I worked at the NY Federal Reserve Bank in the early 70's when they were trying to use 3890 check readers for clearing "country bank" checks (i.e., any bank in the Fed's district except the 7 big ones in NYC who were handled by ACH, the "Automated Clearing House"). MVT, 360/65 with 512K storage and very early CICS - they never did get it working, the timing had to be so quick that after the check was read they had to direct the machine to put it into the right output pocket (EXCP-level I/O was required to do this). Never did work.
The 3890 was a huge machine that looked like a card sorter on steroids. Peter -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2020 4:49 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: An older device query - still using?? On Tue, 12 May 2020 15:26:12 -0500, Matthew Stitt wrote: >Has anyone checked with the banking customers? I recall there was software >for check reader hardware. The 3890 seems to ring a bell. Also a quick >Internet search confirms my suspicions that the 3895 was a check printer and >the 3890 was a check reader. > >I still write checks <g> > Ed Gould, answering my question a while ago, said the timing requirements of such a device were so strict that it would have crashed during a leap second. When did MVS introduce leap second support? But perhaps the designers didn't worry about an exposure every couple years. >On Tue, 12 May 2020 14:40:37 -0500, Marna WALLE wrote: > >>Hello All, >>We had an internal small discussion wondering if there were any customers >>that still used these devices (the youngest of which went end-of-service in >>2014, from what I can find). I wanted to extend this conversation outside of >>IBM, to those that might have firsthand current knowledge. >> >>Here's the devices I'm wondering about: >> >>1287/1288 - IBM Optical reader and page reader respectively >>3540 - IBM Disk device >>3886 - IBM Optical Character reader >>3890 - IBM Magnetic Ink Reader >>3895 - IBM Printer device -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
