On Sun, 2026-03-01 at 15:32 -0600, Steve Lewis wrote: > 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),
One of my colleagues (Theodore Pavlovich) was among the last to switch from FAP to IBMAP. My mid-70's office partner (Suzanne Levison) had worked on MAD as an undergraduate. > 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. The IBM 1401 has a "tape load" key. Oddly, the 1410 didn't. One needed to key "L%U100011R_" into location 1 and set the instruction address to 00001. > 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.
