We had a Data General Super Nova and an ASR33. The big problem with the card reader was the sweat from my hands, as I recall. I eventually had to wear gloves and just handle the cards by their edges. Didn't seem to affect other people, though. Maybe they didn't sweat in anticipation of those dreaded read errors and the endless debugging of daft typing errors. At the time, I was working on producing developments of interpenetration joints on oil rig legs, before CAD had been invented. The output was a screenshot, taken with a Kodak camera in a special lightproof hood which took a B&W picture of the (small) screen. I still have the written up thesis with yellowing photos. Seems like a trivial problem now...
Marcus On 19 Jul 2013, at 15:00, Erik Christiansen wrote: > On 19.07.13 09:24, Kent A. Reed wrote: >> Obviously you guys never had to depend on punched paper tape. I ran >> through roughly a shipping pallet of blank tape---both rolled oiled tape >> and folded dry tape varieties--- when I was using minicomputers to >> gather experimental data in the early 1970s on the way to my PhD. With >> just that small amount of tape processed, I had several times to field >> strip and repair the mechanical punch and reader mechanisms on my >> Teletype ASR33 (10 cps read/punch) and the mechanical punch mechanism on >> my DEC high Speed Paper Tape Reader/Punch (300 cps read, 50 cps punch). >> >> 1. The "high" speed unit would take ca 277 hours to punch this job and >> ca 48 hours to read it running continuously at full speed. > > Ah, the days of "Clankety Clunkety Clank Bang - Whumpf!", as the ASR33 > banged out its 10 cps, then the dashpot absorbed the recoil of the > carriage return. And we dreamed of owning one - for the day when we > would eventually build our own computer, the only imaginable way of > owning one. > > My vintage is at the end of that era, though. Somewhere I have one of > the fast paper tape readers we used when I started out on an HP2100A > (with "980 ns" ferrite core memory). The read paper tape streamed damn > near horizontal for a metre and a half in free air, before falling > earthward. We had an old film rewinder, hand cranked, for respooling. > I never saw any mylar tape, but they wouldn't offer the good stuff to > students anyway, I figure. > > Sometimes I think it'd be fun to fire up the fast punch I have, but > asking for a couple of rolls of paper tape at my IT supplier would > probably earn a funny look. And I can just imagine asking for the > splicing tape - sticky and prepunched with delete/rubout characters. > > Erik > > -- > In attempting to ride roughshod over 1170 written submissions, a local > government determination, a resident survey 94% against them, and years of > protests, McDonald's is seeking to trash democracy, AFAICT. We do _not_ want > them in our hills! BURGER OFF from Tecoma. See: http://www.burgeroff.org/ > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > See everything from the browser to the database with AppDynamics > Get end-to-end visibility with application monitoring from AppDynamics > Isolate bottlenecks and diagnose root cause in seconds. > Start your free trial of AppDynamics Pro today! > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=48808831&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ See everything from the browser to the database with AppDynamics Get end-to-end visibility with application monitoring from AppDynamics Isolate bottlenecks and diagnose root cause in seconds. Start your free trial of AppDynamics Pro today! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=48808831&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
