> On Oct 7, 2022, at 6:22 PM, Fred Cisin <ci...@xenosoft.com> wrote:
> ...
> On Fri, 7 Oct 2022, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>> Didn't know that one. I do know:
>>
>> He died at the console
>> of hunger and thirst
>> next day he was buried
>> face down, nine edge first
>
> Well, I am definitely not the first one to say it.
>
> Face down: since card readers deal off the bottom of the deck, that puts the
> first card first. for burial, I can moon the world, or they can kiss my ass.
>
> 9 edge first puts the cut corner on the outside, where it is visible, to
> notice if a card is turned. I have seen corner cut on either left OR right
> upper corner. I don't recall seeing any with both corners cut.
I do remember cards with no corner cut, and also with pointy corners rather
than the usual rounded corners.
Some devices would feed 12 edge first. I vaguely remember IBM reader/punch
units where one went 9-edge first and the other 12-edge first.
Then of course some card devices feed the narrow edge (1 column) first rather
than the top or bottom row. CDC had a reader that worked column-wise and a
punch that worked row-wise, so the interface logic for the punch needed a
transpose operation while the reader doesn't -- given that both would transfer
card data as a word per column. But Electrologica used the same hardware
without the transpose logic in the controller, so the software would see
columns from the reader but would have to construct rows to send to the punch.
paul
