Systems Staff

Here is John Aspden and Jill Foster
both network software programmers
John left for Canada in about 1990/1991
so the photo must be before then.[tb]

This is room M17.
That is the Mezzanine floor between the
Sub-Basement and the Basement floor.
M17 was the network connection room
of the NUNET Local Area Network.

This is not a systems programmer
but a Memorex engineer servicing a disk drive.
We actually have a disk drive from one of these units.
More about it is at Memorex Disk Drive

This engineer I met in several other jobs
but I cannot remember his name - sorry.

This is 'Reg', the Amdahl customer engineer
sitting at the Amdahl Console,
this was not the operator's console,
that was a terminal elsewhere,
this controlled the major configuration options
of the computer, and stored the diagnostic information
that the engineer needed to keep the mainframe
in good condition.
The Amdahl was remarkably reliable,
it could run for a month or more non-stop.
Normally it would be stopped for upgrades
of software or firmware.

To his right was the Power Distribution Unit.
Electric power was delivered here
then from here to all the computer components.
The PDU controlled the orderly sequence
of the powering on of the mainframe.
No way could everything be turned on at once,
it would black-out the University.

The network consisted of nodes
that were PDP11 and LSI11 computers
connected by coax cables, at the periphery
to hundreds of terminals in offices all over the campus,
and at the centre, here, to the mainframe
via a home made channel interface
top component in right hand rack.

Two network technicians down in the bowels
of the Claremont Tower.
Between them is a patch panel where
British Telecom cables were connected.
The guy on the left is George Brown, on the right is Stuart Hay.

The jumble of cables on the left of the partition
must be Local Area Network cables,
they have coax couplers on the end.

Two System programmers:
Franklin T. Greenwood (Lyn) in the network group, and Quentin G. Campbell, forgot what he was doing then
but latterly was the electronic mail postmaster.

To the right of them is the end of
an Amdahl 6880 Model A2 disk storage controller.
On the top of the controller is a false floor panel
suction lifter.

This is Eric Watson, a systems programmer.
The computer listings to his left I guess
are of the HASP program.
Behind him is a KDF9 magnetic tape drive.

This is a systems programmer called Peter Lomas.
I do not know what he is doing, he has a magnetic
tape write permit ring in his left hand.
Behind him are IBM 2401 Magnetic Tape drives.

These are not systems people but
but they are not computer operators either
men from a haulage firm delivering a
Rotary Convertor for the IBM System 370/168 computer.