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[Reply #15 on:]

If it's anything like the college I work at one of said kids is presently looking for their misplaced storage medium...

(Ok, I know, they all use USB sticks these days...)

[Reply #16 on:]

You guys and your new fangled magnetic media.

Oh.. we're on that subject again....

University: Punch card for FORTRAN. Batch process get your print output. Edit, shuffle and resubmit. Repeat.

First work: Papertape into a PDP-11 (and toggling the bootloader. But then we got a board with 20x16 Diodes in a matrix and an addressdecoder. Some diodes were cut and - tada! - we had a ROM address space with the papertape bootloader)

"Patching" was very real on the papertape. You cut some extra holes or used black tape to block some. (there were some tools/jigs so the holes were proper aligned)

But then things went ... well, modern like. 8" floppies, double the core to 16Kilobytes, even 24K.   

[Reply #17 on:]

.... in the street outside my house this morning.

Wth?

The gods must be crazy.

[Reply #18 on:]

http://floppydisk.com/1010.htm

[Reply #19 on:]

I kept some of these for my vintage systems. Was lucky that someone sent me some 5" 360K single side discs to make a copy of dos for the compacq, very first luggable ibm pc and very first compaq.

There is a panel in my work place that someone kept. It's got hundreds of jumper wires on a matrix of holes. He said it was a program someone made. That stuff IS older than punch cards.

[Reply #20 on:]

University: Punch card for FORTRAN. Batch process get your print output. Edit, shuffle and resubmit. Repeat.

Me too (WATFOR)... you forgot the "drop on floor and accidentally stomp cards" part.

I remember running back to the computer centre between lectures to fetch print out only to find it hadn't compiled due to a silly syntax error. Then there would be no vacant card punch, then late for next lecture.

[Reply #21 on:]

University: Punch card for FORTRAN. Batch process get your print output. Edit, shuffle and resubmit. Repeat.

Me too (WATFOR)... you forgot the "drop on floor and accidentally stomp cards" part.

That's what the sequence numbers in columns 73-80 are for.  You just put it in a card sorter  

I remember running back to the computer centre between lectures to fetch print out only to find it hadn't compiled due to a silly syntax error. Then there would be no vacant card punch, then late for next lecture.

That's what an exacto knife and scotch tape are for.    In addition, I recall occasionally having to program in Pascal on an 027 card punch when the 029 card punches were busy, and having to multi-punch things like semicolons.

[Reply #22 on:]

There is a panel in my work place that someone kept. It's got hundreds of jumper wires on a matrix of holes. He said it was a program someone made. That stuff IS older than punch cards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_402
Not sure about the model numbers and other specifics, these were just slightly before my time but I do think I remember them being wheeled out the door. I did have an assignment for a few weeks once that involved operating a card sorter. If a jam occurred, it could create quite a mess in a hurry.

[Reply #23 on:]

Jack,

That looks like it came out the same era as the one at my work place. Must be pretty old. My only experience with punch cards was using them as note cards and bookmarks.

[Reply #24 on:]

Jack,

That looks like it came out the same era as the one at my work place. Must be pretty old. My only experience with punch cards was using them as note cards and bookmarks.

Liudr, yeah, when I started working they had a "Tabulating Department" that was full of that equipment with those plugboards.  Never became familiar with it as the writing was on the wall and the mainframes were beginning to occupy the next room over.  This is the only souvenir that I managed.

[Reply #25 on:]

I have these pictures:

[Reply #26 on:]

I have these pictures:

We would do well to remember those next time we get stuck debugging code. I sure wouldn't want to debug that thing!

[Reply #27 on:]

Those plug in wired matrix panel were what we used at a NASA tracking station in the 60s to configure the equipment for the next satellite,  it actually worked very well.
We just had a rack with one panel for each satellite and the main components were connected in a couple of seconds.

[Reply #28 on:]

looks just like my code!

[Reply #29 on:]