daveo4EV

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Mwa3aan

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Punched Cards.
Paper Tape if you subscribe to the AtHomeUpdate FoD.
...or was it Cassette Tapes?

A show of hands for anyone who actually loaded software into a computer via any or all of those methods... Anyone? Anyone other than me?!? And, no, doing it as part of a Civil War Re-enactments doesn’t count.
I saw my dad do punch cards. I started using computers just as tapes gave way to floppy.
 
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louv

louv

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My birth announcement was on punched cards. Dad was a nerd too. He was working at Bell Labs at the time. I can only imagine the confusion as family and friends opened the mail to find a blue, 80-column punched card with a bunch of weird square holes in it.

I had no choice, really. It’s was a nerd’s life for me. Destiny.

[photo of a photo of the actual punched card removed]
 
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evanevery

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Punched Cards.
Paper Tape if you subscribe to the AtHomeUpdate FoD.
...or was it Cassette Tapes?

A show of hands for anyone who actually loaded software into a computer via any or all of those methods... Anyone? Anyone other than me?!? And, no, doing it as part of a Civil War Re-enactments doesn’t count.
[Hand Up]

Remember the Altair 8080? 1976 or thereabouts... You had to load the bootstrap program BY HAND (which then enabled it to load the O/S via a tape reader in an LA120 Line Printer). There was no such thing as BIOS or ROM back then. You had to actually set 8 dip switches and hit LOAD over and over (to pull each of the 8 bits in through the accumulator) just so you could make it smart enough to load the O/S via a paper tape. You never wanted to shut that baby down...

So, Yeah!

Punch cards came much later for me. They were a luxury. (PDP 11/80).

"One's and Zero's? Hah kid, you had it good... We had to use the letter 'l'!" (That's an "el" for those who don't get the joke) ;-)
 
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louv

louv

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[Hand Up]

Remember the Altair 8080? 1976 I think... You had to load the bootstrap program BY HAND (which enabled it to then load the O/S via a tape reader in an LA120 Line Printer). There was no such thing as BIOS or ROM back then. You had to actually set 8 dip switches and hit LOAD over and over (to pull each of the 8 bits in through the accumulator) just so you could make it smart enough to load the O/S.

So, Yeah!

Punch cards came much later for me. They were a luxury. (PDP 11/80)
Yup. Programmed one of those in my first college CS class. Years after using punched cards.
 


evanevery

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My birth announcement was on punched cards. Dad was a nerd too. He was working at Bell Labs at the time. I can only imagine the confusion as family and friends opened the mail to find a blue, 80-column punched card with a bunch of weird square holes in it.

I had no choice, really. It’s was a nerd’s life for me. Destiny.
Careful... So much personal info there... (Gotcha by 4 years)
 
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louv

louv

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Careful... So much personal info there... (Gotcha by 4 years)
Yes. A birthdate. A full name. Ok. Someone will steal my identity. Grrr. I was going to edit out the date... but then I’d have to blur the holes! :)
 
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louv

louv

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JC Mann

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Punched Cards.
Paper Tape if you subscribe to the AtHomeUpdate FoD.
...or was it Cassette Tapes?

A show of hands for anyone who actually loaded software into a computer via any or all of those methods... Anyone? Anyone other than me?!? And, no, doing it as part of a Civil War Re-enactments doesn’t count.
I learned programming on punched cards !
 

Genau

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Punched Cards.
Paper Tape if you subscribe to the AtHomeUpdate FoD.
...or was it Cassette Tapes?

A show of hands for anyone who actually loaded software into a computer via any or all of those methods... Anyone? Anyone other than me?!? And, no, doing it as part of a Civil War Re-enactments doesn’t count.
Punch cards I WISH. Until the mid-1990's, we had to manually type in Minuteman III ICBM target updates stored on a 128 pound magnetic drum with 1 MB total storage capacity. Don't ask about checksums. We were blessed to have paper tape for crypto loads. That said, that EMP hardened, nuclear-certified weapon system was infinitely more stable and debugged than the Taycan.
Sponsored

 
 




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