University Computer Center

I'm going to do several different blog postings of pictures from the 1968 to 1973 time period related to the University of Iowa's academic computing facilities, staffing, and projects. This first posting documents the University Computer Center (UCC) a few years after it was initially established (and when it had technology different from that shown here). Most of the comments here are intended for colleagues of mine from that time period who have recently begun to reconnect and to share memories and stories. These blog entries are one way for me to contribute to that exchange.

All of the following pictures were taken in maybe 1970 or so. I'm not precisely sure of the year, but I think you may be able to tell from some of the pictures that we were no longer using the entrance down the ramp on the east side of the machine room. The I/O window seems to be the one created off the west side hallway when the Center was expanded. In another photo, the one showing the manual rack, you can see that we were using the temporary building to the east of the machine room.

I recall that I arranged for these photos because I had been invited by my high school mathematics teacher to come back and give a talk on computers and computing for the students in her class. Jim, Bruce, and I all lived on the (then) far east side of Iowa City not too far from each other. So one weekend, I prevailed on them to join me in making this photographic record. Their modeling skills will be evident to you. Clearly, IBM influenced their taste in white shirts. And just for the record, I still have that "old gold" sweater.

A last few things you may wish to know before looking at the photos is that you can double click on any one of them to see a larger version. You can then use left/right arrows to move through the pictures without having to read all my lame comments. Press ESC to return to the blog. Also, note that some of the comments below contain embedded URL links to Wikipedia pages with additional information. You may leave comments as well--see the comments link at the end of the post.

Obviously, this is the exterior of the UCC, which was located in the lower level of the northwest section of what was known as East Hall and then later Seashore Hall. This entire building complex, which among other things once housed the original UI Hospital, is currently being demolished. The demolition of the area that once housed UCC triggered the exchange of memories and reconnections mentioned above.

The sign is one of two I remember. The other was made to look like a punch card. Lee had it for many years and perhaps still does. The van reminds me that we had a pickup and delivery service for persons around campus who did not wish to travel to UCC to drop off card decks and return to pick up these decks and their output listings.

The next picture shows the window where users would drop off their card decks and pick up their listings. Note the sign indicating the current anticipated turnaround time between drop off and pickup. The keypunch in this photo was in a stand up configuration for quick changes in card decks.

I recall two different keypunch machines, the 026 and the 029. This one is an 029. Read more here.

UCC staff created a system called GRUMP that could be used to maintain images of punch card decks online. GRUMP worked with 2260 CRT displays. Read more about 2260s here.

From time to time, UCC experimented with new emerging technologies. The system Jim is using here was an Imlac PDS-1, a graphical display system about which you can read more here.

We also supported a small number of printing terminals, like the IBM 2741 Two software systems UCC provided were ATS (administrative terminal system--a text processing system) and CPS (conversational programming system). An old teletype is also shown.

Adjacent to the I/O window area (and later in the temporary building??) was an array of keypunch machines for users to use on a walk-in basis to prepare their programs, data, and jobs to be processed on the computer.

IBM was for a time one of the largest publishers in the world, simply because one needed documents in order to know how to properly use the many different software systems. A room was set aside at the Center to allow users to work on their programs and to consult these manuals.

In early days, an array of "unit record" equipment was available to allow doing such tasks as card sorting, card-to-print operations, statistical sorting, and others. Some of these machines could be programmed via plug boards. Most of these capabilities were obviated by the computing system and the machines were phased out. However, a sorter was useful for putting decks back into order if, alas, they were dropped and scrambled (and if one had the foresight to punch sequence numbers into the trailing columns of the cards). Here, Jim is operating what I think is an 082 sorter.

Below is a 2540 card reader/punch. This was one of two readers used to read card decks into the computing system for processing. The other was a 2501.

UCC had two different line printers. One was a 1000 lpm 1403. The other was a 600 lpm machine, perhaps a 1401 (although the 1401 was also a distinct IBM system), so I'm not sure about that.

Obviously, these are some of the media in regular use at that time: magnetic tapes, paper tape, removable disk packs (hard disks), printed listings, and punch cards.

These next two pictures show the console area of the mainframe computing system--an IBM 360 model 65. The machine occupied a number of cabinets. IBM offered cabinets in blue, red, canary yellow, or gray, as I recall. I think we sometimes called this machine "Old Blue" or "Big Blue." Reading the details about the machine will bring to mind the inevitable thoughts about the enormous differences between computers back then and those in common and prolific use today (size, capacity, speed). Many of us today wear more powerful computers on our wrists. These mainframes sat atop raised flooring so that interconnecting cables could be placed below. (Remember the special gadgets used to lift squares of the floor for access to the areas below?) Significant cooling systems were required to keep them from overheating.

I always liked this picture of Jim in supplication before the CPU gods.

Behind Bruce is an 8-pack array of 2314 hard disk drives. Bruce is at the console, where operators could manage the system job flow, control devices, and receive instructions for such things as the mounting of magnetic tapes or the changing of 2314 disk packs (as demonstrated by yours truly in the second photo below).

UCC supported a number of remotely connected devices at regional colleges and universities as well as interactive terminals like the 2741 shown earlier. So in addition to the IBM equipment, the machine room housed many telecommunications interfaces, modems, etc.

I'm not sure which is which below, but the next two pictures show the two channel controllers for the 360/65. One was a selector channel (2860) and the other a byte-multiplexor channel (2870). (By the way, I don't know why all of these model and device numbers affixed themselves so permanently in my memory. I certainly could not recite with accuracy the numbers for many of the machines that came later or those of different contemporary machines.) I don't recall that either Jim or I or any of us ever had much reason to open these cabinets to examine the control panels, but for my intended use of these pictures, it was much more impressive to show "the guts" than the exteriors of lots of similar cabinets.

A set of magnetic tape drives (2400 series) were available. Most were 9-track, while one or two were 7-track, as I recall. Tapes were used for backing up the disk systems as well as for data input/output. The Department of Physics and others used tapes to collect experimental data for later analysis on the UCC system. In the machine room were racks with numerous tapes stored on them.

Below is a 2703 controller. This device was the interface between an array of telecommunications devices (modems) and the mainframe (via the byte multiplexor channel). I remember that I actually did frequently access the control panel in order to investigate problems with connections to some of the regional schools and other locations.

Finally, although it was eventually replaced by other equipment, for a time we used an IBM 2671 paper tape reader. A few UI departments collected data on paper tape from experiments and analyzed the results on the mainframe. I can't find much information online about the 2671, but there is a decent treatment of paper tape here.

Planned future postings: UCC staff and projects, SHARE meetings, moving to the Lindquist Center.