4.5 megabytes of data represented by punch cards - photo

[Altair]

4.5 megabytes of data represented by 62,500 punched cards.




Previously:

https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...855#post144351
Curta mechanical pocket calculator - photos
Mechanical calculator trying to divide by zero

[jimfols]

The neat thing about file cards is when they quit using them and caused an abundance of inexpensive tool and parts cabinets.

[bruce.desertrat]

There were only so many christmas wreaths you could make from 'em.

As an undergrad I once helped a near-sobbing engineering student who had accidentally droppped the box holding the card deck containing his semester project...on a windy day...on the campus mall.

Lots of memories of trudging to the IO window, handing over my deck, then trudging back in 3 or 4 hours to get the output...to find you had a typo on 5 cards, or you mixed up a handful of them and got them in the wrong place. I was sooooo envious of a friend who had an account he could use the time sharing terminals instead of the batch jobs I had to use.

[Monty Python Yourkshiremen accent] But try and tell the young kids that these days...

[Duke_of_URL]

The Fortran days... ah the memories. I tell young'uns today that when I learned software we had no such thing as a monitor, mouse, or keyboard, just a keypunch machine, cards, and a line printer for the results (good, or error codes). I used to dread being behind a PhD Engineering student in the line to the card reader. They usually had two or three large boxes of cards to feed, and it would take a good 10 minutes to successfully load them. Graphics? Ha! I had to write my own program to graph my results. Software had to be very elegant when working under a memory restriction.

[jdurand]

When you're leaving the card reader slip go to the box of colored blank cards used to seperate jobs. Slip in a card with /*$LOGOFF on it and make yourself scarce.

We used to hide stuff in the line printer queue. The school admin were always trying to find where we were hiding things but never did. One guy had given himself super-root status. Didn't show up on the system but could monitor everyone.

[baja]

I worked at a Buick dealership in the 70`s and used a machine that when I put in a stock order, it made a punched tape that I would start once communications had been established with the same type machine at the GM warehouse in Santa Fe Springs. I had worked with a guy that gave me grief who went to work as parts manager at a California Buick dealer. I made a tape that was just enter, enter, enter, etc. and glued it together in a loop and after hours I dialed up his machine and started the tape and ran all his paper out on the floor.

[jdurand]

I spent MANY hours in front of an ASR-33 Teletype. It was the control terminal for a mini computer we had in college.

One note: The aftermarket replacement top panel on the right that had a beverage can holder built in had a serious problem, it was directly over the power supply and you quickly wound up with hot beer...err... soda.

[baja]

I think that is pretty much the same machine I used. Don`t think it had a beverage holder though, lol.

[bruce.desertrat]

The forerunner of the USB Coffee warmer?