Punched Cards & Paper Tape

[skirttron]

Yeah, though it is true that beards have always been quite popular among "real" computer people who remember paper tape. Mind you, although my first language was discrete-component minicomputer machine code, I have never had one myself.

[binx]

Only paper tape I remember was ticker tape, but definitely punch cards! Boxes to submit a job that may or not run...

binx

[crfriend]

... Oh, probably not.

Yeah, though it is true that beards have always been quite popular among "real" computer people who remember paper tape.

Paper tape was easy. Binx nailled it on punch-cards, though. Hauling a heavy box to the computing centre and never knowing whether the program would work. And when it didn't, you'd have to sift through a printed core dump of your ABEND. Paper tape was at least somewhat interactive.

Mind you, although my first language was discrete-component minicomputer machine code, I have never had one myself.

Machines like that are an absolute joy because the average human can, if he wishes, actually understand everything going on inside one -- right to the gate level. Try that with the latest crop of microprocessors! (That's why I like using the minis as teaching tools.)

If that vest was black and you were pictured from the waist up, you could easily pass for either an Orthodox Jew or an Amish, German Baptist or Mennonite elder.

You're not the first one to make that observation, sir. My father did a good 20 years ago following the printing of a family portrait. He said I looked like a church elder who'd discovered the wonders of alcohol and never looked back. Much laughter was had by all involved.

Oh, and Binx, I do lead a rather modest lifestyle. I try to "practise what I preach", especially in computing (my prime machine is just about 10 years old), "walk lightly on the Earth", and be caring and understanding with others. And it has precisely *nothing* to do with any religious beliefs.

[MtnBiker]

Ya , I remember programing in straight machine code F0 03 60 etc etc

I still have to do this on a regular basis. I'm a mainframe developer, and while most of my code is in C, maybe 10% is 370 assembler.

If a client has a problem, I most always will try to fix it by sending a 'zap' where the fix is simply replacement, hand-coded machine code.

[me012247]

Didn't know 370 assembler still exits ... I was a systems programmer on IBM mainframes from 1968 to 1984, then I became a manager and over the years I forgot how "exiting" it could be to program in assembler. I ended my carreer as a vice president for Software AG of North America in 1996. Maybe some guys here still know that company

[skirttron]

Punch cards? I can beat that! Back when I was at college we had to put our stuff on coding sheets from where it was entered and batch compiled by butthead clerks. My Fortran code came back with syntax errors because the clerk had put full stops (periods) at the end of each line without being asked.

[MtnBiker]

Didn't know 370 assembler still exits ... I was a systems programmer on IBM mainframes from 1968 to 1984, then I became a manager and over the years I forgot how "exiting" it could be to program in assembler. I ended my carreer as a vice president for Software AG of North America in 1996. Maybe some guys here still know that company

then you know the world is still run using 360 architecture. Sure there are some big non-360 setups, but just about everything that matters has some creaky old big iron at the end of the chain. plenty of web-this and java-that can make it look very pretty but nothing, at all, can compare to the big stuff for reliability and cost-effectiveness.

plus it's just so dang much fun!!

[me012247]

I agree, I had lots of fun

[earth_man]

then you know the world is still run using 360 architecture. Sure there are some big non-360 setups, but just about everything that matters has some creaky old big iron at the end of the chain. plenty of web-this and java-that can make it look very pretty but nothing, at all, can compare to the big stuff for reliability and cost-effectiveness.

plus it's just so dang much fun!!

We've moved beyond S360 and even S370. Z/OS is the current name for the operating system. Many new instructions have been added since the old days. The current crop of processors have a very small footprint and are air cooled CMOS machines. Assembler have moved beyond the 8 character name and can use upper and lower case names as well as underscores.

The processors are now 64 bit as well so practically speaking, you can keep your whole file or database in memory for ultra fast processing.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/hardware/ click on Z/990

If anyone remembers VM, well now there's Z/VM and a special processor to run Linux. Load your fave distribution and have 50,000 Linux images running.

Software AG is still around but I'm suprised CA hasn't bought them like so many other companies.

[kingfish]

Paper tape eh? Up until about 8 years ago, I had an old Telex TTY-33 (with tape punch and mechanical reader) in my basement. I learned to type on it. Later, It was used to talk to a single board micro my dad had brought home from work. For nostalgic reasons I still have in my wallet a little 7-bit ASCII table I laminated with the paper tape bit legend on the back. As for punch cards, I bet my dad still has the ones for runs he did on an IBM 650 back in the early 50's for his Master's thesis. My very first college level computer science class teacher made us do our assignments using punch cards. We'd code the stuff in Pascal, type the them up using the old IBM 029 keypunch, then submit them as batch requests only wait a half hour to find out what syntax we blew.

Those were the days....Nowadays it's C on Microchip's PIC microcontrollers driving god-knows-what.

TTFN
John.

[Kilted Musician]

Punch cards? I can beat that! Back when I was at college we had to put our stuff on coding sheets from where it was entered and batch compiled by butthead clerks. My Fortran code came back with syntax errors because the clerk had put full stops (periods) at the end of each line without being asked.

The high school I attended was the first school in town to have access to a computer. It was a paper tape, teletype terminal hooked to a computer [accoustic modem] in another state. That's where I learned BASIC! Then when I got to college, I had to take Introduction to Computers. It was an IBM 1130 running Fortran. The only input device was a card reader and the only output device was a line printer. I would say we've come a long way!
--Rick

[DanR]

An 026 keypunch machine down in the cellar of the building that housed the Comp Sci for me. Handed my source deck to the ill-tempered operator lady who drank prune juice for the taste. You would have thought I'd handed her an open jar of Ebola virus from the look she always gave me. I always carried a wide felt tip marker to score that V on the top edge of the cards in case I dropped the box. Had a fellow student draw perfectly parallel lines on the top of his box of COBOL source cards. I asked him what the point was. His blank expression for a few moments was priceless.

[iain]

cobol, watfiv and fortran! and losing two days for an error in logic sure helped you develop a rigorous way of thinking..