Technology

59152 readers

2010 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

How much power do older mainframes need (if they're actually even run)? (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I’ve never worked with major enterprise or government systems where there’s aging mainframes — the type that get parodied for running COBOL. So, I’m completely ignorant, although fascinated. Are they power hogs? Are they wildly cheap to run? Are they even run as they were back in the day?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I don't know the exact numbers but: I frequently used a VAX11/780. Its main components were two enclosures (CPU and Memory), each about a square meter in footprint and somewhere in the range of 1.6m high (IIRC). Both had their power delivered as 3x380V (i.e. European three-phase power) into the power supply part (the lower half to 2/3rds of those blocks) which turned it into rock solid 5V - and a LOAD of heat, which meant the room also needed some extra strong AC.

That thing was an 8MHz cpu with 8MB of RAM.