On 17/04/2018 22:17, Martin Gregorie wrote:

>
> As I said, I only used the switches a few times: for a short while we had
> a uniplexor attached so we could run Minimop on a single teletype.
> Executive had to be patched on the switches before use if the system had
> been rebooted since the last time we'd used Minimop.
>

Time does strange things to memory... I worked at a company that had a
pair of 1905's in 1983. One just ran in batch mode and the other was
used interactively during the day. There were plenty of the funny orange
cased ICL VDUs about the place. The 1905's sat in the air-conditioned
room along with an LSI 11/23+. I was writing stuff for assorted Apricot
PCs and the LSI 11 and got to the room regularly to load 9trk tapes etc.
I remember them being in quite dark grey cabinets unlike the orange on
the VDUs and the creamy-beige of the LSI 11.

I can remember being there when one of the 1905's was being rebooted and
watching the questions being answered on an ASR33 console to boot the OS
(GEORGE III?). The machine would partially start then crash and they
were on the 4th or 5th attempt. I can clearly remember one of the 1905's
had 256k of memory (can't recall if it was core) and whilst the bootup
guys were working, there was a panel open and there was a wall of lights
(incandescent bulbs). There were few lit whilst the questions were
answered and then after return was hit, the room lit as the lights came
on. Some flashing and it all went dark. Lather, rinse, repeat a few more
times till it stayed up and the jobs were re-queued.

Having read the comments, I'm wondering what I was looking at? If it
wasn't the CPU cab for the 1905 because there were almost no lights,
what was it? Definitely part of the boot process because once the
machine was up, the lights did a proper movie depiction of a computer. I
really don't think it was 2900 series because the owners were constantly
grubbing about for peripherals and parts as by 1983, the machines were
well obsolete. Again I remember there was joy and rejoicing when a
number of 60 and 200MB disk pack drives were found somewhere in Ireland
and someone was sent off to hire a big van to go and get them.

Answers on the back of an unused punch card.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05