General > General Technical Chat
You know you're old when.....
CatalinaWOW:
--- Quote from: Brumby on July 27, 2021, 04:50:48 am ---When you used:
- an IBM 082 card sorter - regularly
- IBM 3348 Data Modules - which weighed a few kgs each (and reminded me of the starship Enterprise). We had the higher capacity ones that were 70MB each!
- the only screen which was the main operator console
- punched cards for everything
at your first full time job
--- End quote ---
There is something fascinating and satisfying about watching an 082 card sorter in action. They saved my bacon on more than one instance when I dropped a large deck. I had one program that ran almost two boxes of cards. Wouldn't mind seeing one in action again, but not willing to put the time and effort in to find and fix along with a card punch and enough cards to make the sort interesting.
TimFox:
In my long-past youth, real programmers put sequence numbers in the right-most columns of Hollerith cards to allow such resorting. You always started by sorting on the least-significant digit, re-stack, sort on the next digit, etc. until you reached the most-significant digit. This type of equipment predated programmed computers.
Brumby:
--- Quote from: TimFox on July 27, 2021, 11:21:41 pm ---In my long-past youth, real programmers put sequence numbers in the right-most columns of Hollerith cards to allow such resorting. You always started by sorting on the least-significant digit, re-stack, sort on the next digit, etc. until you reached the most-significant digit. This type of equipment predated programmed computers.
--- End quote ---
... and if you were doing an alpha sort, you would do two passes - zones and numeric, with special consideration to the '0' pile. (Crikey - the things you remember.)
Edit:
A couple of years ago, I was helping a friend sort out some of their product storage and there were these booklets that were worth anywhere from $15 - $25 each and they had to be sorted in order on a 3 digit number. Handling these was a risky business as their condition was most important in commanding the best price so I stepped in to show them how to do it.
They were rather concerned when I started, but by only handling each booklet exactly 3 times by simple placement (no shuffling, sliding, inserting, etc.) it was all sorted ... using the exact same technique as you would on an 082.
They were really happy.
TerraHertz:
When watching Professor Julius Sumner Miller on B&W TV was one of your childhood pleasures.
Brumby:
--- Quote from: TerraHertz on August 01, 2021, 04:58:43 am ---When watching Professor Julius Sumner Miller on B&W TV was one of your childhood pleasures.
--- End quote ---
Oh, yes! :-+
In fact, my parents thought I wasn't applying myself at school, so they wrote to the good professor for some words of wisdom - AND HE WROTE BACK! A quick note in felt tipped pen on the back of a flyer and signed by the good professor. It's buried somewhere in the archives of my life - safely, I hope.
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