The FR80 arrived at Atlas in the middle of March, site installation and acceptance test took two months, the machine being finally accepted on 19 May. The last two weeks of May were spent running an in-house service which allowed the package writers to debug their software. A service was then offered to users on 1 June.
The FR80 stands for Film Recorder 80, 80 being the number of resolvable line pairs drawn in 1 millimetre on a recommended film stock. The FR80, unlike the SD4020, can only have one camera mounted at any one time. This camera is located on 2 pins which bolt on to the Precision Light Source (PLS). At this stage the intensity for the film stock being used and the focus for the camera have to be set by the operator. For the hardcopy and microfiche camera a vacuum system is used to maintain accurate registration (this is also part of the operator's function). The hardware is then ready for use.
After this the required programs have to be set up. The hardcopy and colour require to be run under a slower vector drawing speed than the monochrome on 16mm, 35mm and microfiche. Hard copy and colour are run at a 8 msec vector speed, 16 etc is run at 2 msec. Most of the programs can reside on the disc during normal service, although some operator action is required to move the required programs into the MON; directory when running data tapes.
With the loading of camera and programs, each change has an overhead of 10-15 mins. At ACL we have the following cameras:
(l) Hardcopy - Model 8060
(2) Microfiche - Model 8032
(3) 16mm Precision - Model 8021
(4) l6/35mm Combined - Model 8020
with colour wheel
The model 8020 has a changeable movement to allow switching between 16mm and 35mm. To change to colour, the filter system has to be switched on and different programs used.
Model 8032 - reduction can be at 42x or 48x. This is changed by a small control disc on the camera and a number of operator commands.
Hardcopy can be a full frame 11½ x 8½, or what is called MANY-UP. This is a number of frames, normally 4 (2 x 2) in each 11½ x 8½ frame. The change is made by software.
The abbreviations and numbers used for each camera are as follows:
Camera Film Stock Abbreviation Number Model 8020 Colour CL16 1 Model 8020 Black & White BW16 2 Model 8020 Colour CL35 3 Model 8020 Black & White BW35 4 Hodel 8021 Black & White PR16 5 Nodel 8032 Black & White MFCH 6 Model 8060 Linagraph paper HCS 7 Model 8060 Linagraph paper HCM 8
At the moment the majority of the data tapes are from ACL's 1906A. Tapes from the RL 360/195 were few up to the start of August, but an increase has been noticeable in the first 3 weeks of August. Arrangements are being made to run work for Culham, Reading University and possibly HRS Wa1lingford.
Output from the 1906A can be to:
Spool jobs are limited to 1316 records per job and 20 job spaces are available. The operators are informed when the spool is 75% full and what action is required. Spool jobs are given priority over other jobs. Table 1 shows how the spool has been used, table 2 shows at what time it is used.
User can list filestore files to microfiche by selecting PROPERTY FICHE in a LISTFILE command. Usage so far is as follows:
MONTH JUNE JULY No of Files 98 101 Total No of lines 547335 469952 Average per file 5585 4652
Fiche can also be produced from tapes written in a COPYOUT format. This facility has been used internally to list GEORGE and other smaller systems like TASK.
Total number of files 430 Total number of lines 750,000 (approximately)
A list of users is shown in Table 3 together with indication of what output they are using, SD4020 service to 1906A users is to be curtailed from the end of September.
System development is still being done by RL on the spooling system for the 360/195, At present, tapes from the 360/195 hold 1 job per tape. Considerable trouble has been experienced with 7-track 360 tapes. The tape drives on the FR80 may not be so robust or tolerant as those on the 360, and this could be the cause of a considerable amount of spoilt work. Investigations are still going on to solve the problem. At present tapes that fail are copied on the PDP15, if available, or the 1906A.
Requests have been made on occasions to list tapes to fiche, to allow the output to be sent abroad. Fifty fiche were produced (approximately 400,000 lines) to be sent to the Continent.
Tables 4 and 5 show the usage during June and July for all jobs except spoilt work.
The two months have been plagued with hardware trouble. The-major faults were:
Quite early on, 13 days were lost on two occasions (11 days and 2 days) when various parts of the system were blown. The possible cause was connection of the wrong plug to the camera. A modification has been carried out to prevent this happening again.
The drive belt required to be changed on two occasions when the paper failed to advance. Downtime was in the region of 2 hours on each occasion. The long delays were partly due to omissions in the local spares holdings.
The clear filter, which consisted of 3 filters stuck together, proved to be troublesome. The filter became buckled and separated causing adjacent filters to stick. This filter has been replaced by 2 filters to make the same value. The magenta filter (#32) has been replaced by a (#31). This was done after PAD's colour tests. Further changes in filters are likely before a satisfactory set is obtained.
The monitor proves to be rather unreliable. Six days were lost at the beginning of June when parts in the deflection amplifiers needed replacing. Similar incidents occurred again at the end of July and the beginning of August. The downtime fer these two incidents was less than half a day. A strong request has been made to III to keep a spare monitor on site or in the UK. III have agreed to the request but, as yet, no monitor has appeared.
The maintenance contract for this has been passed on to CFM, who have a vast amount of experience with this type of equipment. Investigations are going on to find a suitable standby teletype and the correct interface. The initial problem with the teletype was that it had a habit of entering double characters when it felt like it!
On two occasions the processor has blown fuses; the causes have not been determined. After the shutdown in August the drive chain seized. This was due to chemical spillage through the drive rollers which then congealed. Heat dissipated from the dry box caused a rather unpleasant working environment. Trunking has now been installed to remove the excess heat.
The tape drives are not as tolerant as those on the 1906A or 360/195. The decks are described as being IBM-compatible - but finding out the definition of IBM standards is not easy. Tapes that fail are copied on the PDP15 or 1906A at the moment. It may be that a drive, or drives, on the 360/195 are at fault.
TABLE 1
SPOOL USAGE
JUNE JULY
WORKING DAYS 21 23
TOTAL NUMBER OF JOBS 373 492
NUMBER PLOTTED 338 466
NUMBER ERASED 35 26
JOBS BY CAMERA
HARDCOPY 264 305
COLOUR 35mm 18 20
BLACK & WHITE 35mm 16 42
COLOUR 16mm 4 15
BLACK & WHITE 16mm 2 7
PRECISION 16mm 29 17
MICROFICHE 5 60
DESPOOLING
NUMBER OF TIMES 133 186
MAXIMUM NUMBER PER TAPE 15 10
AVERAGE PER TAPE 2.5 2.5
TABLE 2
1906A SPOOL USAGE BY 3-HOURLY PERIOD
TIME JUNE JULY
0000-0300 4 6
0300-0600 0 5
0600-0900 31 38
0900-1200 106 113
1200-1500 77 83
150O- 1800 108 124
1800-2100 31 75
2100-2400 16 35
TABLE 3
1906A Users
CL16 BW16 CL35 BW35 PR16 MFCH HCS HCM
GSIN00 * * *
GSIN01 *
GSIN02 * * * * * * *
GSIN04 * * * * *
GSIN06 *
GSIN09 * * * *
GSIN10 * * * * * * * *
GSIN17 * * * * *
GSIN20 * * * * *
GSIN22 * * * * * *
GSIN23 * * *
GSIN12 *
AASH01 *
AGRE01 *
AGRE04 *
AGRE06 * * * *
EMSN03 *
EASN07 * *
GPHW01 * *
GPCY01 * * * *
GPPN02 *
NDIN00 *
NAIN00 *
NAIN01 * * *
NGXR01 *
NPIN04 *
NLIN02 * * *
NLLE01 *
NRIN06 *
NSIN00 *
NSIN23 * * *
NSIN24 * *
NSIN37 *
NSIN39 *
NSIN38 * *
NSIN32 *
NSIN40 *
NLXX02 *
CXIN05 *
CXIN08 *
SBSV01 * * * *
VMGA01 * * * *
VMNI01 * * * *
VNNI02 *
SBUM01 * * *
MANAGER *
SUBLIB *
OPERATORS *
360/195 Users
CL16 BW16 CL35 BW35 PR16 MFCH HCS HCM
* * * * * * * *
AZ05 *
AZ06 * * *
AZ12 *
AP02 *
AP08 *
AZ21 * *
HRJJ *
2100 *
4200 *
4460 *
TABLE 4
FRAME AND TIME USAGE BY CANERA FOR JUNE
No of jobs Time Subframes Frames
Hrs Mins
Herdcopy Single 166 4.26 1673
Many-up 180 3.00 4472 1510
35mm Monochrome 30 .33 447
Colour 41 3.28 2992
16mm Monochrome 10 3.48 24155
Colour 8 2.27 5550
Precision 59 10.56 64393
Microfiche 4l1 4.10 403
TABLE 5
FRAME AND TIME USAGE BY CANERA FOR JUNE
No of jobs Time Subframes Frames
Hrs Mins
Herdcopy Single 212 3.54 1859
Many-up 152 2.54 1706 680
35mm Monochrome 51 1.24 823
Colour 35 1.40 909
16mm Monochrome 11 2.41 5304
Colour 20 2.50 7051
Precision 39 8.10 26869
Microfiche 109 3.14 213