[ Re: UNIX- Grad-daddy of all modern operating systems?]

[Jerry Davis]

On Sunday 01 July 2007 21:18, George Toft wrote:
> http://georgetoft.com/georgeslaw.shtml
>  From my college days . . .
>
> "Hey, Grampa, tell us the story about 80 column punch cards, and why a
> good rubber band was your best friend. You mean you couldn't just talk
> to the computer?"
>
> "Well, Sonny, columns 1-5 were for your numeric labels. A 'C' in column
> 6 meant it was a continuation from the previous line, and your code went
> in columns 7-72. Columns 73-80 were your card sequence number and it was
> optional. Nobody liked to put numbers there because if we moved a block
> of code, we would have to resequence the cards. Screw that - just make
> sure you had a good rubber band, and another one as a backup in case the
> first one broke. Gives you a whole new meaning of data backup, huh."

Rubber bands break. One other way of sequencing the cards (which I used), was 
writing the seqno on the back of the card in pencil. If you inserted a card 
somewhere, like seqno 30, just make it 30.1, if you delete a card, say seqno 
22. On card 21, just write 22 deleted. That way you would know that you 
weren't missing a card. This all worked for me.

Then came line editors. GREAT!!!!

Jerry

>
> "Grampa, what was the deal with column 1 on the printer?"
>
> "Oh, yeah. Put a 1 in column 1 and the printer won't advance. Print
> about 10 lines with this:
> 1====================================================
> and all of the print wheels on the line printer would line up and the
> strikers would synchronize and go WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP and shake the whole
> computer center. Heh, heh, heh. The computer operators would jump out of
> their skin - they definitely knew when I ran a job."
>
> "Grampa, what's a line printer?"
>
>
>
> George Toft, CISSP, MSIS
> 623-203-1760
>
> Mark Jarvis wrote:
> > (repost using email address I signed up with)
> >
> > In 1960 (+ or - a year) I took a programming class at ASU where we used
> > the LGP-30.  It had a 1000 (1024?) word drum and each word was 32 bits.
> > The drum was the main memory--there was no other storage.  It had
> > 16--yes 16!--instructions with paper tape input and typewriter output
> > and it had a one or two inch oscilloscope where you could watch the
> > instructions execute.  Part of each instruction was the address of the
> > next instruction to be executed.  Too few today have the assembly
> > language background to appreciate the oddities of  the machine, but it
> > had some doozies.  Five years later I had graduated and was working at
> > Motorola Semiconductor on McDowell and transferred into the computer
> > section of the QC department.  We had a GE 205 computer with 8192 20 bit
> > words of memory.  If I remember correctly, a single word memory access
> > took 36 microseconds.  When sorting 30 row, 12 column table using the
> > Shell sort algorithm, the console lights made a several second long
> > pattern that was quite easy to spot.  BTW, the 205 was the entry level
> > knockoff of the GE215 box.  Since the 215 had a memory cycle time of 18
> > microseconds, GE added a bunch of circuit boards to steal every other
> > clock cycle to make the machine slower so they could lease it for less.
> > Go figure!
> >
> > Yes, for lots of years I used decks of cards for both programs and
> > data.  If you had any sense, you sequenced your cards in col 73-80 so
> > that when (not if--when) the deck was dropped, a few passes through the
> > sorter would fix things--and you initially sequenced by 10s or 20s to
> > allow for later additions.
> >
> > While I wouldn't take anything for the experiences of those years, I
> > wouldn't go back to them for anything either.
> >
> > Mark Jarvis
> >
> > Jim wrote:
> >>Lynn Newton wrote:
> >>>But I'm sure there are a number of subscribers to this list
> >>>who can one-up me with "I remember when" stories, by margins
> >>>of several years at least.
> >>
> >>I don't know if this would be in the one up category, but I remember
> >>being a high school freshman in 1981 and spending time after school in
> >>the math teacher's room messing around with his TRS80 with a whopping
> >>4KB RAM and running programs stored on cassette tape.
> >
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-- 
Happy Trails!
Jerry
 
KE7JVW
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