Re: [OT] Re: Continuous Reboots Plague Windows XP SP3 Users

Mag tape (how many capstan pucks did you cause to spin off at high speed and crash through the door?), and core memory, I've used, but I only go back far enough to remember the main computer the college had was a IBM 360 with 64k ram.
Mere mortals were never allowed to 'see' the 360. No... we had to take our precious offerings of punched cards, ad give them to someone who knew someone who had a friend that knew the guy that had access to the person that could feed the cards to the mythical beast.

We would have to wait a day or two to receive the results of our futile efforts at programming the beast. Usually only to find out we had managed to put the line printer is some sort of continuous loop that just spit out reams of green bar paper with only one or two random characters per page.

OK Ben, you win the old fart trophy....

May your path be forever lit by vacuum tubes.......

"Ben Myers" <ben_myers_spam_me_not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:pcus24pu4if10ksja36vpo51pgo1nls7fc@xxxxxxxxxx
I'll see your PDP8 and raise you a Burroughs 220, Univac 1107, and a GE 225 just
for good measure. And, there once was an IBM 1401 in my life. I've seen a lot
of aardvark-like computers. Or were they platypuses? Punched cards, paper
tape and 2 1/4" wide mag tapes! ... Ben Myers

On Fri, 16 May 2008 12:10:51 -0400, "Timothy Drouillard"
<timdrouillard@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Crazy Coyote" <CrazyCoyote2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:B_idnUM1H9s67LDVnZ2dnUVZ_jKdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I used to write system diagnostics using punch cards and paper tape. No
keyboards in those days. The younger generation has a hard time
comprehending this. Kinda' like B&W TV with rabbit ears.
Load, Deposit, Examine, Run.

Can you say...PDP8?

Loading a program using the High Speed Paper Tape reader, and getting about
a third of the way through when the paper tape would quit re-folding itself
neatly on the output side resulting in a huge pile of tape all over the
floor that you had to pick back up and re-fold?

Nobody told me you could just hit the Halt button then Resume/Run.

Ah yes, playing 'Adventure' on a line printer.

Not quite the graphics of Crysis.


"Tony Harding" <ToHard@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:482d1f02$0$15184$607ed4bc@xxxxxxxxx
journey wrote:
On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

A real blast from the past.

I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched
cards?
I have a stack of them on my desk. I use them occasionally for
bookmarks, and have also cut up some to make flash cards for tutoring.

If I searched around a bit, I could also find my old box of punched
tape splices (of course I haven't actually used them in maybe thirty
years).

In 1985 I took the last semester of PL/I that used cards. I remember
walking around the computer lab seeing students with huge stacks of
cards to read in.

Prior to that I was lucky in that next to my high school there was a
vocational school and I was allowed to take some computer classes
there. They had all of the hardware to sort the cards.

So I got to see the tail end of card usage.

Oh, before that at my Dad's engineering company they used cards so
when I went in there on Saturdays I saw them used in a production
environment.

My mother made a hideous Christmas wreath using punch cards sprayed
with gold paint.

LOL, very creative, but OY! :)



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