pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
I have time to kill, leaving time for a trip down memory lane.
As a contractor in the '80s I worked at a huge IBM manufacturing facility. This is where I got all the heavy asbestos exposure. Kaf Kaf. Walk into an office of that era and of course there's a desk phone but the thing sitting on the desk wasn't a PC yet, it was just a dumb tube, a CRT. Networks as we understand them today didn't quite exist - there were 'thick' and 'thin' types and Token Ring was still in the future. Again, lacking any common standard IBM developed their own cabling system, in this case Type II LAN. Cable about the diameter of my thumb that ran from the office wall back to a wiring closet nearby. The cable was shielded twisted pairs that were split between 'voice and data'. Data meant a balun - an impedance matching device - to transition from twisted pair to RG6 coax. The coax was a huge backbone network - fiber optics were still in the future. Terminated with twist on BNC connectors - I have literally put on tens of thousands of them and it took years before I got all the little copper bits out of my hands. All this was so that each tube could connect to IBM 3270 Front End Controllers - a box the size of a washing machine that supported - wait for it - 32 users. I used an analog time domain reflectometer that weighed a ton and had a little green crt in it - I could pinpoint trouble in any of that quite accurately over miles once I learned how to use it.
I'll wind down - but that phone was far more important than it is now. In that case they were using a Danray system, one of the earliest digital switching systems. I worked for Northern Telecom who pioneered quite a lot of sort of thing. The desk phones each required three pairs of wires to work that all wound up on a line card - one per phone (of the 10K+ in use) that had a soldered fuse that commonly popped. IBM had secretarial pools and an entire hierarchy/pecking order/feudal system regarding executive coverage and who answered what order, etc. Multi-line phones often meant 1A2 electromechanical technology - 75 pairs of wires to make one 30 line phone work. Back then IBM Electric typewriters were the benchmark - you could actually change the font by changing a metal ball it uses. Spares were kept in these special cases and you could literally determine the secretary's place in the pecking order by looking at that. Only those with the most balls were on top.
I digress, this just sparked some memories. I got to see a lot of interesting (to me) development - early microcomputers, packet switching systems, PBXs, digital carrier systems, later on it was VoIP that I saw direct from it's squalling birth. I'm still reasonably current in the network game but talking to someone who is in it now about all this is like describing how to crank start a Model T.
As a contractor in the '80s I worked at a huge IBM manufacturing facility. This is where I got all the heavy asbestos exposure. Kaf Kaf. Walk into an office of that era and of course there's a desk phone but the thing sitting on the desk wasn't a PC yet, it was just a dumb tube, a CRT. Networks as we understand them today didn't quite exist - there were 'thick' and 'thin' types and Token Ring was still in the future. Again, lacking any common standard IBM developed their own cabling system, in this case Type II LAN. Cable about the diameter of my thumb that ran from the office wall back to a wiring closet nearby. The cable was shielded twisted pairs that were split between 'voice and data'. Data meant a balun - an impedance matching device - to transition from twisted pair to RG6 coax. The coax was a huge backbone network - fiber optics were still in the future. Terminated with twist on BNC connectors - I have literally put on tens of thousands of them and it took years before I got all the little copper bits out of my hands. All this was so that each tube could connect to IBM 3270 Front End Controllers - a box the size of a washing machine that supported - wait for it - 32 users. I used an analog time domain reflectometer that weighed a ton and had a little green crt in it - I could pinpoint trouble in any of that quite accurately over miles once I learned how to use it.
I'll wind down - but that phone was far more important than it is now. In that case they were using a Danray system, one of the earliest digital switching systems. I worked for Northern Telecom who pioneered quite a lot of sort of thing. The desk phones each required three pairs of wires to work that all wound up on a line card - one per phone (of the 10K+ in use) that had a soldered fuse that commonly popped. IBM had secretarial pools and an entire hierarchy/pecking order/feudal system regarding executive coverage and who answered what order, etc. Multi-line phones often meant 1A2 electromechanical technology - 75 pairs of wires to make one 30 line phone work. Back then IBM Electric typewriters were the benchmark - you could actually change the font by changing a metal ball it uses. Spares were kept in these special cases and you could literally determine the secretary's place in the pecking order by looking at that. Only those with the most balls were on top.
I digress, this just sparked some memories. I got to see a lot of interesting (to me) development - early microcomputers, packet switching systems, PBXs, digital carrier systems, later on it was VoIP that I saw direct from it's squalling birth. I'm still reasonably current in the network game but talking to someone who is in it now about all this is like describing how to crank start a Model T.