Punch cards
David L. Gehrt
dlg at inanity.net
Mon Apr 7 05:11:38 UTC 2008
> On 2008-04-04, Robert Rabinoff <rar113 at columbia.edu> wrote:
>
> > When I first learned to program in 1964 we used an IBM 1620, fondly known
> > as CADET (Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try).
>
> Heh. My one-and-only formal computer class was learning FORTRAN, which
> we ran on an IBM 1620. The computer had more important things to do than
> run student programs, so we would write them out in spiral bound
> notebooks in class and as homework, then come to the computer center
> after hours when the keypunches weren't being used for more important
> work, punch the cards and put them in the job queue to be run over night
> (we weren't allowed to touch the sacred computer). The next day we'd
> come back for the job printout (on wide greenbar paper, of course),
> peruse the errors in our programs, punch new cards, drop them in the
> queue and repeat until it worked.
his got me to thinking.
For me the year was 1962, the computer was an IBM 709, serial number
NASA-1, at Washington State University. My first and only formal
programming class was a FORTRAN lab that met at 0800 on Saturday. This
was the semester I turned 20 and could legally drink beer in Moscow,
Idaho, 8 miles from campus. So I attended The first and last class, and
took the midterm. All of the program exercises ran correctly the first
time I submitted them, although I did make several mistakes at the key
punch.
I got a D -- something about attendance.
I can remember sitting in the machine room, lit my the glow of the
vacuum tubes, at the 709 console entering small programs on the M-Q
(multiplier-quotient) register keys and then watching the lights on the
console blink. I think the cycloids machine was about 1.8 milliseconds.
Quick, no?
I went on to spend most of the years following until my retirement in
2004 in software, I think rather successfully.
It is good top remember the early days. No os, booting the machine from
a bootstrap loader on a single binary card to get the "FORMON" loaded
from tape at 800 BPI.
Oh, the other stories we old crotches could tell.
dlg
> --
>
> John (john at os2.dhs.org)
>
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