Ancient Tech

[pigfarmer]

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.

 

[Rick Hunter]

My uncle got into the defense side of computers while in the Air Force from 1959-1963 and as a civilian employee of DOD thereafter. His career spanned from punch cards fed into huge readers weighing thousands of pounds in the 60's to reel to reel tape storage in the 70's to floppy discs the size of LP records in the 80's. His career wrapped up with data transmitted via fiber optics between secure servers on the massive DOD worldwide intranet. He says the amount of legacy hardware still in use on critical defense systems is unreal.

 

[pigfarmer]

amount of legacy hardware still in use on critical defense systems

Insomnia. Again. Maybe we need an Ancient Tech thread? Move these last couple posts?

I've been out of the game a while and never worked on any critical defense systems but I have dealt with the military and they tend to hang on to things forever. On a Fighter Pilot Podcast someone mentioned that the camera that records landings on carriers is old and the footage of poor quality. It was explained that anything the military uses has to pass rigorous vetting before it comes into service and as long as it works and can be serviced and is good enough for the task, there it'll stay. Writ small, I sort of feel that way myself. Not one to go chasing after the next new thing because it's the next new thing, like EVs.

 

[wwkirk]

Insomnia. Again. Maybe we need an Ancient Tech thread? Move these last couple posts?

I've been out of the game a while and never worked on any critical defense systems but I have dealt with the military and they tend to hang on to things forever. On a Fighter Pilot Podcast someone mentioned that the camera that records landings on carriers is old and the footage of poor quality. It was explained that anything the military uses has to pass rigorous vetting before it comes into service and as long as it works and can be serviced and is good enough for the task, there it'll stay. Writ small, I sort of feel that way myself. Not one to go chasing after the next new thing because it's the next new thing, like EVs.

I've heard, I know not where or when, that legacy software can have several advantages.
1. Much less hackable than more modern software.
2. The personnel and training protocols have become very, very honed in its use.
3. [This one I'm less sure about.] The users have tweaked and fine-tuned it to where there is no reason to want to switch to something else.

 

[pigfarmer]

Go to a Home Depot or Menards and go look for a basic hammer. Yes, there have always been different types for different applications but I'm talking about the one you throw in the drawer in the kitchen, a basic claw hammer. There are expensive 'hammers' there that look more suited to taking rock samples on Mars than hanging a picture, and they ain't cheap. Yet, a nail is still a nail, our wrists and hands haven't evolved away in the past few years and it doesn't do anything my grandfather's doesn't - people buy them (or not, really) because of feel good, not actual necessity. A mousetrap's still a mousetrap last time I checked.

This is why people are tripping over EVs and running to but the next version of a smartphone for some insane amount of money.

 

[nivek]

Thanks for this thread suggestion @pigfarmer @wwkirk @Rick Hunter ...

...

 

[nivek]

I've heard, I know not where or when, that legacy software can have several advantages.
1. Much less hackable than more modern software.
2. The personnel and training protocols have become very, very honed in its use.
3. [This one I'm less sure about.] The users have tweaked and fine-tuned it to where there is no reason to want to switch to something else.

I have a lot of legacy software and hardware, going back to the Windows 3.1 days...I've thinned out some of my hardware, mainly just where I had too many duplicate parts but I still have quite a bit of hardware with back-ups...Never know when it may have some use, even with the software...

...

 

[pigfarmer]

Thanks for this thread, I have a couple of notions. Right now my ancient tools and ancient backside are headed out to dig. Dig I must.

 

[pigfarmer]

I know fax machines are still in use but are fading in the rear view mirror. Like a rotary phone, someone somewhere will be dependent on one and upset when they're told it's time for Old Yeller to go. In old Heinlein novels he refers to 'faxstat' or the like and it sounded really futuristic decades before the technology actually arrived. You'll have that in sci fi I guess. Now it's kind of hokey.

There were two IBM sites about five miles apart and at one end sat Harry who fielded help desk phone calls - no recognizable computers or fax machines quite yet - and generated repair orders. He had a contraption that looked like some kind of burly Steampunk bathroom scale eating a box of tractor feed forms. It had a pen attached with a thick flexible cable and he'd sit there and literally hand-write up the orders.

At the other end sat a nascent and eager Pigfarmer who would watch the similar version of the infernal device, the exception being that it had a mechanical armature that would mimic whatever Harry did with the pen at the other end on some sort of thermal paper including all the pauses and fidgets we have in our writing. If Harry paused and tapped his pen, so did the other end. Imagine that, real time ...... data transfer ... ish.

The exact details of this mind blowing technology are lost to me but was (I think) transported via a '9.6 line' meaning a 9600 baud synchronous point-to-point four wire circuit. Hang on, that's super (and probably duper) typewriter speed. Modems of this stripe were roughly 6"x6"x24" [<<<<< SEE? The editor interpreted the final 'x24' as those silly emoticons] and were heavy sumbitches - I imagine because they were so full of cool futuristic stuff. They needed a pair of wires for Transmit and another for Receive to talk to each other, whether sitting on a desk next to one another or in the case of Harry's Magic Pen several miles apart. Nobody even uses actual telephones anymore, but we've all seen traditional surface mounted wall wall jacks, usually amongst the dust and dirt down on the baseboard. Before that they used to be these 4-prong things that were novel simply because it meant a phone could be unplugged. At one time they couldn't be and were hardwired right into the wall.

Imagine that, having a conversation and being required to remain within the limits of the wired instrument. Jabbering pointlessly while in the supermarket or while taking a **** was still in the future of human achievement, but I digress.

The first modular - unpluggable - jacks were of the type Bell System Type 404A jack and type 283B plug. I still have a few.



IBM's modem technology depended on the same four-prong jacks that your grandparents did to plug their klunky Bakelite Western Electric phone in with. If you had the Tx and Rx connected end to end properly, meaning crossed in the middle, you could sit and listen to the opposing modems sync up with a lineman's butt set and that sounded like a destroyer vs submarine WW2 movie with all the pinging. Sometimes when there was a problem I'd ask 'why don't they sing?' much like Capt.Kirk in Voyage Home. Actually, the Ancient Tech and that old movie are contemporaries.

 

[pigfarmer]

 

[nivek]

The editor interpreted the final 'x24' as those silly emoticons]

Yes, there's a long list of smilies that we used from the old forum software and when they migrated to the new forum template, they were automatically given short generic text to replace name tags by the software...I cannot turn off the text to replace with smilies feature...Those short names have randomly shown up in the addresses of some YouTube videos and in mathematical equations posted as In this case...In order to correct this I have to delete all of the emotions migrated over, but once deleted I can't reuse them, since they were a part of the old software or alternatively I have to rename the generic tags manually one by one which will be very time consuming because every time I change one and save it, the admin software resets my editing page back to the beginning...So I've been changing the 'text to replace' tags a few at a time whenever the issue pops up...I did not want to relate all the emoticons, I like many of them, but I'll see if there's a smilies package I can get that will be suitable...Funny coincidence, here's this thread taking about old software and hardware and here I am trying to hold on to older legacy emoticons...lol (I'll get this smilies issue corrected once and for all)

...

 

[pigfarmer]

Yes, there's a long list of smilies that we used from the old forum software and when they migrated to the new forum template, they were automatically given short generic text to replace name tags by the software...I cannot turn off the text to replace with smilies feature...Those short names have randomly shown up in the addresses of some YouTube videos and in mathematical equations posted as In this case...In order to correct this I have to delete all of the emotions migrated over, but once deleted I can't reuse them, since they were a part of the old software or alternatively I have to rename the generic tags manually one by one which will be very time consuming because every time I change one and save it, the admin software resets my editing page back to the beginning...So I've been changing the 'text to replace' tags a few at a time whenever the issue pops up...I did not want to relate all the emoticons, I like many of them, but I'll see if there's a smilies package I can get that will be suitable...Funny coincidence, here's this thread taking about old software and hardware and here I am trying to hold on to older legacy emoticons...lol (I'll get this smilies issue corrected once and for all)

...

No issues but I had noticed it a while ago and haven't exactly figured out specifically what causes it. I can just write '2 by 4' and so forth

 

[Rick Hunter]

Alot of government agencies are still married to fax machines, including the SSA. At my job we provide documents to them all the time.

 

[Rick Hunter]

View attachment 18856

Yeah, it sure does offer the business subscriber exactly what He wants, I betcha!

 

[pigfarmer]

There's a LOT going on in that ad. One step short of having her male boss in the picture smoking a cigarette with a smirk on his face while admiring her. Things have certainly changed.

I never worked on a Pulse but did about every other vintage of those old PBXs Northern ever made. In context, Ma Bell was broken up in 1984 allowing businesses to use PBXs - private branch exchanges. At one time we used to lease our phones from Bell, we didn't own them. In today's terms imagine the Internet being controlled by a single authority and only their equipment will be able to access their network. PBXs gave end users control over their business phones and lines - the only access to the outside world at the time. It was a big hairy deal.

 

[Rick Hunter]

There's a LOT going on in that ad. One step short of having her male boss in the picture smoking a cigarette with a smirk on his face while admiring her. Things have certainly changed.

In ads, yes, but business overall not so much. I used to work at a slimy car dealership where good looking women employees who were willing to play ball could live the high life. Likewise, those who didn't were ushered out pretty quickly. I'm now in government, and yes a woman's appearance still goes a loooonnngg way when it comes to promotions and appointments, even if there is no hanky panky going on.

 

[pigfarmer]

Having a hard time throwing this one out, but out it'll go. Tandberg SLR75E SCSI tape drive. Remember those? 75GB of storage, oooh pinch me. At the time though, it was a big deal. This unit and I have gone on many, many late night campaigns together. Hasn't seen the light of day for six years so it's queued up to be sorted & tossed. I have craploads of wiring blocks, line cards, all sorts of stuff to begone with.

 

[Rick Hunter]

I would advise you to donate it to a vintage computer museum. There are quite a few of them and they welcome donations.

Exploring the History of Computing | Vintage Computer Museum

Explore the rich history of computing at the Vintage Computer Museum. Discover iconic computers from around the world, preserving the byte marks of history.

vintagecomputermuseum.com

 

[pigfarmer]

I would advise you to donate it to a vintage computer museum. There are quite a few of them and they welcome donations.

Exploring the History of Computing | Vintage Computer Museum

Explore the rich history of computing at the Vintage Computer Museum. Discover iconic computers from around the world, preserving the byte marks of history.

vintagecomputermuseum.com

The old Tandberg is already out where No Man Is Going Again but I'll keep that in mind for anything else. There are people who collect old telecom stuff so maybe a I'll seek out a forum. My interest in Ancient Tech isn't limited to just this stuff anyway.

That was more of a nod to a piece of gear that was very common in data centers and equipment rooms but just fell by the technological wayside. As physical interface types go, that's an old one. It was used to laboriously load applications and store backups on physical servers. I made lots of quality OT with that thing. Old applications that used things like that required a lot of obscure command line. All very, very different now.

One obscure thing to note. If we all of a sudden had to go back to dial up browsing on our 286 PCs we'd probably just lock up and make little whimpering noises a while, and then maybe remember it and get to hate it all over again. But, the 'application level' command line that was the only interface for those old Northern PBXs I worked on for a long time never changed much. It added more features and commands over time but the basic 'overlay loader' never changed from the first one I saw in 1985 on a huge serial TTY to the last ones made around 2020 that would have been virtualized and I'd be at it with a PuTTY session. There's more to it than that, but that's a perfect example of retaining a useful old format because for what it does there's no need to change it.

 

[pigfarmer]

These old pbx cards have been more useful in the week or so I put them there than they were in the last 10+ years. Lou has planted the flag and has been there since. Been lugging them around forever, they literally have hundreds of thousands of miles on them and apart from pussycats no longer have much purpose.