutions to pretty much anything.

The volunteers posted a video of their efforts, which you can see here.

Many things that we take for granted are done very differently in old computers. For instance, the IBM 1401 uses 6-bit characters, not bytes. It used decimal memory addressing, not binary. It’s also interesting how much people could accomplish with limited resources, running a Fortran compiler on the 1401 with just 8K of memory. Finally, working on the 1401 has given me a deeper understanding of how computers really work. It's not a black box; you can see the individual transistors that are performing operations and each ferrite core that stores a bit.
 
I love all these historical computer museum efforts. Including the blown up microprocessor where you can dial the frequency up and down in real time! Really fascinating Science behind all that and just like natural history, we should preserve our technological history too!
 
Its amazing that it still works. Loading data from cards seems antiquated now, but I suppose they didn't have any other kind of storage back in those days.
 
having literally built a computer from the parts.. a heathkit 4bit? computer that was a foot square blue thing..a LONG time ago..LOL after that a fun project me and my dad did, though it was mostly me.. checking in with him.. ALOT.. was to design an interface board for our C-64 machine to control a robot, using that big expansion slot on the back side of the C64. That was also very informative in my early years. I have enjoyed really knowing how a computer works. I can look into a computer and tell you the path of shit and whats going on, where.
 
Seriously, thank you for that video.

That machine was a little before my time and actually seeing one run today with good cameras showing the process and equipment! What a piece of history. Other than the necessary emulator, that really makes you feel what using a state of the art mainframe in the 50s was like.
 
Advil said:
Seriously, thank you for that video.

That machine was a little before my time and actually seeing one run today with good cameras showing the process and equipment! What a piece of history. Other than the necessary emulator, that really makes you feel what using a state of the art mainframe in the 50s was like.
Click to expand...

yeah i always heard stories about it from my grandmother who used the 1401 when she was working for the air force.. but never actually seen one working outside of old ass video's that explained nothing about it. she absolutely hated it though, it was loud as hell and you had to make sure you didn't lose or miss sort the huge stacks of punch cards.
 
Had a few jobs working on an IBM mainframe in the 90s. All I did was mount tapes, print stuff
 
Ah, nostalgia. My first programming job was a data management system for a school district written in a mix of Cobol and assembly code (really - yes). Late 70s, still running on an IBM-1401. We had one old guy keepign it alive while others worked to port in place to a 1401 emulator running on a Dec-20, then port to native. Ugh.

Best memory was the "removable media disk". Looked like a top loading washing machine... Inside the from door, basically the motor cover, scrawled in grease pen, was "DO NOT KICK - CALL IBM SUPPORT".
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
yeah i always heard stories about it from my grandmother who used the 1401 when she was working for the air force.. but never actually seen one working outside of old ass video's that explained nothing about it. she absolutely hated it though, it was loud as hell and you had to make sure you didn't lose or miss sort the huge stacks of punch cards.
Click to expand...

Dropping your card deck really sucked and generally resulted in NSFW language. Unless you had the forethought to put sequence numbers in IIRC columns 73-80. Then you could put the pile into a sorting machine and get a correctly ordered deck back. My first couple of classes in Com Sci used punched cards. The terminals were for the advanced students. My typing sucks and I think my success rate on cards might have been as high as 1 out of 2 on good days.

But yes, almost everything about that old tech involved lots of noise. The band line printer probably caused a fair amount of later life deafness for long time operators.
 
Yeah it helped drawing angled lines down the edges of the stack to get that damn sort back in faster.
 
katanaD said:
having literally built a computer from the parts.. a heathkit 4bit? computer that was a foot square blue thing..a LONG time ago..LOL after that a fun project me and my dad did, though it was mostly me.. checking in with him.. ALOT.. was to design an interface board for our C-64 machine to control a robot, using that big expansion slot on the back side of the C64. That was also very informative in my early years. I have enjoyed really knowing how a computer works. I can look into a computer and tell you the path of shit and whats going on, where.
Click to expand...

Yeah my dad still has two broken down Z80 Heathkits in the basement. I told him he should donate it to https://heathkit.garlanger.com if he's never going to get it running again. I really would like to play Galactic Warrior again though if he does get it running.

Oh yeah, I've kept my Zenith 386 around. It runs but needs a new CMOS battery. Whenever I get around to getting it back to 100% my one goal is to stream Wing Commander 1 and 2 on the original hardware.
 
God I love that aesthetic, fill your house with old Mainframes and pretend your a 60's bond villain.
 
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PigLover said:
Ah, nostalgia. My first programming job was a data management system for a school district written in a mix of Cobol and assembly code (really - yes). Late 70s, still running on an IBM-1401. We had one old guy keepign it alive while others worked to port in place to a 1401 emulator running on a Dec-20, then port to native. Ugh.

Best memory was the "removable media disk". Looked like a top loading washing machine... Inside the from door, basically the motor cover, scrawled in grease pen, was "DO NOT KICK - CALL IBM SUPPORT".
Click to expand...
That's awesome! I believe that rigid disks are still sold to this day:
http://www.athana.com/rigid/rd.html
http://www.athana.com/rigid/alignpack.html

CT%20Pack1.jpg
 
Dead Parrot said:
Dropping your card deck really sucked and generally resulted in NSFW language. Unless you had the forethought to put sequence numbers in IIRC columns 73-80. Then you could put the pile into a sorting machine and get a correctly ordered deck back. My first couple of classes in Com Sci used punched cards. The terminals were for the advanced students. My typing sucks and I think my success rate on cards might have been as high as 1 out of 2 on good days.

But yes, almost everything about that old tech involved lots of noise. The band line printer probably caused a fair amount of later life deafness for long time operators.
Click to expand...
Yeah pretty much same setup when I was in school - Frosh/Soph limited to keypunches during "normal" hours with the TSO terminals reserved for upperclassmen. After about 2 AM they were released to the unwashed masses. Since I had to buy my own cards I was glad I had taken typing in HS; wasting money on data supplies cut into important things . . . like beer. Still, the early IBM 029 keypunch machines had no buffer - once you "oopsed" you had to eject the card and futz around a bit to fix your error. Went home for the summer and came back and lo and behold they had upgraded to the IBM 129 with its wondrous 80 byte buffer!!! Make a mistake? No problem, backspace, backspace, fix and continue. Press the "Release" key to have the buffer's contents translated to hole punches. Learned early to spend a little extra $$ on some colored cards for reuseable stuff like JCL and delimiters and just use the plain jane vanilla cards for code. Also invest in sturdy rubber bands (always use at LEAST 2 in case one snapped) and occasionally bring donuts for the data control staff to get your important jobs bumped up the line. All these years later still working on mainframes but they are nothing like what they were.
 
I'm pretty sure that's the system my work's ERP system is ran on.
 
In 50 years humanity fails to survive .... AI has killed everyone except the two guys keeping that IBM alive out of pure respect.
 
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