This was an IBM magnetic drum drive; the drum had about two dozen magnetic discs. It weighed over a ton.
Its capacity was, for the time, an astonishing 5Mb. It was part of a computer that IBM would lease for $3,200 a month (nearly $25,000/month in today's money).
The ones your girlfriends warned you about.
1 hour ago
2 comments:
Yes, Since my first birthday computers and associated storage have gone from over 20,000 square feet in floor space to a corner of ones pocket while going 1 million times faster and storing 10000 times more data.
The RAMAC was more than storage with was a whole new idea of random access to data which up to then was sequential access on tapes. The speed up in data handling was significant.
It was obsolete within 5 years.
Amazingly few exist, after they came back from lease IBM being protective of their knowledge and were scraped.
Eck!
That's one area of human endeavor that leaped ahead just like science fiction of the 50's and 60's promised.
I got no flying car, but at least I can model, render, and simulate one.
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