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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Search Google, 1960:s-style
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donmck Guru  Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1310 |
Search Google, 1960:s-style Found this one on "alt.folklore.computers" newsgroup. Should bring back memories for the people that worked with punch cards, and what I call real computers, that at least had flashing lights on the front panel. :-) http://www.masswerk.at/google60/ I tried it with "Dontronics", then tried "Maximite". (Text search strings). Interesting results. Don... https://www.32v8.com/1 |
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| mookster1 Regular Member  Joined: 10/06/2011 Location: New ZealandPosts: 81 |
Now that is awesome. I can't say I've even laid hands on a punched card, let alone used one of those machines, but that is certainly a really cool way to search the Net!  Capacitance is futile - roll on 2012! |
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elproducts Senior Member  Joined: 19/06/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 282 |
This brings back so many painful memories of college where we had to hand in our stack of hundreds of punch cards, with one command line each, to the nerd at the central computer who may move his buddies program ahead of you if he didn't like you. Then wait three hours to find out you have a syntax typo on card 36 and you had to fix it and do it all over again while he laughed at you. Then wait in line for a punch card terminal to open up so you could fix it (hoping there weren't more errors beyond card 36). And all the sleeping in the hallways waiting for the program to run successfully so you could turn it in for the class the next day. My senior year we got a VAX computer system with terminals. I could type in a BASIC or Fortran program and get instant results. It was so amazing. No more waiting 3 hours at a time. No more nerd playing king to your computer time. This was freedom. A year later I had my first Commodore VIC20. Ah the good old days. www.elproducts.com |
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| paceman Guru Joined: 07/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1328 |
Hmmm....all the accounting types got access to punched cards for general ledger etc. where I worked - via the programming gurus and a room full of "punch & verify girls" of course. The rest of us operational technical types had to "punch" (and read) paper tape at 10 characters/sec with ASR33 teletypes. At least we got to run our own programs (Fortran of course) on our own computers and could ignore the IBM system "ivory tower". Greg |
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James_From_Canb Senior Member Joined: 19/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 265 |
OK. Good old days 2: We filled out coding sheets at school and had them transcribed by a local insurance company. After we checked the transcription, the punched cards were sent from Sydney to Melbourne (around 600 miles or 950 km) for processing. We didn't find out about our errors for a week or so. We became very careful filling out our coding sheets and checking the transcription. At Macquarie University our faculty inherited an old mainframe with 64 KB of core memory, and we found a way to get weekend access to terminals. They weren't in very good repair and I was a little tired and mistyped the number of runs for a FORTRAN simulation of a telephone exchange. I think I entered 100000 instead of 100, or something like that. The break key on the terminal didn't work so the program couldn't be interrupted. The computer operators weren't in the computer room because it was a weekend. The program finally stopped when I had exhausted the entire course's time allowance for the semester. That took a bit of explaining, including how we had got access to the terminals. Ahhh.. The good old days. And the good days now. The Maximite could run the simulation in a couple of seconds. James My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention. Hedley Lamarr, Blazing Saddles (1974) |
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djuqa Guru Joined: 23/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 447 |
Yes the Good old days, NOT The young whippersnappers often forget just how lucky they are having so much CPU grunt in so small a package. My first 2 Programming Assignments for my advanced Diploma in computing I had to manually type them on an old Typewriter and send in VIA post as I did my first entire programming course by mail. Really teaches you however to thoroughly proofread any programs. When I got access to a REAL computer (IBM370) at work 6 months later, I thought I was Xmas. In 1978 When I got my TRS-80 with Basic it was great but I missed using compiled languages. Later in 1980 when I got an APPLE][ with USCD Pascal, Fortran and 2 Floppy drives It really was Xmas. Now I find despite having MegaGHZ CPU's, Multi TeraByte HDD's and a large selection of compilers I love using my little pic32 boards. VK4MU MicroController Units |
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| shoebuckle Senior Member Joined: 21/01/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 189 |
A 3 hour turn-around? You should be so lucky. We got one overnight compile & test, always assuming there wasn't an urgent production job, which always took priority. We would spend the whole day desk checking the code very carefully and chasing data manually through the program because a single syntax error could result in a compile error and no test. Then there was always the possibility that the card reader could eat a few cards or the operator accidentally (?) drop your deck. We very quickly learned to keep the sequence number in the last few columns of the card up to date so that the deck could be run through the sorter. As you say, happy days! Young programmers probably don't realise how lucky they are. Mind you, I don't regret those early days. It certainly taught me how to get the result I wanted in the minimum amount of time. I remember one of my mentors saying that the first thing you should do when you start to program is turn the machine off! Such excellent advice, and is still applies today. Cheers, Hugh p.s. I loved the simulation. Took me back to my first programming experiences in the early 1970s. |
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brucepython Regular Member Joined: 19/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 64 |
Remember mark-sense cards? You used a soft pencil to make a stroke between < > marks printed on the card next to whatever that mark was supposed to mean. Each language used a different style of card, one instruction per card. At least you could correct the card if you had a decent eraser, and no punch card machine was required. First-year students used them in a PDP-8 which sat in a small trolley that could be wheeled around to where it was needed. Not quite a laptop, but at least it could be moved from room to room without resorting to a forky and a team of specialists. My most indelible card-related memory is of a bloke at Monash Uni carrying a foot-thick* stack of cards on top of his textbooks as he walked around a corner into one of Monash's notorious wind tunnels. To see him standing there forlornly watching his cloud of cards swirling upwards toward the top of the buildings (straight out of that classic Japanese woodcut, Hokusai's "A sudden gust of wind") was one of the most pathetic sights I've seen. A bit like a hard drive crashing, only infinitely more spectacular. Bruce * This was in pre-metric days. |
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marcwolf Senior Member Joined: 08/06/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 119 |
The first commercial programming job I ever did was on a Diehl Alphatronic, and it was a machine code general ledger. All input via a HexPad (one step up from front panel switches that I have also used) Coding Coding Coding.. Keep those keyboards coding.. RAW CODE!!!!! |
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