From: Roland Perry on
In message <88jcelFs8lU6(a)mid.individual.net>, at 09:50:13 on Fri, 25 Jun
2010, Huge <Huge(a)nowhere.much.invalid> remarked:

>(I thought it was an NCR/Elliott 4130? Or were they subsumed into ICL?)

I started on an ICL 4120 which was an Elliott design, but inside ICL by
late 60's.
--
Roland Perry
From: Roland Perry on
In message <88jjl9F592U3(a)mid.individual.net>, at 11:53:13 on Fri, 25 Jun
2010, Bob Eager <rde42(a)spamcop.net> remarked:

>I never said otherwise

Sometimes it's really hard for people on usenet to accept that a posting
is in agreement with theirs.
--
Roland Perry
From: Mike Tomlinson on
In article <BbednRHroYQSK7zRnZ2dnUVZ7rWdnZ2d(a)brightview.co.uk>, Jon
Green <jonsg(a)deadspam.com> writes

>A low level reformat can sometimes help, but IME it usually only delays
>the inevitable.

There's no such thing with modern drives. All you can do is zero it
(write zeros to every sector).

--
Mike Tomlinson
From: Mike Tomlinson on
In article <88jd26Fs8lU8(a)mid.individual.net>, Huge
<Huge(a)nowhere.much.invalid> writes

>Having recently moved my aged mother from a 3 bed house to a 1 bed flat, I
>am determined to throw all the junk out.

I did a similar thing 3 years ago. Just coming to the last of the piles
of boxes in the back bedroom.

--
Mike Tomlinson
From: Roland Perry on
In message <88jcpkFs8lU7(a)mid.individual.net>, at 09:56:04 on Fri, 25 Jun
2010, Huge <Huge(a)nowhere.much.invalid> remarked:
>> In mid 70's I worked on ICL drives, including something they called a
>> "drum", which was a single-platter mounted vertically.
>
>You sure it was a "platter"? Only, when I worked for ITT in around 1975/6
>(on what became the Unimat 4080 telephone switch), the message switches
>that we shared our computer room with definitely had drums that were
>drum shaped.

Absolutely sure. It was in ICL's in-house computer room in Bracknell,
and I was one of those engineers allowed to wander around and look at
anything I wanted to. In the hope that one day, when it broke, I could
try to fix it. I say "day", more like "half an hour".
--
Roland Perry