LEO (1950)

[Chuck Guzis]

> From: "Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk>

> I once saw a Univac FAST RAN Drum memory. What a lump!!!

I think you mean "FASTRAND"--and probably a FASTRAND II or III.  A 
great hulking movable-head mass storage device that was being used in 
the Univac line long after the competition had moved to disk. 
Basically a couple of nickel-plated sewer mains in a fluorescent-
lighted box.  I wondered if the box would flip over if the bearings 
on one of the drums suddenly seized up.

I encountered one sometime around 1970 on the newly-installed 1108 
system at IIT in Chicago.  Situated in a converted storefront on 
Michigan Avenue, truck traffic rumbling by and shaking the old 
building would cause the FASTRAND to hiccup with errors.

Sperry Univac must have offered the college a heckuva deal on the 
installation.  It replaced a S/360-40 setup that turned in years of 
good performance.  I could not imagine an installation going from 8 
bit characters on a 32-bit machine to 6 bit characters on a 36 bit 
system, with lousy drum printer output (instead of a 1403) to boot.

Cheers,
Chuck