When I began pursuing a Computer Science degree at Wright State University way back in 1974, there wasn't an Internet, personal computers, or smartphones. In the basement of their library, there was an IBM 360-65 mainframe computer like the one in the picture below and rows of dishwasher-sized removable disk drives and reel-to-reel tape drives. Starting my sophomore year, I worked for the computer center as a student programmer, and unlike most students on campus, I was able to go into the computer room and see all the hardware that ran our class-project programs. After my junior year, I took the open junior systems programmer job and really began to sink my teeth into the layers of technical details involved in these "Big Iron" computing beauties. The YouTube video at the link below is a tour of Clemson University's Computer Center in 1970 and explains a lot about mainframes.
Big shout-out to my buddy Nick for this blog idea.
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