Talking of old IBM systems

[Chuck Guzis]

On 24 Mar 2010 at 9:16, blstuart at bellsouth.net wrote:

> I don't know about the ocean, but they did send them off to
> scrap yards and stuff to be demolished.  I had a roommate in
> college who had worked at one of these places in high school
> and he had one of the 360 nameplates as a souvenir.  And there
> was more than just OEMs to consider.  Back then they'd lease
> you their grandmother but not sell much of anything.  So
> when something went off lease and they had a new model,
> most customers were "gently" encouraged to lease the new
> one and IBM would pull the old one.  So what to do with
> the old ones?  Well, you can guess.  Certainly couldn't have
> the older model in the used market to cut into leases on
> the new one...

There's another aspect to the problem, that CDC ran into during the 
70's--that of used parts finding their way into the mainstream.  
Apparently, this was enough of a problem that CDC ordered that any 
decommissioned system be reduced to unusable junk.  At SVLOPS I saw 
CEs spend hours taking bolt cutters and hammers to disk drives and 
one-of-a-kind systems (STAR 1-Bs) after stripping useful bits from 
them.  

It hur to watch.

--Chuck