How did they string core?

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Mon Dec 17 08:28:39 2001

> > It was done by hand I think. Mexico comes to mind.
>
> Some manfacturers did it by hand, some by machine. IBM had core stringing
> machines during the S/360 era, for the huge stacks (about 1' by 4') used
> in some of the storage units. They also had cores hand strung in the far
> East, as the cheap labor was more economical than the robots.

The far east manufacture of core lead to a long-running joke
in the old mainframe days... the instance of it I will describe
was only one of many...

Anyway, when we'd boot the COPE (Harris) 1200 Remote Job Entry
Station (a PDP-8 clone), there would be a message that would
flash by on the console *very quickly*:

        HELP! HELP! I'm being held hostage in a Hong Kong Core House!

Read this thinking "Mike Hunt" and "Amanda Huggenkiss" if you
don't (by some chance) get it...

-dq
Received on Mon Dec 17 2001 - 08:28:39 GMT