[PLUG] Terabyte paper tape

Russell Senior russell at personaltelco.net
Tue Sep 21 17:37:40 UTC 2021


I started out in the Mechanical Engineering program at Oregon State in
the fall of 1980. The introductory ME course, ME101, had a computing
component. We wrote a program using punch cards in a room of the Milne
Computing Center, but they were pretty much unbolting the punch
machines to haul them away as soon as we stood up. I recall they were
all gone by the next quarter.  Later, I took a Fortran course from a
chain-smoking redheaded research assistant guy named David Cawlfield.

My ASR33 & paper tape experience came prior to that at Sunset High
School. Primarily, we played Trek during lunch and we'd generate a
long spool of paper tape logging the game for no particular reason.
Because of the oil impregnated paper, the punched tape has a very
particular smell and beautiful exactly-round punched holes. I
presently have two ASR33's and a few assorted parts parked in my
garage awaiting restoration. One of them belonged, I believe, to a
sadly departed PLUG personality, Pete Lancashire.

On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 10:09 AM John Sechrest <sechrest at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My first one was a HP 2100 series with paper tape, cards and 16K of
> memory.
> It had flippy switches too. I had to memorize the boot sequence to load the
> tape, to load the OS.
>
> Basic and Fortran.
>
> The fortran compiler was multi-pass, so that meant being available to load
> the second part of the tape after the first pass was generated.
>
> I remember tapes piling up on the floor and getting good at rolling them
> back up.
> Still have cards that I use as book marks.
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 9:26 AM Randy Bush <randy at psg.com> wrote:
>
> > funny, i came in a different door; so used hollerith cards (1130, 1401,
> > 709x) and a lot of assembler before tape (pdps).
> >
> > side excursion to more modern technology: i recently got a cheap usb-c
> > cable tester.  https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B07Y8BPVV4 (home url
> > is https://bit-trade-one.co.jp/adusbcim/) and no longer have to wonder
> > whether the cable will carry and/or supply power, video, ...
> >
> > randy
> >
>
>
> --
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> <http://www.seattleangelconference.com/>
>
> *JOHN SECHREST*
> *Founder, *Seattle Angel Conference
> TEL  (541) 250-0844    EMAIL  sechrest at seattleangel.com
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