Mark
It did, especially in Cobol hehe, The worst part was if you forgot to
put the receive tray in the card reader correctly and all 500 cards came
flying out all over the room........ funny as heck till it happened to you
hehe. The most boring part was waiting for the output so that you could
begin the process of debugging. .... time share..
James
At 08:41 PM 7/24/00, you wrote:
>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!
> > >
> > >
> > >*********************************************
> > >Want free email? Sign up at http://www.freeze.com !
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
