Typically the OS was not stored on punchcards. b
On Sun, Mar 1, 2026 at 11:51 AM bluewater emailtoilet.com via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote: > > Punchcards? You want punchcards? I got punchcards. Not exactly what I think > you are looking for but a large sample. Please check out > www.punchcardarchive.com > > Check the Stats page for a quick summary. Beware the Album page. It takes a > while to load. After all, it has to display 25532 cards. > > Not a full program but doing a search on CCROS in the Title field will show a > few cards that represent a few bits of a read only S/360 program. > > Donald > > -----Original Message----- > From: Steve Lewis via cctalk <[email protected]> > Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2026 11:34 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <[email protected]> > Cc: Steve Lewis <[email protected]> > Subject: [cctalk] Operating system, on punch cards? > > So studying about 1960s operating systems recently, it occurred to me that > the ASR-33 wasn't really "a thing" until the late 1960s. Yes, they > technically existed since 1963, but even going through 1960s Datamation > issues - you don't see a lot of ads or mention of ASR-33 until 1965. > > The IBM 1050 maybe existed in 1961 for the IBM 709, but even so - general > thought is that CTSS (operating system) was largely initially developed using > punch cards. > > So - are there any archives or collections of these original punch cards? > Or are they essentially all gone/destroyed, since in general after some code > was "perfected" it was likely then archived to tape? > > Anyway, apologies - it was just something that only recently occurred to me, > that basically all of the original operating systems originated on punch > cards: CTSS, Supervisor, AOSP, SCOPE, even MULTICs. So - do any of > those decks of cards still exist in archive? Would be neat to see a photo > of those - except it would be a shoebox of punch cards like any other, I > suppose. > > Or is this wrong, and the top tier teams making these OS's, probably had > teletypes and all the magnetic tape they wanted? > > -Steve
