Age

From: William Donzelli <aw288_at_osfn.org>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 15:12:10 +0000

> There seem to be few 360s of any model still around.

They are around, but no one does anything with them and the owners
generally don't like to talk about them (probably out of fear of being
bombarded with sales offers). I think at one point I had a running list of
12 or 13 survivors. Most were 40s and 50s, none were the real monsters.

S/370s, for being newer (and I think more plentiful when produced), are in
far fewer numbers. The list for them is only 3 or 4. I suppose they just
don't have the prestige of the earlier models.

What is going to be a big gaping hole in the mainframe line is that of the
machines of the 70s and 80s*. As far as I know, no one saved any machines
in the 30xx line. The last 3090s have pretty much been retired. Even
ES/9000s are not doing well, although every so often one of the rackmount
models (922x) appears on Ebay.

The IBM clone ("PCM"s) scene of the 70s and 80s is very bleak - the list
is 1, and that machine is not even complete.

*Oddly, the true survivors are PDP-10s and Cybers, the two lines that
died.

> The Computer
> History Museum in Mountain View CA USA has a 360/30. I hope we can
> restore it someday.

IBM. Tough stuff.

William Donzelli
aw288_at_osfn.org
Received on Mon Feb 28 2005 - 15:12:21 GMT