[HECnet] TOPS-10 D-Day, DECnet failure on November 9th is less than six days away

[Paul Koning]

> On Nov 7, 2021, at 7:03 PM, Thomas DeBellis <tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ugh, the larger ones all made a racket, even an 11/05 in a rack.  An 11/40 really did, particularly did because you had sit close to it to use the GT40.  I don't remember an 8/E being that bad.
> 
> But 10's and 20's?  Ouch.  The machine room at Marlboro that I used had a pile of KL's, KI's and a KA in it.  2116, 2012, 2136, 1031 come to mind, but there had to be three times that list.  What a racket.

One of the nice features of CDC mainframes (the 60 bit machines) is that they were rather quiet.  That's because the mainframe was liquid cooled,  with water cooling of the refrigeration machinery.  Only external boxes like the console and outboard peripheral controllers had cooling fans.  The machines I worked on had the disk drives in another room (one floor down) which put all that noise away from the operators.  Being able to talk to your colleagues without shouting was quite nice.

	paul