Punch card nostalgia
System
Posts: 45
This discussion was created from comments split from: fastspin compiler for P2.
System
Posts: 45
Comments
I am still sitting on a new roll of mylar paper tape.
The big difference is all about when that roll becomes unspooled. Mylar = dust magnet, plus insane tangles. It can be cheaper and easier to punch a new tape!
Paper has less of both properties. Paper with oil has the least of those negative properties, and it tends to not dull the punch.
(worked with a lot of paper tape in the 80's !! Old shops, old gear = pretty good fun at the time)
Mylar, if you've got the thin stuff, does have the highest data density per unit area of available spooling capacity.
Never got to use a punch card system. An emulation with some sort of tool or fixture to punch cards would be a fun curio.
I would always run one spool mylar then one spool paper/oil to keep the punches oiled up.
I'm recapping a GNT 4601 right now. Went to fire it up and the Tants popped. It circa 1988 but with about 40 hours on it. Want to punch some MRL, (Man Readable Leaders) for giggles for parties.
We had to put the chad from oiled paper into a burn bag because it was classified (it was always unclear to me how the bad guys could make sense of it). Sometimes the oil would ooze out and dampen the bag.
I hauled a couple of decks of punched cards, a roll of punched tape, and a 9 track magnetic tape I saved for many years. Rescued them when the first company I worked for shut down the computer department, and finally tossed them some time in the 90's. Kind of regret dumping them now.
Think one G-code, basically. So, it's running on, fetching the next one, wash, rinse, repeat.
Mylar just was not reliable in those machines. Basically, what the operator did was load the tape, hit the advance switch and just let it pile nicely into the bin, while holding the end to be taped to the other end.
If it didn't just lay into the bin, nice and neat, it would tangle, or tear, and that part was toast. Happened all the time. One of the tasks I had, as a newbie to that particular shop, and with computer knowledge, which most of the guys didn't have, was to run oil tape copies of the mylar. Sometimes that $%(&@#$# mylar was "the master", meaning I had to nurse it through the reader to make a file first.
The fun part was making literal patches. You get the little puncher machine out, figure out the bits, punch 'em, then use that patch tape, align everything and just "patch" it and go!
The bit bucket "CLASSIFIED?"
That's hilarious! I have a couple people I am gonna share that with. They will get a laugh out of it.
Honestly, I really like paper tape. It's still in use in some places. Every so often I get a call to deal with one, or teach someone about it. I like it, because the whole thing is human scale, a lot like the cards. That puncher / reader looks exactly like the ones I used.
Somewhere I've a copy of "INVADERS.COM" punched to tape. I read it in a few times to play and show the old tech off when I had access to it.
Things have gotten so big. I think a whole roll of paper was something like 180k max capacity.
Now, finally I got a few free hours. Time to play with FastSpin!
Sounds to me like instructions determined by some officer who didn't understand the technology, demanding proof that there was no risk of being able to reconstruct the data.
When the engineer/technician baulked at the absolute nature of the demand, the officer took the "better safe than sorry" approach, regardless of the ongoing cost.
No longer appropriate tho
Where is this? I work in the valley and never heard of that.
John Abshier
LOL, Sounds like a decision made by someone with the same level of intelligence and understanding of science as some of the politicians and commentators we see on TV and the internet these days.
The thing about them is they will just happen. Do it then, or the feel is lost.
Making a thread like this is great. Good call. Appreciated.
+1
+1 - Thank you very much.
Eventually they figured out how to connect the DG Nova to the output device. But the bootstraps for the machines were still made up on punched paper tape.
The second company was an interesting one, it transitioned from a setup running on even older hardware. But continued with the previous line.
I sure as taxes miss that activity. Did do some IBM work, but it nothing like what spawned this discussion.
DG, Honeywell, Sperry, Univac, DEC, ICL, Singer, Friden, CDC, InterData, Prime, Memorex, and many others have disappeared over the years.
When it's hard drive, the size of a washing machine and all of 10MB, started to sound like a concrete mixer the city decided it was time to upgrade.
After many man years of work we upgraded the network to IP with custom built DSL modems and had all new software running on a Windows server.
After all that expense the functionality was pretty much exactly the same. I suspect the reliability far less...
Ah, "the good old days". Replacing bearings on the head carriage, gluing the velocity coil back on, aligning the R/W heads, etc, etc. What fun!
Or the public servant who dropped a disk, then proceeded to put it on every drive trying to read his data. Toll: 20 heads/drive x ~15 drives. $$$$$