Hear, hear!
-- /~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way. X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. / \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
I got summer job at the univ. doing port of 1401 MPIO to 360 assembler. The univ. had 709 with 1401 front-end for doing unit-record; cards were read to tape on 1401 and the tape moved to 709 tape drive. the 709 did tape-to-tape processing and the resulting output tape was moved to 1401 tape drive for output to printer/punch (MPIO was 1401 program that handle card-to-tape and tape-to-printer/punch).
As part of eventually replacing the 709/1401 with 360/67, a 360/30 was brought in to replace the 1401. While 360/30 had 1401 hardware emulation mode and could run MPIO directly, I got hired to rewrite it in 360 assembler; except for requirement to duplicate MPIO function, i got to design and implement my own program; dispatcher, interrupt handlers, device drivers, error recover, storage management, etc.
The datacenter shutdown at 8am sat. and didn't re-open until 8am mon ... so I had the machine room for 48hr period. I also got other programming jobs ... and in the fall it was little difficult going to monday morning class after not having slept for 48hrs.
The source assembler program eventaully grew to approx. 2000 cards (could still fit in card box). The 360 assembler took a minimum 30 minutes to assemble the source and produce "TXT" deck (i.e. deck of hex cards for execution loading). Since it took so long to assemble ... i got pretty good at duplicating cards & punching patches. The "TXT" deck just had hex "holes" ... no printing across the top and the 026 keypunch was alphanumeric ... to get the correct combination of hex" holes, had to used "multi-punch" feature ... use keyboard to force combination of holes to be punched. Put the original card in the duplication slot and then duplicate out to the columns for the patch ... multi-punch the new hole combinations and then duplication the remaining columns.
Got fairly good at being able to interpret the hex holes in "TXT" deck ... having to fan the deck to find the card that had the correct displacement in the program (for applying the patch). Was typically able to do patches in much less time than it took to re-assemble.
past post containing format of TXT card (as well as table for hex punch hole combinations):
much, much later I was at SJR in san jose and my brother was regional apple marketing rep (supposedly had largest physical region in CONUS). He would come to town periodically and I could go to business dinners with him. Got to argue with some of the mac developers about design ... before the mac was even announced.
-- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
other random apple trivia ... my brother figured out how to dial into the apple hdqtrs business computer (which was a s/38 at the time) from his apple-II to track manufacturing schedules and deliveries.
-- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote just the peurile silly shit any 2 year old could leave for dead.
Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind jmfbahciv wrote just the puerile silly shit any 2 year old could leave for dead.
Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind jmfbahciv wrote just the puerile silly shit any 2 year old could leave for dead.
Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind jmfbahciv wrote just the puerile silly shit any 2 year old could leave for dead.
Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind jmfbahciv wrote just the puerile silly shit any 2 year old could leave for dead.
jmfbahciv wrote
Wota terminal f****it.
jmfbahciv wrote
on.
pockets.
numbering.
paper.
Not in that situation you couldnt.
Fantasy.
And most isnt anything like good enough in that situation anyway.
jmfbahciv wrote
on.
Anyone with even half a clue has backups.
Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind jmfbahciv wrote just the puerile silly shit any 2 year old could leave for dead.
jmfbahciv wrote
What I used didnt have anything like that. Just an ASR33 for all input and output.
Pathetic.
The "covered wagon" helped settle the American west. Just because the "covered wagon" was *not* a steam train or an airplane, that is *no* reason that one should curse the "covered wagon".
Those computer cards are a big part of what got us where we are today. It seems mighty ungrateful for anyone to curse or revile them... If it's part of one's "right of passage" to throw the past into the trash bin, one might consider these things.
-- +----------------------------------------+ | Charles and Francis Richmond | | | | plano dot net at aquaporin4 dot com | +----------------------------------------+
which is why people used the label fields on the cards.
Payroll systems could be argued to be the hardest part of rocket science. Shooting rockets off only need deal with physical reality, but payroll needs deal with physical reality and acts of Congress and state legislatures not to mention all sorts of government regulations.
-- The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money is good, or is it the reverse?
I never got that good. We bought a PDP-10 before I got that proficient with reading holes. The system spoiled me forever after that.
I think that was a common practice becuase of slow assemblies.
I wonder if that (inserting cards in the deck) influenced how DDT was written to work?
that must have been fun.
/BAH
output.
Which explains your bitterness about TTYs, not cards.
/BAH
i periodically mention the economic conference from a couple years ago where one of the news stations broadcast a roundtable of economists. they said the tax code (that was constantly being twiddled) was 65,000+ pages. The proposal was that going to flat tax would reduce the tax code to 400-500 pages and vastly improve the productivity of the country.
there were statements that lobbying tax code (constant twiddling) contributes to congress being the most corrupt institution on earth. that changing to flattax & 400-500 page tax code would gain something like 6 percent GDP (currently lost dealing with the special provisions). It would also significantly reduce the enormous high-level level of corruption. That 6percent would be much larger benefit offsetting any loss of possible positive benefits buried in those
65,000+ pages.The roundtable ended with semi-humourous observation that one of those lobbying against the flat-tax change was Ireland ... supposedly some number of the companies relocating to Ireland gave as reason the problems dealing with US tax code.
misc. past posts referencing the (flat tax) roundtable:
-- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
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