On Thu, 2008-08-28 at 12:17 -0500, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: > On Wed, August 27, 2008 14:19, William L. Maltby wrote: > > > ><snip> > On Wed, 2008-08-27 at 20:13 +0200, Chris Geldenhuis wrote: > > >> From reading your many and interesting posts to this list I realize > >> that we must be contemporaries (possibly I started programming before > >> you - circa 1963 on a ICL1500 aka RCA 301 in assembler or directly > >> punching machine code into punch cards). > > > > Yep. I had my 1st professional job in 1969. I was in the "modern" age, > > S360 stuff was the equipment then. The punch cards were still there, > > made on 026 and 029 card punches and read by MFCMs to load programs into > > IBM's DOS. > > > > I guess we're both old enough to fill in for JP when the resident > > curmudgeon is not on-list. ;-) > > You can list me as a backup curmudgeon as well :-). If this keeps up, we'll outnumber the "squirts"... uh-oh! We'll incur the "Wrath of Khan" from regular list denizans too! >:-O > > Started being paid to write software in 1969, for an IBM 1401. 026 and > 029 card punches for me, too; I preferred the keyboard touch on the 026 by > quite a lot. 14" five platter removable pack disk drives that > stored...around 1.5MB if I'm remembering right (can't seem to find the > info online quickly, either; might be as high as 2MB). 7204 is a number stuck in my mind. Size? Model? Oh well, really puny, regardless. > > I don't think I still remember much about how to make drum cards, though. > I *do* have some cards from back then out near my computer at home; found > them cleaning out some stuff, and could quite bear to just dump them, so > they're kicking around. It took a long time, but a few years ago I ditched the last of the punch cards I used to keep around just to show to younger folks. They hadn't even heard the term "Hollarith Code" apparently. -- Bill