Burying a Mainframe In Style

coondoggie writes "Some users have gone to great lengths to dispose of their mainframes but few have gone this far. On November 21, 2007, the University of Manitoba said goodbye to its beloved mainframe computer by holding a New Orleans-style jazz funeral for its 47-year-old IBM 650, Betelgeuse. In case you were wondering what an IBM 650's specifications were, according to this Columbia University site, the 650's CPU was 5ft by 3ft by 6ft and weighed 1,966 lbs, and rented for $3200 per month. The power unit was 5x3x6 and weighed 2,972 pounds. The card reader/punch weighed 1,295 pounds and rented for $550/month. The memory was a rotating magnetic drum with 2000-word capacity (10 digits and sign) and random access time of 2.496 ms. For an additional $1,500/month you could add magnetic core memory of 60 words with access time of .096ms. Big Blue sold some 2,000 of the mainframes, making it one of the first successfully mass-produced computers."

Comments

Kudos

[Martian_Kyo]

to the guy(or girls and guys) who did this. Any machine that has been in service or at least functional for 47 years, deserves this kind of respect and this kind of send off.

Yes, i know it's only a machine, and it has no feelings. But this is a respectful send off, and 'job well done, thank you' to all people who were involved in designing, maintaining and producing this mainframe.

Plus...it's a very cool..and sounds like fun.

a bit of accurate reporting would be nice

[petes_PoV]

OK, this box might have started life in 1960 as an IBM, but it hasn't been one of those for many, many years. Like all good product lines IBM and Ahdahl have provided upgrade paths, so it stopped being it's original configuration before most slashdotters were born. I doubt that it has any of it's original parts left - not even the power plug.

In fact a Millenium 1015 is quite a recent mainframe - introduced in 2000, (hence the name) although the 1015 is the bottom of the range unit with just a single processor.

It would be nice if reporters actually researched this story instead of merely cat'n'pasting the whimsical and completely inaccurate press release.

Aah - mainframes

[Linker3000]

I can remember sitting in on an IT meeting at a place where I was contracting (doing Netware Support) where one guy had to report back on his efforts to sell an old IBM Mainframe System that spanned the entire length of the computer room. The system had been replaced by this tiny, shiny, black AS400 that sat in the corner.

"Best so far is about £2000" said the man.

"You can only get £2000 for all that equipment!?" said the astonished IT Director.

"No", came the reply, "That's the cheapest to pay someone to strip it out and take it away!"