And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
You can certainly tell that is a movie prop, and not the real thing. The real thing was incredibly heavy and was not open on the back, or at least the ones I worked with back in the 1980s. On a side note related to the old computer tape drives. The movies almost always showed them spinning reels of tape back and forth constantly. In real life, the tape drives were idle for most of the day, and only "came to life" in the evening when the nightly batch jobs were started up. At one company I worked at, the president of the company toured the computer room, and wanted to know why the expensive tape drives the company had recently purchased weren't being used. So, one of the programmers was tasked with writing a program to be run during the day that did nothing but write garbage data to tapes, rewind the tape, erase the tape, and loop back to the beginning of writing garbage data to tapes again in order to keep them busy during the day, just so that the president of the company would feel like they were getting their money worth out of the expensive tape drives.
Oh boy, bringing back some great memories from the 80s when IBM sales people hated my guts because they wanted to sell loads drives to avoid 'waiting for tape drives' messages and I showed management data proving them there was not enough bandwidth or cpu cycles to even USE those drives. I received a goodbye present from IBM sales when I left the job......
Yes, very fake. Only a power cord and no fat cable with at least one DB37 on it for data. These were heavy and not on casters that I ever saw. OTOH, in a lab in Sunnyvale I did have a Honeywell H96 tape drive mounted in a rack with casters. During the Loma Prieta earthquake, that thing tried chasing my buddy and I out the door of the lab.
The reminds me of the story of an engineer working late one night, alone in the office. He goes to pick up some work at the printer and finds the CEO standing in front of the shredder, a piece of official-looking paper in his hand, with a bemused look on his face.
The CEO says, "I'm on a deadline and I've got to get this taken care of, and I can't figure out how to work this damn thing!"
So the engineer shows him how to turn the shredder on, and then directs him to the feeder slot, where the CEO feeds the document to the humming machine.
"Great!~" says the CEO, clapping his hands and then rubbing them together. "Now - I just need 3 copies."
You wanted a minimum of 3 tape drives: initial data, update data, and output data. Plus, back in the day the efficiency of the sort algorithms was a big selling point, you wanted all the data on the insert tape to be pre-sorted so the tapes didn't have to seek back and forth... Now we have SSDs, no heads to move across a platter.
I don't know why you are all showing so much animosity. I loved those things. Of course, I was having an affair with the very cute, very petite night operator. I'd sit down in the wheeled swivel chair and she would do her shift from my lap, including ...YAY... putting tapes onto the tape drives...that was 30+ years ago and I still remember her putting her left breast in my mouth while mounting or unmounting 9" tapes...in between kissing and fondling and caressing...
I often get the urge to do that same thing to my computer.
ReplyDeleteMy work computer........
DeleteYou can certainly tell that is a movie prop, and not the real thing. The real thing was incredibly heavy and was not open on the back, or at least the ones I worked with back in the 1980s.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note related to the old computer tape drives. The movies almost always showed them spinning reels of tape back and forth constantly. In real life, the tape drives were idle for most of the day, and only "came to life" in the evening when the nightly batch jobs were started up. At one company I worked at, the president of the company toured the computer room, and wanted to know why the expensive tape drives the company had recently purchased weren't being used. So, one of the programmers was tasked with writing a program to be run during the day that did nothing but write garbage data to tapes, rewind the tape, erase the tape, and loop back to the beginning of writing garbage data to tapes again in order to keep them busy during the day, just so that the president of the company would feel like they were getting their money worth out of the expensive tape drives.
Oh boy, bringing back some great memories from the 80s when IBM sales people hated my guts because they wanted to sell loads drives to avoid 'waiting for tape drives' messages and I showed management data proving them there was not enough bandwidth or cpu cycles to even USE those drives. I received a goodbye present from IBM sales when I left the job......
DeleteYes, very fake. Only a power cord and no fat cable with at least one DB37 on it for data. These were heavy and not on casters that I ever saw.
DeleteOTOH, in a lab in Sunnyvale I did have a Honeywell H96 tape drive mounted in a rack with casters. During the Loma Prieta earthquake, that thing tried chasing my buddy and I out the door of the lab.
The reminds me of the story of an engineer working late one night, alone in the office. He goes to pick up some work at the printer and finds the CEO standing in front of the shredder, a piece of official-looking paper in his hand, with a bemused look on his face.
DeleteThe CEO says, "I'm on a deadline and I've got to get this taken care of, and I can't figure out how to work this damn thing!"
So the engineer shows him how to turn the shredder on, and then directs him to the feeder slot, where the CEO feeds the document to the humming machine.
"Great!~" says the CEO, clapping his hands and then rubbing them together. "Now - I just need 3 copies."
I do believe he has a sore foot.... looks like it landed right on top and he recoils as he goes off camera.
ReplyDeleteGood catch. Jacked his foot up bad.
Delete-Snakepit
That was the machine inflicting its revenge because the dumbass was too stupid to keep his appendages out of the way.
DeleteNemo
Looks like a scene from the old ITV Network show UFO...from 1970-1971.
ReplyDeleteYou wanted a minimum of 3 tape drives: initial data, update data, and output data. Plus, back in the day the efficiency of the sort algorithms was a big selling point, you wanted all the data on the insert tape to be pre-sorted so the tapes didn't have to seek back and forth... Now we have SSDs, no heads to move across a platter.
ReplyDeleteFuck those nine track tapes!
ReplyDeleteI don't know why you are all showing so much animosity. I loved those things. Of course, I was having an affair with the very cute, very petite night operator. I'd sit down in the wheeled swivel chair and she would do her shift from my lap, including ...YAY... putting tapes onto the tape drives...that was 30+ years ago and I still remember her putting her left breast in my mouth while mounting or unmounting 9" tapes...in between kissing and fondling and caressing...
ReplyDeleteYou're makin shit up faster'n we can process it.
DeleteCommander Straker throwing a fit.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was Pete Townsend for a second!
ReplyDeleteNow the astronauts will be stranded on the moon.
ReplyDeleteUFO was a great production by the immortal Gerry Anderson, classic.
ReplyDelete