November 1956 IBM aanounces the worlds First hard drive
.modernmechanix.com/1956-first-hard-drive-5mb/ interesting OLD archive
Forum Discussion
Yes, the changes have truly been amazing. My father had a 33+ year career with IBM as a Field Engineer, and I literally grew up hearing about these amazing "machines" that I couldn't quite grasp. When I was very young, the only "machine" I knew about was the washing machine, so my earliest impressions of my Dad's job included him working on washing machines. I eventually figured it out! I think most boys have memories of times they spent at their Dad's knee, him teaching the son something important. Mine are of my Dad teaching me about the binary and hexadecimal number systems used by computers.
Dad's been retired for over 25 years now, and I'm within a few days of my 33rd anniversary with IBM myself. I've worked primarily in large data centers with multiple mainframes installed. Those would be the "big iron" dinosaurs that PC's were going to kill off. They're still out there, and they are incredibly powerful and reliable CPU's today. The hardware has become so economical to produce that most of the mainframes sold have massive amounts of "extra capacity" included that can be turned on quickly and easily by the user simply by downloading an enablement key. A guy like me with a toolbag doesn't even have to get involved, unless it's a really big upgrade where we're installing modules that have about 100 more CPU's available to be turned on. And, the individual CPU "chip" is so powerful that most of the time it's performance is dialed DOWN with microcode (firmware) to give the customer the performance level they're paying for.
The current enterprise class disk storage arrays are certainly impressive, with hundreds of single drives as large as 6 Terabytes if I remember right, and total available storage measured in Petabytes.
Solid state drives and flash storage are very popular now. SAN Volume Controllers and De-duplication servers are hardware/software data storage solutions that are extremely interesting devices to read about if you like that kind of thing.
To me, by far, the most interesting systems I work on today are the virtual tape libraries. Watching the consolidation of tape operations that just 15-20 years ago would have taken up tens of thousands of square feet of raised-floor computer room space into a single rack about the same size as a residential refrigerator has been mind boggling.
I could quite literally go on and on, but I better stop. Normal people just aren't that interested in what goes on behind the scenes when a credit card is swiped, a bill or a check is printed, an ATM transaction takes place, or a company's payroll is run. It's all magic! :B
:):)
Dad's been retired for over 25 years now, and I'm within a few days of my 33rd anniversary with IBM myself. I've worked primarily in large data centers with multiple mainframes installed. Those would be the "big iron" dinosaurs that PC's were going to kill off. They're still out there, and they are incredibly powerful and reliable CPU's today. The hardware has become so economical to produce that most of the mainframes sold have massive amounts of "extra capacity" included that can be turned on quickly and easily by the user simply by downloading an enablement key. A guy like me with a toolbag doesn't even have to get involved, unless it's a really big upgrade where we're installing modules that have about 100 more CPU's available to be turned on. And, the individual CPU "chip" is so powerful that most of the time it's performance is dialed DOWN with microcode (firmware) to give the customer the performance level they're paying for.
The current enterprise class disk storage arrays are certainly impressive, with hundreds of single drives as large as 6 Terabytes if I remember right, and total available storage measured in Petabytes.
Solid state drives and flash storage are very popular now. SAN Volume Controllers and De-duplication servers are hardware/software data storage solutions that are extremely interesting devices to read about if you like that kind of thing.
To me, by far, the most interesting systems I work on today are the virtual tape libraries. Watching the consolidation of tape operations that just 15-20 years ago would have taken up tens of thousands of square feet of raised-floor computer room space into a single rack about the same size as a residential refrigerator has been mind boggling.
I could quite literally go on and on, but I better stop. Normal people just aren't that interested in what goes on behind the scenes when a credit card is swiped, a bill or a check is printed, an ATM transaction takes place, or a company's payroll is run. It's all magic! :B
:):)
