CERN Accelerating science

Abstract

It may be interesting to look backwards into what we published in this CNL several years ago. This starts a series which will try to offer a retrospective of how Computing has been evolving, in particular at CERN, over the past 35 years. I am certain this contribution will evoke memories in more than one!

Five years ago...

• Downsizing and Closure of the CERNVM Service (CNL issue 221 "Migration Special" - July-December 1995)

The CERN Management Board has now approved the time scale for the end of the CERNVM service. The computing capacity will be reduced by half during the Christmas shutdown at the end of 1995 and the service will be terminated on 30 June 1996. From January a clear warning message of the termination date will be displayed when a user logs in.

I could not resist this one. CERNVM marked a before and after in the way Computing infrastructure was deployed at CERN (Ed.)

Ten years ago...

• Introduction of TMS, the Tape Management System (CNL issue 200 - July-October 1990)

During the summer a Tape Management System, known simply as TMS, went into production on the IBM and Cray systems. TMS was written at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK and is also in use at IN2P3 in Lyon.

...

The last phase of the TMS development is to provide facilities in the tape vault to allow convenient entering and exiting of tapes in the Experimental Group racks.

The title of the article might have hinted TMS would have been the "final answer" to tape management. By today standards the tape vault is becoming symbolic. Tomorrow?? (Ed.)

Twenty years ago...

• Guest Article on Enhancements to Fortran (CNL issue 153 - August 1980)
  Following its heroic action in making blanks significant to aid syntactic interpretation, the ANSI Fortran Committee JX3.3 is pioneering an approach to aid semantic interpretation. As a first step, an ASSERT statement has been proposed, which can aid the compiler in making decisions during optimisation. Such an assertion takes precedence over the actual code in the event of a conflict, because it represents what the programmer really wants.

  Those heroic days when coding standards guessed what the programmer really wanted... (Ed.)

More than thirty years ago...

• CDC 6000 Series News (CNL issue 53 - 12th August 1970)
  ... A considerable amount of time was lost on printers due to problems with the ribbon and paper sensing mechanisms. Additional attention is now being given to this rather sensitive elements.

  Hum, it seems printers have always been the favourite torture seat of our users! (Ed.)

• 3800 and 6400 (CNL issue 8 - 25th July 1966)
  Of all problems considered the installation and operation of the 3800 is the most urgent one. During August the computer will be equipped with 64K of core memory, eight magnetic tape units and one on-line printer, card reader and punch. Estimates of the configurations group indicate that this configuration can carry out the present work of the 3400 (150 hours/week) plus the TC production on a 3600 in Paris (75 hours/month) in about 2.5 shifts.

  64K? A long way down, and still the ancillary stones for LHC Computing (Ed.)