2012-07-08 Honeywell Mainframe 1981

Honeywell Level 66, model 66/07. Had 384k words of memory. One word = 36 bits, so it was 1.25 megabytes. Five disk packs (removable). Three tape drives. Line printer in foreground. The video screen sitting on the mustard colored cabinet displayed all the jobs running along with their priority. Sometimes the students would be on timeshare and slow down the batch jobs especially the printer. So Burt, the daytime operator, would reduce timeshare’s priority and slow it down in order to stop the printer from slowing down. The students probably weren’t happy, but they were hogging the CPU time.

The F.E.s (field engineers) often left the door to the CPU open to let cool air in. The rows of lit LEDs on the door displayed the various registers to allow troubleshooting. The boards were not printed circuit, they were wire wrapped boards to allow making changes in the field. The small number of Honeywell mainframes and the various sizes and versions meant that that it was not cost effective to manufacture printed circuit boards for each machine.

I have a lot of other stories about the “Honey ain’t so well” mainframe and those times

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