Lots of numbers.....
My first computer job was on a dual Univac 1110 in a machine room with 40 tape decks (like in the old sci fi movies) and a 20,000 tape library. Above each deck were Chi-Lites (oddly named the same as a soul band of the time). When a tape deck wanted a tape it would display the number wanted by that machine in format A1234B. As there was no possible challenge to the job, instead of writing them down and going to the library I reached the point, after 3 months, where I could scan and remember 6 tape ids, and go and get them. I now have empathy with disk heads. Sadly, today, I can barely remember 4 or 5 digits for long enough to use them. Happy days?
(jerrykew He who codes last, codes least, Tue 19 May 2015, 11:24, 4 replies)

u r well old m8

( The Doveston haunted by the memory of his own amnesia, Tue 19 May 2015, 15:06, closed)

Working in I.T..... as a component of the operating system.

(eViLegion Chief Commissioner of the Scottish Lunacy Board, Tue 19 May 2015, 16:10, closed)

ffs, if no-one else is gonna do it
s c
( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Tue 19 May 2015, 21:18, closed)

And now AWS
Today I build scale able architectures on AWS, yet somehow still picture those processes, it certainly gives you insight into efficient process design.

In the same machine room we had drum store, 1/4 ton cylinders coated with ferric oxide and a strip of magnets as read write heads down the side, spinning at 20,000 rpm, it was primitive ssd then.

They took 3 hours to power up, and we're reputed to occasionally - around he world - to come off their bearings, one drilled down through a building, another walk through the processor cabinets out of the room. To be hit by one was described as creaming, though it never happened. Can't picture one of those on my wrist with a touch screen.

It was a strange sensation to walk past 20 or 30 of these peering in through the glass view ports at the unimaginable kinetic energy beyond.

J
(jerrykew He who codes last, codes least, Wed 20 May 2015, 0:53, closed)