Punch card, paper tape, yeah

Off Topic » in reply to The Punch Card Era

nick hoffman — 4/26/2006 3:24:13 AM (archived)

And I'm still not retired.

Started on a PDP11 that had to have several lines of machine code entered on the switch panel before you could feed the punch tape in to boot up. You weren't popular if you crashed it!

My Uni days were done on the first and last CDC (45? - damn, forgotten already!) computer in England, still running after nearly 20 years. AS I left, they cut it up for scrap and gave out souvenirs.

Ah, memories. (And trick #1 was to write line numbers onto your card deck or mark stripes on the edge so that you COULD re-sort them when they dropped)

But I don't miss those days. Happy with the power of a Cray on my desktop...

The whole thread (7 posts)

History of the Microprocessor - phil - 4/20/2006 2:35:55 PM
- Experts see computers getting bigger and smaller at the same time - ljk - 4/25/2006 3:57:00 PM
  - The Punch Card Era - ljk - 4/25/2006 5:59:28 PM
    - I remember punch cards, and am not retired. *hmph* - Mary Anne - 4/26/2006 5:53:30 PM
    - Punch card, paper tape, yeah - nick hoffman - 4/26/2006 3:24:13 AM
      - It was yellow punch tape when I was in school. - Tom Brosz - 4/26/2006 4:00:37 AM
    - Punch card Pranks - carl - 4/25/2006 8:12:01 PM

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The whole thread (7 posts)