honestly I can't begin to imagine writting a program on punch
cards. seems to me that something like that would take literally forever!
--
Mark
** Registered Linux user # 182496 **
On Mon, 24 Jul 2000, Pj wrote:
> Well, ya all make me ashamed to admit to learning keypunch-- compliments of
> IBM-- for Caterpillar. The mainframe, I believe, was in its infancy at then.
>
> Pj
>
>
>
> At 03:01 AM 7/25/00 -0000, you wrote:
> >Nope, hadn't that particular thrill...but I do remeber the card readers
> and tape..
> >
> >And, only heard about the plug boards when I was first learning programming.
> >
> >I remember my first internet experience was playing Star Trek on a DEC
> terminal through a telephone coupler as a modem link. I *did* like the
> hundreds of lights on those modems, though... looked real cool when I was
> 12 years old!
> >
> >
> >> No one remembers the Diablo drives, 5M fixed & 5M removable (soft sectored
> >> cartridges made for some fun when mounted on a hard sector drive :)
> >>
> >> But that was "high tech" compared to storage which consisted of paper tape,
> >> punch cards, mag tape... Of course, even these were great when compared to
> >> programs "written" on 30"x30" (if I remember the size correctly) plug
> boards
> >> with loads of wires and the odd diode to prevent backflow. That was
> about the
> >> time it took an entire weekend to sort a few thousand "records" (cards, one
> >> column at a time) if not too many cards were "eaten" by the sorter which
> >> required a trip to the 026/029 machines... Then VM appeared on the
> >> IBM360/67... Ahhhhhh!!! :^)
> >>
> >> Retired (not yet 55),
> >> Pierre
> >>
> >> PS: The best "flashback" was watching a co-worker go airborne... he was
> >> sitting on a chair which he rolled over bubble wrap while pulling out a DEC
> >> power supply drawer... :^) :^)
> >>
> >> Greg Stewart wrote:
> >> >
> >> > I remember when a 10MB hard drive was the size of pizza, fit into a
> refridgerator-sized beast ofa cabinet, and PCs had 8 & 1/2 inch floppy
> diskettes!
> >
> >
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> >
> >
> >
>
>
