The Passage of Time

[jimg]

California...ya got me beat!! I did experience punch cards in college (IBM360/65) but never did the collator/sorter thing. Thats only b/c IBM took forever to make it into the interactive age. Theres nothing like dropping a fat pile of cards. I was SO happy when the university got their PDP10!!!

 

[California]

IBM took forever to make it into the interactive age.

So true! I was astonished when I started at a Large Government Agency in 1979 and saw the programmers were prohibited to punch their own cards. They coded their Cobol on paper forms (like a pad of writing paper) and turned the sheets in to Keypunch to be punched overnight. An upgrade finally brought in a 4341 Programmer's Workbench (small mainframe) to hold the library of projects but then management was slow to buy expensive terminals for the programmers. This era wasn't quite interactive, the mainframe might not have time slots available for program testing for several days. The Dark Ages of computing.

I already owned that TRS-80 personal computer at the time and knew there was a better way.

For you youngsters - The old IBM Corp marketed on the principle of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). In other words the high prices they charged were maintained by limiting access to insiders who took years to learn all the rituals. The PC was the worst marketing blunder they ever made, it revealed that the masses could run computers just fine.

 

[texasjohn]

OH, GOSH... The memories!

1st computer I worked with in college.. IBM 1620

I ran 401 accounting machines, wired the boards

1st computer I programmed in assembler: IBM 1401 with 1200 BCD memory as I recall. 1=read a card .... 2=puch a card... remember WORD MARKS?

1st long program written in FORTRAN

Job putting myself thru school at General Dynamics in Fort Worth, that computer shop had more sorters, collaters, reproducing card punches, card readers, etc. than you could count... all supporting an IBM 7090 AND IBM 7094 ... ASP machines.. Attached Support Processor... RAMAC disk drive as tall as I was with glass case so you could watch the disk spin and arm move. Untold numbers of tape drives and IBM 1311 removable disk drives...

OH, my, you got me started!

 

[RobertN]

One of the first tester I worked on, an old Xincom(testing Eprom), still had capablility to use a reel to reel tape. But it had more...

The system had a bank of LED's and a small keypad. Even tough the OS and base system had been updated, you could still read out individual lines of code and change them in Octal. Didn't have to reload your program. We always left blank lines in the code so we could add extra commands on the fly.

I also displayed data by LED. It was nice; you could see you test advance or see failures based on the patterns in the LED's. Don't see that in the GUI's of newer testers...

Kids!

I started in front of a card sorter. Soon advanced to the collator (it merged cards according to logic wired temporarily onto a board) and the keypunch.

The university's programmer put the boxes of cards - the entire student

 

[Cottonhawk]

Yep, many moons ago I also discovered the HP calculator! That was great as I was not very good with the slide rule. Later on I got a HP calc for engineers, that was some calculator.
On the computer front I had access to the big one in the computer room ... an IBM1620. Then the hard disk with 20k came out and they called it IBM1620D. I remember those days in order to get things done I had to stay up all night writing programs and punching cards. If I recall correctly that IBM moved pretty quick on the main frame front to IBM360....
Talking about "The Passage of Time" by marking the evolution of computers! From 4k to my iMac w/ 2 GB......
How did it go by so quickly?

 

[jimg]

Consider this industry does a complete change over in months (vs years). Its been doing roughly that since it started. I dont know of any other occupation that obsoletes knowledge and equipment so fast. Thats how we made it from the 'good ole' days to now so quickly.

 

[dbdartman]

This is all so strange, yet familiar at the same time! 30 years ago I'd just met my GF. She worked for the state of NJ & had just moved from keypunch into programming. 2 years later, she was in systems programming. DASDE, COBOL, FORTRAN, etc.... I heard about it all. Even got into the "computer room" a few times... Disc drives the size of refrigerators, banks of magnetic tape machines, piles (nearing mountain-sized) of card boxes... Then along came "webtv"... but I've since graduated to a real PC for my internet cruising! And people wonder why I enjoy playing with cars from the 60's-70's. I also remember when I was in the Coast Guard, around 1975 a friend had a $400 TI calculator that even had a "game" that could be programmed in (land the lunar module). I always crashed it...

 

[motepoc]

Worked for a textile plant here in SC for thirty three years. Spent 13 of those in the IS group on the hardware side. Have watched the growth and change in the computer world and had to change with it too. Worked on most of the computers mentioned here and more. A lot of DEC equipment, word processors, pdp machines, vaxes, disc drives, tapes, installed the first fiber optic network on site. As a matter of fact, I have a few of the old WT78 word processors out in my barn, along with the printers they used back then, and some of the floppy drives that went with them. The plant gave them away, when they went to desk pc's (MAC and IBM and compatables. Have retired from plant and working on computers.
Have been helping my wife take care of her mother. She's in the first stages of alztimers. She's a great woman and the worst I can tell you about her is, that she has me as a son-in-law. Good article on her The Item - South Carolina

 

[Bird]

That's an interesting news article, Tom, and it's great that you have so much family working together. Both my father and my grandfather had Alzheimers about the last 5 years of their lives, so I know what a job you, your wife, and the rest of the family have.

 

[themichelob]

My first computer was a Commodore 64-of course, no hard drive, but it did have those 5.25" floppys. Cost about $1,000 not including printer. Learned alot about programming from using that thing, though. Bought an Epson printer for it with a different ribbon for each color. We've come a long way since 1978!!
Regards, Mike