[K12OSN] OT: history

[James P. Kinney III]

How many people learned to keep an eye on the card reader so no one
could sneak by and slip in a blank card in your stack during crunch time
before a program was due?

I had toggle switches to program the whole stinking thing. 8 rows of 8
switches, a single switch as an "enter" switch and a light that flashed
to indicate the 8 bytes had been received. Didn't have a tape reader on
the main data collector but it did write to paper tape (industrial
control computer for taking machine floor samples of a multitude of
sensors during fabrication of large and medium power transformers) which
could be read by a separate machine that crunched numbers into a plotter
using the special, uniform density plotter paper. Then I could cut out
the curve shape (literally with a pair of scissors) and weigh the curve
as a method of computing the integral of the curve (find the area under
the curve).

The machine was rarely restarted since it took most of a full day for 2
people to key in the hundreds of bytes to run the thing.

I LOVE MY LINUX MACHINES!!!!
 :)
On Fri, 2008-02-15 at 12:08 -0800, Hoover Chan wrote:
> Do any of you old timers still remember how to program in assembler? How about toggle switches to load a paper tape loader? <grin>
> 
> --------------------------------------------------
> Hoover Chan                   chan at sacredsf.org
> Director of Technology
> Schools of the Sacred Heart
> 2222 Broadway St.
> San Francisco, CA 94115
> 
> ----- "Peter Hartmann" <peter at hartmanncomputer.com> wrote:
> 
> > Oh right....I forgot about assembly.  Thanks all.
> > 
> 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III          
CEO & Director of Engineering 
Local Net Solutions,LLC        
770-493-8244                    
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7


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