Ibm 360 - Blog Posts

Yey, I love finding photos of mainframes in use from the archives of colleges. This is an IBM System/360 model 30. Their lower end of the System/360 range. Introduced in 1964 and shipped in 1965.

Initially this entire machine had the maximum memory of 64k. In the early ‘70s 3rd party manufacturers started to realize it was built to accommodate more (up to 128k, though just 32k upgrades cost near $40,000), so IBM offered options to upgrade the memory to 96k.

The 360 was created with the intent to be used with shops that had an IBM 1401 (introduced 1958). It could be configured with an optional emulator to run their existing software. Short sighted business then bought the machine configured with 16k as that was the 1401s maximum memory capacity, why would you need more, when the machine could be much much more capable at 64k. You could load DOS/360 to “partition” the machine for 2-3 concurrent jobs.

Computers in an accounting class at Ball State University, 1974.