Talk:IBM 305 RAMAC

untitled
This article is informative but wrong. The IBM 305 series was not a drum storage setup but was in fact the first production of a stacked disc hard drive, sporting 50 discs measuring 2 foot in diameter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.25.19.64 (talk) 18:14, April 8, 2006


 * Yes, I believe you are correct about it not using drum storage. A different model used drum storage, the IBM 310. Note that IBM had some other models as well: the 307 used trumpet storage, the 292 used a combo piano and saxaphone storage setup, and the IBM 405-012 had a trombone storage unit. IBM also produced another model in limited quantities, the IBM 7, which used a cello storage unit. Customer demand for this model was very low, as there were too many strings attached. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.200.116.136 (talk) 21:58, September 3, 2006


 * First comment appears to have been serious; second one is just silly. —SaxTeacher (talk)  19:01, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * You seem to just be DRUMming up wiki drama with that comment! Harp!—Lucielle  —Preceding comment was added at 21:23, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, it was a drum machine; see IBM Reference Manual 305 RAMAC, A26-3502-0. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 22:46, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Appreciation
Great article! Wrt to the thread above, it totally misses the point. The drum storage was analagous to the RAM storage of later (and contemporary machines). That (the active memory) and the overall place of the system in the evolution of computing (where the disk and drum highlight the narrowing that later occured in what was still a more fluid model of general computing) is the really interesting thing about it. Lycurgus (talk) 18:58, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Date of announcement
I've read elsewhere that the date of announcement was September 4, 1956. The IBM reference agrees with this. So how come the article has September 13, 1956? This looks like someone has falsely made a correction for the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. (But that change would be more like 11 or 12 days. So I'm not really serious about that.) I think at least there should be some explanation of the discrepancy. Alan U. Kennington (talk) 05:05, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The key qualifier in the article lead is publicly announced on September 13, 1956—that, per, is the date an article ran in the NY Times. September 4, 1956 was the date it was internally announced, and the press release was distributed on September 14, 1956. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:41, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually the New York Times article was published September 14, 1956 and it states that I.B.M. "yesterday took the wraps off four new electronic devices..." – Wbm1058 (talk) 23:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I question whether http://chmhdd.wetpaint.com/ (a tertiary source) is a reliable source for the claim that "September 4, 1956 is the date on which IBM internally announced both the IBM RAM 650 and IBM 305 RAMAC, both of which included the IBM 350." To back this up, we won't find any news reports on September 4, 1956 but will need to find an internal source within IBM to confirm that there was an internal announcement, or a reliable secondary source quoting a primary (internal) source. More likely, based on IBM itself, "The IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit was introduced on September 4, 1956 and the IBM 305 RAMAC Computer was introduced on September 13, 1956." (i.e., the first disk drive was announced nine days before the computer systems that used it)—Also, the IBM 355 was also announced on September 4, 1956, and the September 13, 1956 announcement was for the IBM 650 RAMAC that used it. Wbm1058 (talk) 02:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Apparently the internal source for the internal announcement claim may be Al Hoagland, as the page says he originally authored it. However, his personal memoir states, IBM announced the RAMAC 350 disk drive on September 4, 1956 and the RAMAC 305 system on September 13, 1956. The following day IBM also announced the availability of the RAMAC disk drive on their popular Model 650 Magnetic Drum Data Processing Machine computer system."... T.J. Watson Jr., President of IBM, announced the RAMAC on September 4, 1956. He said in part, “This is the greatest product day in IBM’s history and I believe in the office equipment industry.”  I see nothing there saying the first announcement was internal. But, neither have I found a contemporary news source to confirm that it was public. So, let's just say that the RAMAC was announced on Sept. 4, 1956, to whom it was announced is uncertain. – Wbm1058 (talk) 23:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Jacks Clemens
One of the engineers on this system died,, not sure how to place this in the article.(mercurywoodrose)99.157.206.37 (talk) 04:12, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Memory coding
Our article said "Each character was 7 bits, composed of two zone bits ("X" and "O"), four BCD bits for the value of the digit, and an odd parity bit..." User:Comp.arch added the following comment to the code after that sentence: 'confusing or wrong, alphanumeric (unless only hexadecimal ones) need more that 4 bits. If preceding "BCD" means here 6-bit, then at least "four BCD bits" below for the core memory is confusing (and not the same as "6 data bits" for the "IBM 350 disk system" above in the lead.'

The sentence in question was confusing because BCD was used with two meaning. The RAMAC six-bit BCD code includes the two zone bits, mirroring the coding used on IBM punched cards, which includes a digit punch and one or more zone punches (rows 11 and 12). I changed the sentence to read: "Each character was 7 bits, composed of two zone bits ("X" and "O"), four bits for the binary value of the digit, and an odd parity bit..." --agr (talk) 21:59, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

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