#BIG IRON

[schiz0ne]

BIG IRON - Marty Robbins reference for The Ghoul!!

He's such a morally grey character i just love his existance. Thank you Walton Goggins for existing.

[ratbastard69420]

[byruit]

Working in a datacenter in the 70s

[smashorpass50plus]

Big Iron by Marty Robbins, released in 1960, this iconic western ballad is over 60 years old :)

[phlebasthebroenician]

[discodisorder]

ME AND THE DEVIL

[robuttsyeah]

cowboy shishido.... yeehaw pardner

[the-gnomish-bastard]

Bad dnd character idea:

A ruined background (take alert) custom lineage human gloomstalker Ranger with the gunner and sharpshooter feats. He uses a flintlock pistol or revolver as his main weapon. His goal is to find an outlaw with a bounty on his head. He comes from the far away town of Arizona.

[fallout-lou-begas]

marty robbins may not have intended it but "big iron" is a beautiful name for a dilator #NeopussyFriday

[univac1219]

Does your 1219 have a nickname?

Also, I was wondering if you have any fun stories surrounding it! Strange quirks it has or anything like that.

I'd love to see more photos if you're allowed to post them!

Thanks for the question! These are my favorite part about my blog by far.

Not exactly, the UNIVAC 1219 doesn’t have a nickname. I did realize recently that I should specify the pronunciation (Twelve-Nineteen), but it doesn’t have any nicknames. Apart from ‘the 1219’, it’s also regularly referred to as the CPU or just ‘the computer’.

Fun stories or weird quirks? Boy, I could fill a book with this machine’s weird quirks (or as we say, intermittent issues), but I’ll try to blitz through the most common ones:

Sometimes the computer will stop running and enter a WAIT mode. No reason, it just needs a break. We can’t fix it, it just has to decide to go back into operating mode.

The computer will often start attempting to communicate on IO channel 13. We’re not telling it to talk to anything, it just decides to try to.

One of our teletypes (the Kleinshmidt) stamps ink splotches into the paper rather than characters most of the time. However, this weekend it worked for the first time in 10 months! We didn’t change anything, it just had an extra cup of coffee or something.

The Digital Data Recorder, or the tape drive, has the most gremlins out of any of our units. The top handler works fairly well, but the bottom handler won’t properly read data, write data, move the tape forward, initialize the tape, or any number of other issues.

There’s more but hopefully this satisfies your curiosity.

Fun stories? Well, I can’t name any specific ones, but I can say it’s a very endearing machine. It’s the very last of its kind and being one of three individuals in the world responsible for it makes every issue that more frustrating. There is no real forum for it, the subject matter experts sit next to me and are often just as exasperated as I am.

But the unique nature of this situation make every successful diagnostic test that much sweeter. Every new addition (5.25” floppy drive via serial) that much cooler. I have an IBM PC-XT clone at home, but I thank my lucky stars every day that this big iron is what I get to specialize in.

As for more photos, I have none that are as grandiose as you would probably expect. I do have my working photos though. I took all my photos when I first started working on it and now I am more dedicated to fixes than photo-ops.

This is a photo of our finicky Kleinshmidt teletype. Still has blotches but it actually printed!

This is the back of the bottom handler. Pictured is the vacuum pump in the bottom left (so sudden stops just yank magnetic tape slack rather than ripping tape). The big cylinder in the center is a motor for running the magnetic tape handler itself. The big black ‘hose’ of wires coming out of the steel plate contains all the cables that come right off the handler’s head for reading and writing data!

This is the forward pinch roller of the bottom handler. It was replaced after this photo was taken as you can see the rubber has deteriorated in the 55 years this machine has been operating.

As for being allowed to post photos, that’s not an issue. The last 1219 was decommissioned in 2014 and now you can find all of its documentation online at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/univac/military/1219/

[elliespectacular]

To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day ♪

He could stroke a million weiners but that wouldn't make him gay ♪

[shitpostempire]

[overstimulated-autism-creature]

[byruit]

VAX 7000

[herecomesthementalmeltdown]

texas red killed one and nineteen more while of youth at 24. what's your excuse

[vikenticomeshome]

If Da Bizzyboys Broke Megapon

Then its time to let the Big Iron talk.