On 2/13/20 11:48 AM, Hittner, David T [US] (MS) wrote:
> My college, DePauw University (Greencastle, IN, USA), had a DEC card
> reader attached to their PDP-11/45 running RSTS/E, and later connected
> it to their new VAX 11/782(!) running VMS.
>
> They made all intro students in 1979 learn to use the card punch
> machines and submit programming jobs on cards, until they finally got
> rid of the card punch/readers in favor of interactive terminals in
> 1980-81.
>
University College of Wales (Aberystwyth) in 1978. Those doing the
'Algol for Scientists' course had to BUY coding pads. You wrote your
programs, longhand, on these, and then tore off the pages and
submitted them to the typists in the coding room. A few hours later
(on a good day!) a deck of cards would appear in your pigeon hole. You
took this to the so-called 'cafeteria', a small room with a card
reader and a line printer, and could queue up to submit your job (with
a 45 second runtime limit) to the twin ICL 4130s (the card reader did
seem quite reliable though!) Find the errors, correct the card(s), go
round the loop again. When everything compiled correctly, submit the
card deck into the queue for batch processing (i.e. a longer run
time). If you were really unlucky, your compile time exceeded the 45
seconds cafeteria time.
Eventually we were let loose on the terminals, which at least saved on
the coding sheets. Chemistry had a single teletype for the entire
department, on a good day it would run at 1200 baud, on a bad day you
had to call the computer department on the main campus and ask for a
300 baud connection instead.
Youth of today, etc, etc...
Brian.
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