Back in my day we programmed with a stick and clay, and liked it

[chris2be8]

Note: This thread was spun off from: New cryptocurrency causing disk drive shortage

Think how many punch cards that would be.

(It show my age that I can say I've used punch cards. And paper tape.)

Chris

[EdH]

Originally Posted by chris2be8

Think how many punch cards that would be.

(It show my age that I can say I've used punch cards. And paper tape.)

Chris

But, do you know whether dirt was discovered or invented? I don't think I've ever used cards or tape for their intended purpose. I started out with cassette tape.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by chris2be8

Think how many punch cards that would be.

I found this

Originally Posted by https://www.quora.com/How-many-80-column-paper-punch-cards-would-be-necessary-to-store-1-terabyte-of-data-How-much-space-would-be-required-for-the-cards-and-how-much-would-they-weigh

Anyway to work it out, a terabyte is 1*10^12 bytes which translates to 1.25 * 10^10 cards, or 12.5 billion cards. This would take up 1,205,467 cubic feet of space and weigh 34,097.5 tons.

Punch cards were never really used to their full potential. There is maybe 10% optimization that could be done while not changing the structure of the holes.

[PhilF]

Originally Posted by chris2be8

Think how many punch cards that would be.

(It show my age that I can say I've used punch cards. And paper tape.)

Chris

I used paper tape in junior high. There was a teletype terminal in the office that students could use to connect to a remote mainframe somewhere. It is how I learned my first programming language (BASIC).

It connected to the mainframe through a 110 baud acoustic modem attached to the side of it. You dialed the number then placed the handset into the cradle. I wonder how long it would take to transmit those 12.5B punch cards at 110 baud?

Looks like I'm showing my age too...

[xilman]

Originally Posted by PhilF

I used paper tape in junior high. There was a teletype terminal in the office that students could use to connect to a remote mainframe somewhere. It is how I learned my first programming language (BASIC).

It connected to the mainframe through a 110 baud acoustic modem attached to the side of it. You dialed the number then placed the handset into the cradle. I wonder how long it would take to transmit those 12.5B punch cards at 110 baud?

Looks like I'm showing my age too...

You are but a callow youth. I was using cards and tape at university when doing my DPhil research.


Answering your question is a matter of simple arithmetic. 110 baud is 10 bytes per second to an adequate approximation. 1TB is 10¹² bytes to an equally adequate approximation. There are 10¹¹ seconds in 3000 years, again to an adequate approximation.

[storm5510]

Originally Posted by EdH

...I don't think I've ever used cards or tape for their intended purpose. I started out with cassette tape.

The first time I saw punch cards was in 1972. My eldest brother was taking a course at a very small school just off Monument Circle in Indianapolis. There was one computer which took up most of a 25 foot square room. Anyone walking by outside could see it through a large picture window. I think the language was COBOL. I remember clearly my brother telling me, "Do not ever drop a card stack."

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by storm5510

I remember clearly my brother telling me, "Do not ever drop a card stack."

No problem, we'll just run the cards through the sorter (you DID remember to punch sequence numbers into columns 73-80 I hope).

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Chuck

No problem, we'll just run the cards through the sorter (you DID remember to punch sequence numbers into columns 73-80 I hope).

You did remember to increment the sequence numbers by 10 or 100 so you could insert new cards I hope.

BASIC programmers learned that very early on.

[slandrum]

Originally Posted by xilman

You did remember to increment the sequence numbers by 10 or 100 so you could insert new cards I hope.

BASIC programmers learned that very early on.

The RENUMBER command from BASIC doesn't work so well on punch cards.

It was also fun when you wanted to insert a lot of code in one place.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by slandrum

It was also fun when you wanted to insert a lot of code in one place.

Use call.

[slandrum]

Originally Posted by kriesel

Use call.

You mean GOSUB (at least in the basic variants I used, and there was a very small limit to nesting). CALL was used when you needed to call directly to machine code.