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Burying a Mainframe In Style

Posted by kdawson on from the 10-bit-words dept.

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."

2 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. #9, Cray-1 in Stockholm by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology put the first Cray 1 sold in Sweden on display yesterday (18 Dec 2007). It has the serial number 9!

    While not as old as the IBM machine, Cray always had a special aura of super-duper-power-ueber-performance to me. -

  2. MUH! by wikinerd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    it's only a machine, and it has no feelings

    But how do you know this?

    And do you think that you are not a machine and that you have feelings? And if so how do you know this?

    How can you be so sure that the mathematical entities inside your beige box computer are not self-aware? How can you know that they don't scream when you shut the computer off and are not reborn when you grant them electrical current the next morning?

    Do you really know that you are anything different than a little sim in a simulated world, or a self-aware mathematical entity in a mathematical universe?

    You don't really know this for absolutely sure, do you? Then how can you claim so easily that something is only a machine and has no feelings when you don't even known whether you are a machine, and whether what you call your feelings are nothing more than simulated or mathematical constructs that you perceive as feelings?