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Apr 20, 2001, 9:45pm

Just imagine how we'll be talking about our awesome machinery in 20 years :) ALL Pentiums will be a joke (well, according to me,
they already are)
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Apr 28, 2001, 3:25am

Define really old... OK... In my data processing class in Syracuse, Ny
Central Tech days [Adult Night School] they used to have these old
computers that one computer was about as big as 3 outdoor soda vending
machines side by side. But they only used 8 - 10 inch real 2 real tapes.
and you entered your computer computations by way of the keypunch machine
and you goot your resilts printed out on the printer machine that was so
big it looks like a YUGO CAR [Nothing you would have wanted on a table]
and god help you if you ever dropped all your key punched cards that you
just created a program on... Then you had better learn how to WIRE
the collator maching to get things back to what you had it before.

NOW.... Did i describe Really Old?
This was back in 1970 and i have worked with those old Dino's...

ananas <vha at oct31.de> wrote in <3ADF8A17.3CCD6835 at oct31.de>:

>Define "really old" - if it's less than 20 it doesn't make me
>wonder that you never heard about 8" and hard sector floppies.
>
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Apr 28, 2001, 4:14am

[View Quote] I would expect that someone who had to use such a slow, complex (well, simple and time-consuming) system would know it was
'reel-to-reel' and not 'real 2 real' ;)

> and you entered your computer computations by way of the keypunch machine
> and you goot your resilts printed out on the printer machine that was so
> big it looks like a YUGO CAR [Nothing you would have wanted on a table]
> and god help you if you ever dropped all your key punched cards that you
> just created a program on... Then you had better learn how to WIRE
> the collator maching to get things back to what you had it before.

Not having worked with punch-card computers, I wouldn't know that's how one of those machines worked. How did it know which order to
put them in? Did each card have some sort of unique ID on them?

> NOW.... Did i describe Really Old?
> This was back in 1970 and i have worked with those old Dino's...

Apr 29, 2001, 10:45am

agent1 <Agent1 at my.activeworlds.com> wrote in
<3aea5fbb$1 at server1.Activeworlds.com>:


> I would expect that someone who had to use such a slow,
> complex (well, simple and time-consuming) system would know it was
>'reel-to-reel' and not 'real 2 real' ;)
------------------------------
Of course i know it was Reel-to-Reel phrase back then... But the newer
Reel 2 Reel fits the same meaning here too.
------------------------------

> Not having worked with punch-card computers, I wouldn't know that's
> how one of those machines worked. How did it know which order to
> put them in? Did each card have some sort of unique ID on them?
------------------------------
Ok.. good question. Lets take you back a little in time to BASIC PROGRAMMING.

10 PRINT "I would Love To Put Just In Through So Much SURVIVOR HELL On The..."
20 PRINT "Newsgroups that by the time that game ends... He will want to..."
30 PRINT "say I Love You JFK2."
1000 Go to 10

Ok... simple basic program there with an endless loop thrown in there
thrown in for good measure... you have that on your screen long enough
and you will HATE ME & JUST IN

now for the cards...

Each card was 80 characters long

So...

1 PRINT I would Love To Put Just In Through So Much SURVIVOR HELL On The...
2 PRINT Newsgroups that by the time that game ends... He will want to...
3 PRINT say I Love You JFK2.

the keypunch machine would read what you just typed...
The computer didn't
On each card was a series of HOLES... and for the #1 the hole in that colum
would be punched out to look like that florida vote mess of CHAFING
Putting a hole through a card. Yes... back then you had that same problem
but since the hole was made by a machine & NOT by a human... That was almost
never an issue.
But each chard had 80 characters on the top of the card & that meant
80 columns on the card each complete with the # & Alphabet. But CASE made no
difference back then. There was no CAPS vs small letters.
IT WAS ALWAYS READING LIKE THIS. BUT YOU HAD TO GET USED TO THINGS THIS WAY
So in column 32 you had the hole punched out for J
column 33 the hile punched out for U, column 34 the hole punched out for S,
column 35 the hole punched out for T, column 36 there would be no holes
punched out [means a space], column 37 the hole would be punched out for I,
and in column 38 the hole would be punched out for N
Colum 1 had the hole punched for 1

so in a way it was like basic programming... BUT with a punch card.

Apr 29, 2001, 12:12pm

Um, you could put sequence numbers on the punch cards and run them thru a collator. But if you DIDN'T, you'd have a helluva time if you
dropped a deck (some decks took boxes and BOXES) because the card reader took em in the order you gave em. And it was fun trying to get
a card reader to READ all the cards...NOT. (Guess it was like a grocery store barcode scanner in a way, got flukey after a while.)

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Apr 30, 2001, 12:15pm

[View Quote] [View Quote] The cards contained JCL (Job Control Language). If you knew that, you could recorrelate and run them with no problems... I remember
having to do that with a full box of cards. (1000 of them) only took me about 8 hours LOL.. Of course if one of them was out of order
or bent or punched wrong.. you were pretty well SOL.
The job would have to be restarted. Believe me, those were NOT the good ole days either...LOL

Holistic1

May 18, 2001, 9:04am

Oh, does this take me back. Never did study programming, but when my sister
was in college, in 78 or 79, I used to go see what she was up to. LOL, even
then, it was OLD! My mom was already using those cards to make cristmas
decorations. She's been in computers since the '50s. You guys really take
me back, thanks! Love Ingie



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