Well, to clarify - my "amazement" was more the idea of developing OS software using paper (not as much the loading of one from paper, though that is still a "glad I didn't have to do that" thing :).
So I'd characterize early OS development (meaning like 1956-1961) as: developed "in memory" (e.g. CTSS is said to have been written in FAP/MAD), then the program exported to punch card (or punched tape-- fan tape being a bit later and fairly exclusive to the "DEC" ecosystem, as it were). Once verified "yeah this kind of works", maybe that code quickly migrated over to magtape (bearing it mind this was all pre-ASCII standards). But one would need some kind of "bootloader" to then initiate it from magtape. On Sun, Mar 1, 2026 at 3:13 PM Van Snyder via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, 2026-03-01 at 13:13 -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: > > I saw the ~5 drawers of punched cards that they used for this. I was > > mortified at my mistake and expected that I was in BIG trouble. > > Apparently the restore took most of the day. > > It took all day because the card reader on the 1130 was REALLY slow. My > first full-time job was as a 1401 operator. The 1402 could read 600 > cards per minute, five minutes for a 3,000-card tray, 25 minutes for > five of them. >
