Burroughs E6000

From: Patrick L. Boland <plboland_at_home.com>
Date: Sat Oct 13 17:29:07 2001

As late as 1977 ! was using two Burroughs E6000 computers to perform the
function of loan payment application. The loans were for health club
membership in the Chicago area and a great deal of the rest of the upper
midwest area. We had over 50,000 loans outstanding at any time and
processed from 1,000 to 3,000 loan payments a day. The machines we had were
magnetic stripe ledger card readers and they would punch an output card
with the results of the processing of the transaction. The latest
information about the loan kept on a master deck of cards was replaced with
the card that was punched as a result of the transaction on the E6000. The
update was performed on a daily basis using the 085 sorter and a
reproducer/collater. During the last 8 to 12 months of the use of the
E6000, while a conversion was being worked on, we used only one E6000 and
kept the other one for spare parts. Burroughs had run out of spare parts.

The system worked, but it was manually work intensive, fraught with errors
and created a great deal of work at the end of the month to balance the
ledgers.
Received on Sat Oct 13 2001 - 17:29:07 BST