On Apr 12, 11:18*am, Morris Dovey wrote:
On 4/12/2010 8:24 AM, wrote:

I'm not sure when they were introduced into the 370s, but yeah, they
were used for /158 microcode. *I remember interviewing at CDC in early
'74. *They had a /158 with its covers off, with a bunch of people
reverse-engineering the floppy drive. *The /158 was their pride and
joy, which I thought odd. *The whole place was "odd" and I told them
so before I left (didn't get an offer .

You're right - I went digging and found that there had been a /Minnow/
R/O floppy drive with diminished capacity released in 1972. I'm guessing
it was an early /Igar/ prototype.

It was R/O (forgotten that detail). The floppy writers were a desk-
sized contraption that connected to an internal use only computer
(RSTS?) from Rochester, IIRC. It was IUO because it would put shame
to the S/7 and there were a *lot* of S/7s, unsold, in the warehouse.

Yuppers on the oddness - my impression was that the CDC management team
had never quite been able to decide what they wanted to do when they
grew up. At one point they were even in the windmill business.

It was obviously run by a bunch of MBA kids, still wet behind the
ears. The treated candidates like grade school kids. Just amazing.