Walter Maxwell writes:
snip

Probably so, I still have a few 8" disks lying around, just so I can
show and tell my great grandchildren (and I have five) what the
early days of computers were using for memory.

I'm going to scan the pic in Reflections and email it to you in JPEG
format.

Walt, W2DU

You had 8" floppies? Let me tell you, when I was young we didn't have
any such newfangled nonsense. No, sir, we thought ourselves lucky to
have punch cards. AND we punched them by hand -- none of these fancy
keypunch machines for us (grumble, grumble).

I still do have a box of punch cards somewhere, containing:

1. A simulator written in 3600 Compass assembler, for a hypothetical
machine we had to design. (The 3600 assembly was itself run on an
emulator running on a CDC 6600.)
2. An assembler we wrote for our hypothetical processor.
3. A program written in our hypothetical assembly language, to be
assembled by our assembler and run on our emulated processor. I
don't remember what it did, probably sieve of Eratosthenes or
something.

I'm not sure if the cards are in order any more though :-)

Regards,
Allen
--
Allen Windhorn (507) 345-2782 FAX (507) 345-2805
Kato Engineering (Though I do not speak for Kato)
P.O. Box 8447, N. Mankato, MN 56002

On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 13:43:34 GMT, Allen Windhorn
wrote:

Walter Maxwell writes:
snip

Probably so, I still have a few 8" disks lying around, just so I can
show and tell my great grandchildren (and I have five) what the
early days of computers were using for memory.

I'm going to scan the pic in Reflections and email it to you in JPEG
format.

Walt, W2DU

You had 8" floppies? Let me tell you, when I was young we didn't have
any such newfangled nonsense. No, sir, we thought ourselves lucky to
have punch cards. AND we punched them by hand -- none of these fancy
keypunch machines for us (grumble, grumble).

I still do have a box of punch cards somewhere, containing:

1. A simulator written in 3600 Compass assembler, for a hypothetical
machine we had to design. (The 3600 assembly was itself run on an
emulator running on a CDC 6600.)
2. An assembler we wrote for our hypothetical processor.
3. A program written in our hypothetical assembly language, to be
assembled by our assembler and run on our emulated processor. I
don't remember what it did, probably sieve of Eratosthenes or
something.

I'm not sure if the cards are in order any more though :-)

Regards,
Allen

Hi Allen,

When I mentioned the 8" disks I was referring to my own personal computer era.
While working at RCA in the early 70s I had others write the programs I needed,
and they punched the cards for me, so I was there then also, but not the extent
you were. Thus you were way ahead of me in computer use.

Walt

Walter Maxwell wrote:
When I mentioned the 8" disks I was referring to my own personal computer era.
While working at RCA in the early 70s I had others write the programs I needed,
and they punched the cards for me, so I was there then also, but not the extent
you were. Thus you were way ahead of me in computer use.

Wrote and punched my first computer program in BELL on punched cards for an
IBM-650. The computer filled, as I remember, with dual triodes, was huge,
but the air-conditioning to keep it cool was bigger. The only permanent
memory was a magnetic drum, used for program and data. (Remember head crashes?)
It used the bi-quinary number system (like an abacus?).

Remember when there was a tube checker in every grocery store?
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp



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