06-05-2011, 08:36 AM
My first experience with a commercial computer was with a PDP-11 in the early days of video editors by CMX - a 340, ISTR. The memory was a core store (I never went "inside" so never knew how big) and the program input was by punched tape reader. This was in 1980/1. Every time we wanted to do some editing, we had to put the tape onto the reader and press the button - it wizzed through the machine and slowly, the editor came to life. The machines controlled were mostly Ampex, a VR2000, AVR2 (both 2" quad), 2 x VPR2 1" C format and a Fernseh BCN50 1" B format together with an Ampex vision mixer. The system never went wrong or crashed in 2 years, or until I left (have we progressed?).
