In the good auld days when we flipped bits with a pencil...

[Joe Morris]

In looking through some of my archives for a book I ran across some pages
I copied from the November, 1962 issue of Datamation which summarized
the popular mainframes of the day. The machines were ranked by "average"
monthly rental (sometimes derived from the purchase price where the box
wasn't available on rental) within groupings of "Solid-State" (58 entries),
"Special Industry" (3 entries) and "Vacuum Tube - Still Widely Used" (16
entries). Some interesting items:

IBM 7030 STRETCH - most expensive at $300,000/month, and remember that
this was in Real Dollars (tm) and not the play money we use today - 262
Kbytes of 64-bit core memory - add time 1.5 usec (could be faster by
lookahead) - cycle time 2.2 usec - file transfer at 62 KBPS (k-Bytes/sec) -
710 MB disk space, 132 msec average access time.

CDC 6600 - $120,000/mo - 1.3 usec add - 1.3 usec cycle - 262K of 60 bit
core - 83 KBps file transfer speed max - system not yet announced by CDC.

IBM 7090 - $64,000/mo - 4.4 usec add - 2.2 usec cycle [my memory says it
was 2.6 usec...anybody got a reference? - jcm] - 32K of 36-bit words -
130 KBps file transfer - 280 MB of disk space, 160 msec access time
[made up of 5 1301 disks at 56 MB per...wow!] - included FORTRAN, COBOL 61,
and COMTRAN.

CDC 1604 - $34,000/mo - 4.8 usec add - 6.4 usec cycle - 32K of 48 bit
core - 83 KBps file transfer - no disk.

IBM 7070 - $24,000/mo - 10K words of 10 digits plus sign - up to 30K words
available [by RPQ?] - 60 usec add typical - 6 usec cycle - 90 KBps file
transfer - 280 MB disk, 160 msec access.

Univac III - $22,500/mo - 8 usec add - 4 usec cycle - 32K of core memory
(6 digits plus sign) - 133 MBps file transfer - specs not available on
disk drive.

and jumping to the bottom of the solid-state list:

Monrobot XI - $700/mo - 9000 usec add - 12000 usec cycle - 1K of 32 bit
drum memory - no file storage - no disk - 15 cards/minute input/output -
20 characters/sec paper tape.

From the vacuum tube list:

IBM 704 - $32,000/mo - 24 usec add - 12 usec cycle - 32K of 36 bit core
plus 16K of drum - 15 KBps file transfer - no disk - note: tape start/stop
time can be overlapped with computing time.

Univac I - $25,000/mo - 282 usec add - 242 usec cycle - 1K of 12 alpha
character memory in mercury delay lines - 13 KBps file transfer - instructions
stored 2/word.

IBM 650 - $9,000/mo - 700 usec add - 60 words [not Kwords!] of 100 usec
core; 4K words of 4800 usec drum - 15 KBps file transfer - 48 MB of
disk data storage [4 RAMAC boxes at 12 MB/box], 600 msec access.

And, the machine we all loved to hate...

RPC LGP-30 - $1,300/mo - 2260 usec add - 17000 usec cycle - 4K of 31 bit
drum memory - 200 cps in, 20 cps out for paper tape via Flexowriter (ugh).

Joe Morris

Ouch...looking back at this I see I blindly used the term "File Transfer"
as it was used back then. For modern people who don't call them "files"
any more, read "tape read/write data transfer".