Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Kinda fun
Full or half duplex, not single or double. That was the parity bit in my brain that got flipped. Thanks, Phil. -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Phil Smith III Sent: Wednesday, November 8, 2023 8:11 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Kinda fun Bob Bridges wrote about his history with keypunches. Mine started in 1965, when I was four. My dad was working on his first concordance, of Beowulf, and my mom was going to do the data entry of the text. (They'd met in the 50s when he was working for a CIA front doing translation and his typist quit. He told them, "I need a new typist, but don't give me anyone interesting", and when they brought her in, he thought, "Dammit, nobody listens to me around here!" Nine months later they were married.) So I got to play with a keypunch at a very young age, and then again starting in 1975 when I sat in on my dad's PL/C class at the University. I have fond memories of playing outside with a bag of chad (please, not "chads"-it was a mass noun for 50 years; the 2000 election instantly made it a count noun, but we old-timers don't have to put up with that). (Jeez, even Office thinks it should be "chads". Kids today.) Bob, your musing about communications parameters sounds like full/half duplex. As for the cost of cards-I bought a few boxes on eBay about a decade ago. Even then folks were often selling individual cards for several dollars. I still have a bunch. My dad always had them in his breast pocket for note cards. He'd also always heard that they were the same size as old U.S. bills, but in the pre-Internet era had no easy way to verify that. Until one day in the late 80s, walking in lower Manhattan, he passed a numismatic store that had an old $1 bill taped to the inside of the window. He instantly whipped out a card and held it up, and sure 'nuff, it was the same size, modulo the clipped corner, of course! Keypunches persisted at University of Waterloo until the early 80s, not because the U was backward, but because ONE prof (not my dad!) insisted on using them. IIRC the I/O operators (remember them?) tried various stunts, like "accidentally" dropping his box of cards (only it wasn't really) in front of him and then stepping on them as they went to pick them up. They finally managed to get approval to tell him HE would have to pay for the maintenance. That cured it. Don't miss https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.masswerk.at/keypunch/__;!!KjMRP1Ixj6eLE0Fj!ufSaokE6hbzq-09wIsJObGdOKh7n1OQ0m3Kq0pXwkcHzmkKfgNbKpSeCZpLJcegYi9wB8FObFeJl6RY$ ! -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- The information contained in this message is confidential, protected from disclosure and may be legally privileged. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, distribution, copying, or any action taken or action omitted in reliance on it, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and destroy the material in its entirety, whether in electronic or hard copy format. Thank you. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Kinda fun
Hey Bob, Parity bits were even, odd, or none. Echo on or off, 1 or 2 stop bits, and the one you're forgetting the name thereof was the duplex, single or double. I don't remember which is which, but one of them (single I think) required local echo so you could see what was being keyed. Rex -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Bob Bridges Sent: Tuesday, November 7, 2023 5:34 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Kinda fun That WAS fun! I preceded that author by, I think, barely a year; I waffled around, changed majors twice (Religion, then Music, then Accounting), and reluctantly took one computer-programming class (PL/C) in the summer of 75. It was NOT boring, it was incredibly cool and I was instantly hooked. Punch cards didn't seem onerous to me because I hadn't yet imagined anything better. I learned the technical tricks of the 029 (I don't know, there must have been some, no?), then learned how much better the 129 was and thought it was 'way cooler. When not doing homework I sat at a teletype, taught myself Basic and FORTRAN, and saved my work on paper tape. My fiancée resented the inordinate amount of time I spent amusing myself writing useless games and utilities just because I could. I finished my degree in Accounting but went straight into programming jobs after graduation. It was a long time before I stopped using my flowcharting template, and years more before I stopped feeling guilty about coding on the fly without flowcharting first. So, yeah, I'm happy not to use punch cards now, but I didn't think to dislike them then. I'm even happier not to have to plug a phone handset into a modem - but at the time, typing up my long, long letters electronically and sending them over a modem to my best friend at the other end of the country was an enormous improvement over sitting at my desk and writing them out with a fountain pen. And while we're on the subject, anyone else remember having to establish communication parms over a modem? You had to agree with the other end about parity bits, and about some kind of echo that I'm pretty sure we called "single" or "double" something. Single was when my own terminal displayed the key I typed immediately; "dual" or "double" was when it waited until it was echoed back from the other end. The lag was the downside of double; the advantage was that I could see what character actually made the trip across the chancy phone lines, and could correct errors more reliably. What was that called? I forget. Oh, and the modem protocols: XMODEM, YMODEM, Kermit and the like. I remember when I first got a 2400-baud modem; it transferred text so blindingly fast that I almost couldn't read the text as it scrolled on my screen! For the first time it might be practical to send a 100K file, if you could spare an hour or two! --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* It's extremely difficult to distinguish a Canadian from an American. In fact the most reliable way of doing so is to make that observation in the presence of a Canadian. -attributed at the Gunroom to a "British man of letters" */ -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Phil Smith III Sent: Tuesday, November 7, 2023 16:18 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2023/11/in-bad-old-days-we-had-punc__;!!KjMRP1Ixj6eLE0Fj!oimg9J3s7FOnrNDMk1B2SCOImuRU5enQjoutTHhN1TwI3cKZwYY7jF8hUfH532CFXyWCDChR31mZFljymRzy0OU$ hcards-how.html -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- The information contained in this message is confidential, protected from disclosure and may be legally privileged. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, distribution, copying, or any action taken or action omitted in reliance on it, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and destroy the material in its entirety, whether in electronic or hard copy format. Thank you. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Kinda fun
Yup, 5 80-column cards to boot an NCR Century 200. Kinda wish I still had a set of them. Rex -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Michael Oujesky Sent: Tuesday, November 7, 2023 6:20 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Kinda fun Boot being short for boot-strap. AKA IPL text. At 05:42 PM 11/7/2023, Bob Bridges wrote: >My old boss sent me a pack of 50 blank punch cards for Christmas a few >years ago, just as a sort of gag gift. He says he uses them for >shopping lists and such. I'd probably be more inclined to keep them as >bookmarks, except I already use old business cards for that. > >But I thought it was an interesting idea and went to eBay to see what I >could get them for. My buss must have a source of his own, because the >last I looked people are trying to sell old punch cards for $100 for a >pack of 50, or even $10 for just one. They're antiques, now! Yeah, here we >go: >$11 Canadian for one. US$19.45 for 15. $26.69 for 40. Like that. > >Here's a test question for youngsters: Why do they "boot" a computer? >Where does that term come from? I'm guessing most of them will assume >it's a sort of joke, that you have to kick a computer to get the ol' >clunker going, like "percussive maintenance" on a TV. Oops, an >old-style CRT TV, I mean, of course, which I suppose is another thing >that doesn't exist any more. > >--- >Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 > >/* An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even >how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you >know and what you don't. -Anatole France */ > >-Original Message- >From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On >Behalf Of Schmitt, Michael >Sent: Tuesday, November 7, 2023 16:57 > >The card punch machines I used would punch each character as you typed >it, rather than buffer and punch card at the end of the line. So, you >had to type *perfectly*. A single mistake meant throw out the card. Or >save it for bookmarks and grocery lists. > >I like to ask the new people I work with "Why does ISPF maintain >sequence numbers in source?" (or JCL, sysin members, etc.). Not one >answers "so you can put your punched card deck back in order when you drop it". > >(They also don't know why old programs, and JCL, is all upper case.) > >-- >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send >email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- The information contained in this message is confidential, protected from disclosure and may be legally privileged. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, distribution, copying, or any action taken or action omitted in reliance on it, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and destroy the material in its entirety, whether in electronic or hard copy format. Thank you. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
