Talk:Q32 (computer)

The three machines which were delivered to the Air Force (one at March AFB 15th AF Headquarters at March AFB, CA), and two at SAC headquarters at Offutt AFB, NE, were actually designated the AN/FSQ-31V. This I know because I was assigned to the 33rd Communications Squadron at March AFB from September 1972 to February 1976 and worked as a maintenance technician and as a maintenance programmer on the Q-31. The last job I had prior to the decommissioning of DPC 3 was to run a suite of declassifying programs that ran for several days overwriting the memory, drums, and disk file with fixed and random patterns. The only machine I knew of designated as Q-32 was the development system housed at Systems Development Corp in Santa Monica, CA that was used to create the version of Jovial and the other operational programs for the Q-31. It was different in that it had more memory, more drums, mode disk space and used what would be called a minicomputer as a communications multiplexor to connect to a bunch of Teletype terminals used by the programming team at SDC, and ran a primative multi-user operating system so that all the programmers could develop code at the same time. While I was stationed at the DPC maintenance facility I found several manuals for the Q-32 in the miscellaneous manuals files including the programmer's reference for JOVIAL, and the system description manual for the Q-32. Unfortunately over the years, my stock of Air Force memorabilia has slowly vanished so I have been looking for authorative references for this part of Air Force and my personal history. ChardingLLNL 15:35, 27 June 2006 (UTC)