"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 25 Jun 2010 07:12:09 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:

In mid 70's I worked on ICL drives, including something they called a
"drum", which was a single-platter mounted vertically.

The important point about the ICL drum was that (like the real drums
before it) it had one head for each track, thereby reducing the seek time
to the electronic switching time. They were mainly used for paging, but I
seem to recall that the ICL ones were let down by a sluggish transfer
rate.

Real drums didn't use Winchester type heads IIRC.
They were drums so all the heads were the same and the surface speed was the
same, with disks the surface speed changes with the head position.


My first programming (around 1968) was done on hand-punched cards, which
I preferred to paper tape as it was both easier to edit and faster to
create (I could hand-punch cards faster than the CPS of the teletype
you'd use to make the paper tape).

Same here....my first three years (1970-73) were nearly all on punched
cards. I still have a few as bookmarks!

I learnt Fortran IV using a portapunch to make cards.
They were then sent to IC to be run in the batch system by post.
When they returned you had to debug them from the printout.
It could take a while.
That was a primary school, I lost the facility when I went to secondary
school as they didn't see computers as important. 8-(