Page 63 - Remembering ISTEL

Remembering ISTEL

facilities including over 40 very high speed bulk terminals, which have
facilities to read punched cards and magnetic tapes and to print at very high
speeds. There is also a fast growing number of dedicated in plant
minicomputers linked to the CDC.

One of the four computers housed at the CDC is a model 3033 - IBM's most
powerful machine. This was one of the first to be installed in the country.

Linked into the computers are 32
very high speed magnetic tape units

and over a hundred units holding
data on magnetic disks.

The sheer numbers concerning the
CDC are remarkable:

The CDC processes up to 2,500

computer jobs a day (the running of
the payroll counts as a job) with as
many as 40 or 50 jobs running

concurrently.

The largest computer in the Centre

is capable of processing 5 million
instructions per second.

The CDC library of magnetic tapes holds over 20.000 magnetic tapes which
would, if spliced together, reach from the CDC to Peking!

A single disk drive unit can hold the data contained in a complete set of

London telephone directories, and the whole of this data can be read by the
computers in the centre in two minutes.

The CDC is now recognised as one of the best designed and operated
computer centres in the country, and we even had visitors from the USA

collecting ideas to incorporate in centres that they were planning.

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