[MOC] Vintage Computer Room

[LegoJalex]

My latest MOC, inspired by computer rooms from the 60s and 70s. 

You can find more of my MOCs on my Instagram.

[JopieK]

Great job! Instantly recognizable!

[neonic]

Looks great.
Great details and stuff, like the printer with the 'door' as paper, nice!
and also the 'base' of the chair.

[MAB]

Brilliant. But quite tidy compared to reality!

 

[bamsham363]

brilliant, reminds me of my office, only less people

[LegoJalex]

12 hours ago, JopieK said:

Great job! Instantly recognizable!

Thanks! 

12 hours ago, neonic said:

Looks great.
Great details and stuff, like the printer with the 'door' as paper, nice!
and also the 'base' of the chair.

Thank you! 

12 hours ago, MAB said:

Brilliant. But quite tidy compared to reality!

 

Thanks! Yeah but from the photos I saw it was quite tidy back then? But I can´t tell since I have not worked there. 

10 hours ago, bamsham363 said:

brilliant, reminds me of my office, only less people

Thanks! You have an office that old?

[Roadmonkeytj]

Love the tape readers!

[jonwil]

Nice. It really does look like an old IBM Mainframe.

 

[MAB]

On 8/20/2019 at 11:33 PM, LegoJalex said:

Thanks! Yeah but from the photos I saw it was quite tidy back then? But I can´t tell since I have not worked there. 

 

Photography was expensive and often photos were for corporate use. So those were the days that if you were going to have a photo taken, you cleared up first. I have some more candid photos of me and my brother taken in the 1970s, where we are standing inside the mainframe at my dad's work when it was down for maintenance. Those things were huge.

[JGW3000]

What, no key punch machines???  Looks great, are the floor panels removable as they were back in the day?

 

 

[Toastie]

Brilliant. Lovely. True. Real. As in it was like that ...

Even the lighting is absolutely right. Been there, loved it. Still do. This is fanastic. You captured everything - the look (and feel) of the machines, the look (and feel) of the room - and the moment, when you sit in that chair, program is running after a million tries - and you think: This is all crazy - but it works. Turn off the lights (it is 2:30 am) and take the bike in front of the building and head home.

Cool. The good'ol days.

I don't miss them >that< much (but I do) - what I really miss is the moment sitting in that chair before leaving.

All the best,
Thorsten

[kalgreen]

Awesome - instant flashback! 

[Littleworlds]

That was before my time, but it still looks fantastic. 

[LegoJalex]

On 8/21/2019 at 1:43 AM, Roadmonkeytj said:

Love the tape readers!

Thank you!

On 8/21/2019 at 11:33 PM, jonwil said:

Nice. It really does look like an old IBM Mainframe.

 

Thanks! There is a mix of machines and computers, and some are party made up, but based on photos I have found 

23 hours ago, MAB said:

Photography was expensive and often photos were for corporate use. So those were the days that if you were going to have a photo taken, you cleared up first. I have some more candid photos of me and my brother taken in the 1970s, where we are standing inside the mainframe at my dad's work when it was down for maintenance. Those things were huge.

Ah yes that makes sense! The old photos look very clean and tidy.

15 hours ago, JGW3000 said:

What, no key punch machines???  Looks great, are the floor panels removable as they were back in the day?

 

 

Oh sorry, the setup is mostly from my mind to make it look aesthetically nice so I might have missed some important machines. 

13 hours ago, Toastie said:

Brilliant. Lovely. True. Real. As in it was like that ...

Even the lighting is absolutely right. Been there, loved it. Still do. This is fanastic. You captured everything - the look (and feel) of the machines, the look (and feel) of the room - and the moment, when you sit in that chair, program is running after a million tries - and you think: This is all crazy - but it works. Turn off the lights (it is 2:30 am) and take the bike in front of the building and head home.

Cool. The good'ol days.

I don't miss them >that< much (but I do) - what I really miss is the moment sitting in that chair before leaving.

All the best,
Thorsten

Thank you very much! Nice to hear from someone who has worked there. Your description made me dream back to that time as well. 

12 hours ago, kalgreen said:

Awesome - instant flashback! 

Thank you! Did you work during that time?

9 hours ago, Littleworlds said:

That was before my time, but it still looks fantastic. 

Thanks! 

[Sérgio]

I Can Hear the printer working! great job

[carebear]

I Feel a Great Oldskool Vibe!

it's Just Right

Thanks for this!

Great Great Work!

Greetings!

[rodiziorobs]

The whole scene, down to the lighting, is so spot-on, I can practically hear the printer buzzing! Really great creation here.

[Mark Bollobas]

Amazing. Just how I remember them being. Fantastic stuff.

[_TLG_]

Nice, I like how you use the door as paper :)

[Toa_of_Shadow]

Looks amazing I especially love the unique office chair design absolutely brilliant 

[ivanlan9]

Most of this is pretty spot on, but the printer isn't.  Check out the wiki article on the 1403 line printer:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1403

It printed using a chain that ran at a constant speed (high) with 132 characters across; behind each position was a little solenoid-operated hammer that, when the proper character zoomed by, shot out to hit it.  Imagine 132 little tiny guns firing all at once; the noise was tremendous.  Boxes of paper were parked underneath in front; the paper was threaded through the chain, then up and over to fall onto a wire tray behind. These things could print 600 lines a minute at first, 1200+ later on in the System 360 days.  It would take ten minutes or so to go through an entire box of paper, which was typically three copies plus carbon.

In the early days (IBM 1400 series), the lids of the printers were manually operated, so operators like me got used to putting the next box on top of the printer until it was time to open up and change the paper.  Later, in the later 360 days, the lids became power operated. Which meant that until the operators got used to the new system, the computer would say "it's time to change the paper" and open the lid to result in a huge mess.  Argh. 

Line printer technology stayed about the same from the late 60s until the early 80s; the only real advancement was in speed. I started working as an operator in the mid-60s on IBM 1400 2K and 4K machines; I was drafted in 1969, by which time I was working on System 360 machines which had 256K and 512K memory.  I came back to computers in 1980 and worked on System 370 machines, later 4300 series.  The last mainframe I worked on had a megabyte of RAM, by which time the IBM PC had come out.  But the print-chain printers, which didn't look much different than they had in the 60s, were still the fastest on the planet.  And the noisiest. 

Fun times.

[ivanlan9]

Argh.  I also missed the tube, too!  In the 60s, we didn't have CRTs.  Instead, the console was a modified IBM Selectric typewriter.  Ours all used folded duplicate paper so that a permanent paper log could be kept of the operator's responses. ...  CRTs weren't used until sometime in the 70s.

[dr_pleco]

This is really pleasant. Didn't realize this was something I wanted until I saw it! Nice work!