#MainFrames

[oldguydoesstuff]

Man seated at the console of a Univac 1108 mainframe computer, circa 1965.

[codeandcanvas]

For those of you who are about to delete your account(s)

I know and understand you. There are reasons, hell, you have reasons to delete whatever account it is you want deleted.

But download your own data first. Archive it. Zip that archive and push it into some automatically syncing folder between local and cloud, so that you can work around data degradation for a longer period of time.

Because you put whatever it is, whatever it was, you put it together and you had reasons for that.

Besides, the companies which used to host your account and your content are not ever deleting whatever it is you made and uploaded, shared and wrote: that is how valuable it is. That is the value of data.

Because neither do these companies know what all this data might be useful for, but they suspect that it will have a purpose in the future.

That purpose is being an archive.

Now, I would normally type something like “welcome to..” and then call it whatever weird stylistic anachronism I could come up with, but I won’t. I don’t trust people who name things. I am moving away from giving things names.

You are using a computer. Parts of what you do with your computer live on someone else’s storage drives. You should learn how to make copies of your own data, and store it well.

Companies like Twitter or Facebook will not be around forever. The next fire sale is always around the corner.

Save your data. Then delete your accounts/make your data unavailable for people outside the company.

[stone-cold-groove]

Don’t touch that button!

[ladyargento]

COBOL

I need to have a look at COBOL for work reasons... I am so exhausted....

[theeleventhsignofthezodiac]

IBM z/OS operating system logo

[hardcoregamer]

There’s plenty of signs already that the game’s “taking place entirely in the confines of a desktop screen” isn’t just for show. Mechanically speaking, they've conjured some clever, and at its best, fiendishly-anxious ideas to keep players feeling challenged. Novelty and humor don’t always guarantee success, but MainFrames’ early parts suggests that alongside the tempting platforming, Assoupi are at least treating this particular niche of the genre with the right dose of humor and self-awareness.

[el-ffej]

Having worked as a system operator in the 70s, in a computer room full of drives that were one-tenth the size of these:

My god, these things must have been loud.

Now that’s a disc drive. 

[crazygamecommunity]

The Arcade Crew e lo sviluppatore Assoupi hanno annunciato il platform a scorrimento orizzontale MainFrames per Switch e PC (Steam), in arrivo ad inizio 2025.

[g4zdtechtv]

Cinematech's Trailer Park - MainFrames (Switch/PC)

Your PC desktop becomes the setting for a grand adventure!

[zmainframes]

Check Point Restart – a detailed explanation.

https://zmainframes.com/zlog/check-point-restart-a-detailed-explanation/

[okayxairen]

this stream was my magnum opus

[oldguydoesstuff]

Enormous IBM 7650 "Harvest" supercomputer built in 1962 for the NSA and Atomic Energy Commission.

[shiprasharma2927]

Mainframes are making a comeback, powering modern enterprises with unmatched reliability and performance. 

[oldguydoesstuff]

I think you seriously underestimate how cool this is. Thanks for sharing with us!

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/

[billloguidice]

Creative Computing Benchmark from 1984 showing computational speed of hundreds of classic computers!

Creative Computing Benchmark from 1984 showing computational speed of hundreds of classic computers! #history #vintagecomputers #benchmarks #creativecomputing #basic

Page 6 of the March 1984 issue of legendary publication, Creative Computing, revealed the then latest version of the Creative Computing Benchmark. This benchmark was a short test of computational speed and accuracy and the random number generator in the BASIC programming language for hundreds of platforms. The 11-line BASIC program was run on hundreds of computers, from mainframes to handhelds.…

[vintageslideshow]

The state of computer technology in 1968.