On 05/04/2016 10:10 PM, Curious Marc wrote: > For the fun of the argument: I was privileged enough to see Carl's > IBM 1130, and to my newbie eye, it may justifiably earn the title of > "small" computer, when compared to its brethren of the time. But it > would never occur to me to call it a mini! It's quite a biggie > computer actually. Heavy stuff, forklift or winch needed to put it > safely in the truck as I recall. Then I thought our IBM 1401 was big. > That's when more knowledgeable people pointed me to the IBM 7090. Now > that's *really* big. And then you have SAGE. Now that's huge. Or > insane, depending on your engineering point of view :-).
On the other hand, the PB250 was contained in a single 5' rack (table model), ran off of a single 15A 120V circuit and weighed a bit over 100 lbs. I'd call it a minicomputer if it weren't for the fact that it was brought out around 1961. 22 bit words. Up to about 16KW in the box; magnetostrictive delay line memory, bit-serial ALU. IIRC, lotsa diodes, but comparatively few (ca. 300-400) transistors. --Chuck
