Kaya Mawa Sailor: Computer Printers will get your hands dirty

Over the years I have worked on many printers, usually the ones attached to computers. One of my first experiences was a rack mounted impact printer that printed on a roll of paper. Also in the 19 inch rack was the Model 513 Stored Program Simulator. It was probably a first of its kind. It was designed by my boss Mei Wong. The 513 had a core memory of 256 x 24 and all the logic boards to store and read from the core. The front panel had 24 toggle switches and several buttons to load or read the data. On the left was a set of toggles to address the core locations.

Bell Rock

The 513 had a list of computer instructions that when followed could control a PCM stream of data. Outputs could be digital or analog. The little printer was noisy and was always a source of problems until the cause was discovered. We worked around the clock on various projects and there was a support group for fabrication and one of the workers had decided to cease the noise by squirting oil on the print head causing it to keep sticking. After cleaning and halting the oil things started to work.

Back yard

That all happened in Gardena, California at a company called Telemetrics. As the company kept growing we all moved to Santa Ana where the bubble broke. I went back to work at Autonetics where the only printers were in the payroll department. The VERDAN computers we worked on didn't have any printers. I bounced around between companies and wound up at El Pac by the Orange County Airport. We were working on a large telemetry system and I was doing some design work. When the system was finished it was shipped to Lockheed in Sunnyvale for installation. The system was hidden behind a large blackboard and you had to move the board and go through the hole in the wall. Inside the system room the windows looking down at the missile bay were blacked out as every thing was so top hush hush. Next to our system was a line printer connected to a cpu. No body wanted to fly back and forth from south to north and most of the engineers left leaving me in charge to finish the dam thing which I did.

Front yard

I was then sent to Florida to finish more installing next to a submarine and we worked in a blockhouse. Florida and I didn't agree so I quit. My wife worked at Pacific Telephone so I laid around the house, rode motorcycles and drank beer.

Local buddy

To keep up with the want ads I would go to the library and read the papers. One day I saw an ad where my old team member had moved to Fullerton. I called up the company and talked to my good friend Roy. He said come over for lunch. I rode my Kawasaki over and shot pool with Roy and had lunch. Roy didn't like working there and was going to quit. He told me what he was designing and described the project to me in detail. So the plan was he would go back to the office and quit and I would call and apply for a job. When I was interviewed on the phone they asked me what I had done so I told them I was experienced in IBM 1130 typesetting.

Buddy out for walk

So next day I arrived and completed the interview and they were so happy to find me. I didn't look forward to riding from Huntington to Fullerton everyday but I rode a motorcycle. I spent two weeks with Roy learning the hardware while the IBM hardware was being installed in Canada. That would be my next stop.

see form house with 300 mm lens

The system was located in Vancouver at Pacific Press the newspaper chain. The 1130 did have a typewriter for output, paper tape readers and paper punches.