Yeah, eBay has tons of them. Use them for movie props all the time. If anyone is in LA there are plenty of surplus electronics shops that are overflowing with them. I used to search "cannon connectors" IIRC.
The steel ones ("Cannon connectors") are indeed very expensive: the only ones I have were removed from industrial equipment. However, for hobbyist use, I'd buy CPC -- Circular Plastic Connectors. Those are available in the same variety of pinouts and cost an order of magnitude less.
You're right, that's BS :-) Yes, many of the 4 Pi systems were essentially IBM 360 mainframes; some were completely compatible, while others were more "inspired" by the 360. However, only the little-used EP/MP model was a multiprocessor system. As for the name, IBM made it clear that the name comes from 4 pi steradians in a sphere.
What 4 Pi systems did you work with, by the way? Do you have any interesting stories?
Nothing too interesting I’m afraid. The unit I was in was responsible for the 4 pi software on the E-3 AWACS. If memory serves, this was right about the time of block 30/35 rollout. I looked recently and they’re running much newer, better computers these days (it’s been 30 years, now I feel old).
We used to say that the computers were so heavy that the E-3 was routinely taking off over its maximum takeoff weight :). Another likely bit of BS. But it did take that old bird well over a minute of takeoff roll to get airborne, which is weird when you are used to airliners. I did not regularly get to ride in one, we mostly used a 4 pi in our E-3 simulator. Did a lot of “external testing” which was mostly very tedious but we did get to talk to interesting people.
The E-3's computer was definitely heavy: the brochure that I have says that it weighed 1,826 pounds. (There's a nice photo of the refrigerator-sized cabinet full of circuit boards in my article.) The 4 Pi line is kind of strange; it has all these compact 60-pound computers, and then they throw in a couple of monster systems that weigh almost a ton.
So I can continue to spread a bit of fun misinformation when someone asks (they never do) by saying that 4 pi radians is 720 degrees, or two 360s. It's a harmless bit of fun, nobody really cares enough to call me on it :).
Author here: I've finally finished a detailed history of IBM's 4 Pi computers, powering everything from the B-1 bomber to the Space Shuttle. Let me know if you have questions...
The name is essentiallly a geometry joke. The IBM System/360 line of mainframes (1964) revolutionized the computer industry with the concept of one family of computers for all applications: business and scientific. (Before the 360, nobody considered compatibility, so different computer models were entirely incompatible, which was a mess.) The name symbolized that System/360 covered the full 360º of applications.
The 4 Pi name extended this idea to applications in the 3-dimensional world: 4π is the number of steradians making up a full sphere. As IBM put it, "System/4 Pi also fills a sphere—the full spectrum of military computer needs—for airborne, space, or shipboard use."
My local carwash's top-end wash is called the "Ultimate 360°", despite the fact that it obviously cleans the entire surface area of the car, and I'm simultaneously annoyed by the name and reminded of the System/4 Pi.
You mentioned in the post that you "received a stack of 4 Pi marketing brochures and articles". Do you plan to scan these and place them on your website or the Internet Archive? I'd love to read them!
The manual for the IBM 2260 describes the CRT in detail but I don't think it has the information you want. My guess is that if you're IBM, you can get the CRT in whatever shape you want.
I am trying to find more information to no avail. Actually the only picture of an IBM terminal with a cylindrical tube is the one in your article, there is nothing else on the entire Internet. I will keep investigating.
Oh, I see the difference now. In the photo of the IBM 2260 terminal that I used, the bezel is rectangular and flat. In every other photo of the 226, the bezel is sunken and the screen is oval-shaped. I'll ask around and see if I can find out why. Maybe the photo that I used is a later version with a better CRT?
The IBM Datamaster is an interesting system, but it was doomed. It had an 8-bit Intel 8085 processor, cost $9000, and came out in July 1981. The IBM PC had a 16-bit 8088 processor, cost $1565, and came out a month later. So there was no reason to buy a Datamaster
There's a good description of Datamaster in "A Personal History of the IBM PC" by Dave Bradley (one of the PC's designers). Unfortunately, it's paywalled.[1]
It did use a screen font closer to the 3270 series. That is a big pro ;-)
IBM also was studying home computers, and was talking to Atari. There are other gorgeous design studies in “ Delete - a Design History of Computer Vaporware”, a lovely book. I want to 3D print half of those designs.
The article asks about the etymology of X for crystal. I looked into that a while ago. The abbreviation "xtal" has been used for "crystal" since the 1800s in medicine, geology, and chemistry, and then electronics copied the usage. This comes from the earlier use of X for the "christ" sound, as in "xmas", which goes back to the 16th century. As the article suggests, the Greek chi (Χ) is the root.
Did someone ask about Intel processor history? :-) The Intel 8080 (1974) didn't use microcode, but there were many later processors that didn't use microcode either. For instance, the 8085 (1976). Intel's microcontrollers, such as the 8051 (1980), didn't use microcode either. The RISC i860 (1989) didn't use microcode (I assume). The completely unrelated i960 (1988) didn't use microcode in the base version, but the floating-point version used microcode for the math, and the bonkers MX version used microcode to implement objects, capabilities, and garbage collection. The RISC StrongARM (1997) presumably didn't use microcode.
As far as x86, the 8086 (1978) through the Pentium (1993) used microcode. The Pentium Pro (1995) introduced an out-of-order, speculative architecture with micro-ops instead of microcode. Micro-ops are kind of like microcode, but different. With microcode, the CPU executes an instruction by sequentially running a microcode routine, made up of strange micro-instructions. With micro-ops, an instruction is broken up into "RISC-like" micro-ops, which are tossed into the out-of-order engine, which runs the micro-ops in whatever order it wants, sorting things out at the end so you get the right answer. Thus, micro-ops provide a whole new layer of abstraction, since you don't know what the processor is doing.
My personal view is that if you're running C code on a non-superscalar processor, the abstractions are fairly transparent; the CPU is doing what you tell it to. But once you get to C++ or a processor with speculative execution, one loses sight of what's really going on under the abstractions.
If you have a child, you should definitely check out FIRST, started by Dean Kamen, who also invented the Segway. For elementary students, FIRST LEGO League uses simple, LEGO-based robotics. In high school, FIRST Robotics has the students building very impressive robots.
