[ih] Design choices in SMTP

[Dave Crocker]

> As a side point, I recall that Bill Kehl of UCLA’s CCN purchased an increase to the core memory for his 360/91 by a megabyte and a short time later, IBM announced a dramatic price reduction which was too late for UCLA!  Ouch!

The 360/91 had a maximum primary memory limit of 2MB.  Down at Health 
Sciences, that's what we lived with.

CCN had 4MB.  The extra two were run off of peripheral storage control.  
This mean that the amount of time and the amount of money, to run a job, 
depended on which memory it landed in.

And as long as we are doing anecdotes...

One of my early tasks on the Arpanet project was various scut work in 
aid of the Arpanet coming out party in DC.  One Saturday, Vint dragged 
me along to a meeting at CCN.

We were sitting at a table in the machine room when the system crashed.  
We all looked up for a moment and then went back to discussions.  Maybe 
20 minutes later I looked up and the shift lead was still on the phone 
talking to whoever.  I asked the senior CCN person at the table what he 
thought was going on and he said they were checking whether to call an 
IBM engineer in.

With pretty much no thought -- as in, being thoughtless -- I said it was 
bad memory module.  The guy stared at me and I explained that the top 
rows of red lights -- hardware error lights -- had lots of lights on in 
a random pattern and that that always meant bad memory.

Until that moment, I had no realized just how good our training had 
been, down at the lean mean Health Sciences computing machine, where I'd 
been an part-time operator for 4 years.

ps. The modules were call Basic Operating Memory until IBM got a call 
from the FBI noting that it was a bit discocerting to airport staff when 
IBM called to asked whether the BOM they were shipping had arrived yet.  
It was then re-named Basic Storage Module, which of course everyone 
called BOM.  Such is the lesson of installed base momentum.

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social