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Building the System/360 Mainframe Nearly Destroyed IBM

(spectrum.ieee.org)
169 points rbanffy | 1 comments | 08 Apr 25 07:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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SoftTalker ◴[08 Apr 25 17:50 UTC] No.43624543[source]▶
The reason the tape drives are in those tall enclosures are the vertical channels below the tape reels. That was for slack in the tape, there was a loop of tape hanging in each of the channels, so that tape reads and writes could be stopped and started faster than the heavy tape reels could stop and start.
replies(1): >>43625016 #
1. Henchman21 ◴[08 Apr 25 18:30 UTC] No.43625016[source]▶
This is super interesting to me, thanks for that. Are there any other hidden but well-known things like that?