I started with punched cards in 1971. By 1981 I had 2 IBM PCs to play with plus a load of Data General kit that used floppies to boot from (although you had to bootstrap it from the front console using switches). In 1982, we got our first VAX 11/780, and I got the first Compaq luggable in the country (imported it from the USA and fixed the power supply so it would run off 240v)
Alan
I'll see your KSR-33 and raise you a Burroughs B220 (tubes!) and an 026 keypunch.
I used a keypunch at school, but that was onto cards. And since I was only helping a friend, I don't count that as the start of my computer career.
Know how to insert a character into a punched card? The IBM service people would yell at you if they caught you doing it.
I used to - many many years ago.
That is interesting Stan, thanks for posting, but… you’ve just sent me down a few internet rabbit holes as I was curious (after all this time) about (why) a clock speed (rate) of 4.77 MHz
We sure have come a long way from the 40 pin DIP (dual in-line package) CPU P8088 (Intel 8088) and socketed too !
• dosdays.co.uk/computers/IBM%20PC%20(5150)/pics.php
↑ cut and paste, the parentheses makes the link screwy. lol
• retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/14096/how-much-did-ibm-save-by-limiting-the-pc-to-4-77-mhz
I work on vintage Macs, down to component level, but I never worked on an IBM 5150
You dupe the card you're starting with up to the place where you want to insert the character. Then you put your thumb on the card you're duping and type the character to be inserted. Then you dupe the rest of the card. Hard on the keypunch.
Amazing history in here and a bit before my time. My first was the Sinclair spectrum. Now days it's programming CNC machines and robotics. Started with DOS G-codes and now graphical. Amazing how far we have come.
When I look at the 5" disks we used to use, I just smile.
So you guys are even before my time. I feel better now 😀
Danny.
Me too - FORTRAN.
About that time I purchased an Apple II. The disk drives weren't ready so I loaded an assembler off cassette tape and programmed in 6502 assembler for a while. Reminded me a lot of HP's RPN.
When I was working at the IBM Almaden Research Center in the 90s, one of the cash registers in the cafeteria broke. Naturally the techies gathered round when the repairman showed up, to see what was inside. It had an 8 inch floppy. Boy did that sucker look big.
Remember the Byte magazine cartoon with the guy in a shirt with a pocket for an 8 inch floppy?
Yep, me too in the late 70's at uni. And if the ribbon on the keypunch displaying the code at the top of the card above the holes was low on ink or whatever you were flying blind punching in code.
Either way, we then handed our cards to the techies/operators and picked up the cards and printed output the next day.
It was very annoying when a single stupid typo in the code (Fortran) would result in pages of error messages. After repunching the faulty card after often waiting in a queue for a keypunch machine it was another 24hrs before seeing the output.
No - but my mouse-pad has the "hit any key to continue" duck cartoon on it.
I once programmed th song "10 green bottles" using punched cards with output to a printer. Unfortunately I forgot to set the counter to 10 to start with so it defaulted to 0. By the time I came to test if if was equal to zero it was at -1. You can guess the rest.
I was handed 2 very large boxes of paper and told never to do that again! Lesson learned.
Alan
This conversation is clearly off-topic for 'Site Feedback and Help'. Should it be moved to the Dumpster?
When I was working at QM, University of London the main teaching lab had a 'glasshouse' computer room to one side holding the PPD11-70 and about six storage module drives (for people that don't know them, they were about the size of a washing machine and had an enormous capacity of 300MB). The students work on about 40 VDUs attached to the system in the main lab. One of the smarter ones worked out a shell script which would make an SMD seek backwards and forwards, resulting in the whole thing rocking back and forth. One day when a no-so-popular member of staff was in the computer room, suddenly all the disc drives around him started moving in on him...
We could get ours to play tunes.
It is 😀 I say dump it but keep it going. Very enjoyable reading from us old farts. 😀
I started with writing Atlas Autocode using punched tape before graduating to Fortran and punched cards. Sometimes a run would fail and be returned with the hand written error message “Hairy holes”.
