Item is a photograph of Computer operator Ed McDowell working with Telex magnetic tape drives that were attached to the mainframe computer system. Magnetic tape was used to backup live production data for archival purposes. Backups were taken on weekly, monthly and, annual rotations and stored in a location off-site. In case of a disaster, these tapes could be retrieved from the off-site storage to rebuild lost data files to known points in time and reduce exposure to the college business.
Item is a photograph of computer operator Ed McDowell monitoring the 3340 disk drives in the main computer room located on the second floor of building "E". The black device that resembles a curling rock or the Starship Enterprise sitting on top of the drives was a removable disk pack that data resided on and could be removed and replaced within the 3340 drive unit as required.
Item is a photograph of Computer operator Ed McDowell monitoring the high-speed Documentum mainframe impact printer in the main computer room located on the second floor of building "E". This printer could print at a rate of 3000 lines per minute. The blue equipment behind Ed were high-speed disk storage devices.
