On 2026-03-01 12:34 a.m., Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
So studying about 1960s operating systems recently, it occurred to me that
the ASR-33 wasn't really "a thing" until the late 1960s. Yes, they
technically existed since 1963, but even going through 1960s Datamation
issues - you don't see a lot of ads or mention of ASR-33 until 1965.
The IBM 1050 maybe existed in 1961 for the IBM 709, but even so - general
thought is that CTSS (operating system) was largely initially developed
using punch cards.
So - are there any archives or collections of these original punch cards?
Or are they essentially all gone/destroyed, since in general after some
code was "perfected" it was likely then archived to tape?
Anyway, apologies - it was just something that only recently occurred to
me, that basically all of the original operating systems originated on
punch cards: CTSS, Supervisor, AOSP, SCOPE, even MULTICs. So - do any of
those decks of cards still exist in archive? Would be neat to see a photo
of those - except it would be a shoebox of punch cards like any other, I
suppose.
Or is this wrong, and the top tier teams making these OS's, probably had
teletypes and all the magnetic tape they wanted?
-Steve
It was only the small guys like DEC that had TTY's.
The UK seemed to love 5 hole paper tape.
IBM was cards until the 1980's, like a on vintage IBM 1130.
7 track mag tape was standard until the IBM 360 came out.
The high cost of core memory limited operating systems to be simple
batch systems until the late 60's.Then it was big money for time sharing.
The *Cloud* at 10 cps, never worked that well.
A lot of the stuff is somebody's intellectual property, thus it is lost
to the world for many reasons.
Ben.
