alt Hacker News(1964)
a webcast about the many great benefits of the novel DASD (direct access storage device) over ISAM (index sequential access)
aka disk and tape.
16mm film
Flipchart
impeccable presentation
thx for the time machine :-)
Replies
ISAM in all important variants pretty much required DASDs, CKDs (Count Key Data) in fact as opposed to FBAs (Fixed Block Access - which act like normal drives people are familiar with)
Tapes don't provide CKD interface and thus do not work with ISAM.
DASDs supported ISAM.
And they're not strictly just a disk. It's more like a complex multiplexing system for an array of disks. It has interesting capabilities like "channel programs" that persist to this day which allow you to send miniature programs to the disk controller to have it seek out the precise record you're looking for in one of several access modes.
IBM still provides almost the entirety of it's OS documentation online:
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos-basic-skills?topic=set-what-...
The slide transition at 6:16 took me by surprise. =)
Chap needs to have his suit jacket fixed, though... that collar gap!
Why do you think that the presentation was done in 1964?
On Youtube there is no mention about the date.
OS/360 was announced in 1964 but it was first delivered more than a year later.
I doubt that such presentations were done about a product that no customers could use and which might still be changed until the first deliverable version.
So I believe that it is unlikely that this presentation was done earlier than 1965 and it is likely that it was not done before 1966. The first OS/360 versions were delivered in November/December 1965.