On 8/1/2011 10:02 AM, Lester Caine wrote: > Kent A. Reed wrote: >> <old-fart reminiscence on> >> >> When I started poking at Unix, "glass" terminals were just beginning to >> replace the venerable Teletype. The only way we could multitask was to >> get artful with the background/foreground commands. > You mean you got hard copy back as you typed? Why yes, yes I do. I may still have a few scraps of Teletype output from my graduate work, but they will have decayed worse than the Dead Sea Scrolls by now. > I seem to recall submitting punch cards sets and waiting for a printout later > ... and then adjusting the cards to fix the faults :) > But it was a lot easier that splicing the paper tape for the tape reader. > Did you ever have to use a hand punch to fix paper tape output? Similar to the "swinging chad" problem experienced in the Bush/Gore election, I had a Digital Equipment "high-speed" (wow, tens of 8-bit characters per sec) paper tape punch on my PDP-11 that started mispunching during a once-in-a-lifetime experiment. Fortunately, I could infer from tests which pin was sticking, check suspicious characters against the Teletype printout, and punch out missing and partial holes by hand. Hooray for redundancy.
The paper tapes were later hand-carried over to the Maniac III in the Institute for Computer Research for transfer to punch cards that were then hand-carried over to the University of Chicago's computer center for data analysis on its IBM 7040/7094 lash-up, later replaced by successions of IBM 360s. Had I failed to fix the tapes, I would have been reduced to keypunching cards from the Teletype output. My degree was on the line. Just another example of "desperate times call for desperate measures." My wife and I have long since used up our remaining stock of punch cards for note taking, shimming furniture, etc. I was pretty good at late-night repairs of IBM 026 and 029 keypunch machines as well. The business-school students kept screwing up the star-wheels on the program drums. Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
