RAMAC

RAMAC is an IBM trademark for mass storage products. RAMAC originally stood for Random Access Method of Accounting and Control when it was introduced in 1956 with the IBM 305 computer system, the first computer to use disk storage. This computer could be housed in a room of about 30 by 50 and had a disk storage unit measuring around 5 square. The addional components of the computer were a card reader, a central processing unit and printer. Functions were controlled by both machine language and with a board wired and placed in the unit.

One of the features of its random access was a large arm inside the disk storage unit that could locate information by its location number and the arm would go immediately to the information. This made it as quick as any computer in existence at that time.

The computer became obsolete in 1962 when the IBM 1400 series of computers became IBM s top mainframe. IBM reused the RAMAC name in the 1990s for its redundant array of independent disks product family.

See also: Early IBM disk storage