"In the old days we...."

[deepakdeshp]

The first computer I dealt with didn't have a screen as a display. It had a punch card reader and to start the computer we had to load a small binary program using a set of toggle switches.

[MurphCID]

The first computer I dealt with didn't have a screen as a display. It had a punch card reader and to start the computer we had to load a small binary program using a set of toggle switches.

I remember punch cards. If we wanted to be a real jerk, if someone left their cards unattended they got shuffled.....

[RollyShed]

I remember punch cards. If we wanted to be a real jerk, if someone left their cards unattended they got shuffled.....

It could be said, a great disservice to mankind, the stopping of punch cards. Now what do you write your shopping list on?
Envelopes? Next they'll stop sending mail and then where we be?
Ohhh!!! Use your phone? But what about the curly cord trailing behind you as you walk the supermarket aisles?

[fstjohn]

I remember punch cards. If we wanted to be a real jerk, if someone left their cards unattended they got shuffled.....

In the early '80s in England when I was working as a contractor maintaining Burroughs mainframes for the US Air Force, we still used punch cards. We had an IBM card sorter which IBM UK maintained. They only had one old guy nationally that still had the skills to repair it. He retired at almost the same time we got new mainframes and got rid of punch cards.

[AndyMH]

Me, teletypes, paper tape and Algol60 were my first introduction to computing.

[deepakdeshp]

Me, teletypes, paper tape and Algol60 were my first introduction to computing.

Paper tapes reading at 50 char/minute, had a checksum after some blocks so if the tape stuck we had to position it at the previous block. It was a total 16k memory with only basic compiler, occupying 12k. 4k for the user space. Those were the days.

[vimes666]

I spent my days in 1975 behind an IBM card punch somewhat like in this article: https://twobithistory.org/2018/06/23/ib ... punch.html There were a few 3270 terminals around but those were mainly used for heating the office (system down 70% of the day).
The card punch never failed if you knew how to switch it on

[kenetics]

At one time I used a Stringy Floppy drive with a Radio Shack TRS-80. It used tiny cassettes with a magnetic tape. It worked quite well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exatron_Stringy_Floppy

[Maxwell-J]

....... paper tape .......

chaded or chadless

[Oldun]

I spent my days in 1975 behind an IBM card punch...

I too spent a fair bit of time using those. Workflow at our office was- Design, hand code (to coding sheets), give those to the "punch girls" who would return the cards to you, check cards against coding sheets, submit for compile (one a day unless you were lucky enough to get two), fix errors, repeat until you got it right!
We used the 029 when the punchies were busy doing unimportant things like production data entry.
Also used a Teletype as a terminal to GE Time share network. I used that to right I mean write, a ship trim & stability program in Fortran so the ships planners could run it at their whim without having to wait for our "massive" Honeywell 2040 to be free.

[fstjohn]

Interesting Wikipedia article on the BBC Microcomputer at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro. The "Beeb" was my introduction to micros back in the mid 80's. I bought it (not cheap) while living in England and brought it back to the States. Since I had the RGB monitor there was no problem with NTSC TV standards, and I brought a 240-110V household transformer back with me and ran it in reverse to power the 240V Beeb. BBC Basic was a masterpiece. Very Pascal-like. I'd bought the ROM expansion board and after doing a course at Burroughs on Pascal I bought the Pascal ROM to practice. I added the dual floppies and wrote a cataloging program to keep track of the nearly 100 floppies full of software I'd accumulated, many of the programs were copied laboriously character by character from magazines and some I wrote and shared with my friends while I lived in England.

[Crito]

I still have DecPack cartridge in my closet somewhere with the very first BASIC programs I wrote in 1982 in high school. My first PC was a CoCo 1 with CompuServe cartridge and one of these modems:

[Portreve]

In the old days, we used to get together with antikythera, who would calculate the phases of the moon and positions of planets for us. What an amazing guy.

...

[lsemmens]

Back in the old days we used to send a runner with a message stick. Occasionally he would lose it and have to go back to get the message again.

[fstjohn]

Back in the old days we used to send a runner with a message stick. Occasionally he would lose it and have to go back to get the message again.

I guess if the recipient got the stick the runner would go back with an 'ACK' and if not, with 'NAK'

[Mintmann]

My first pc had no Windows!

Lol!!! Me too!

My first computer game was called Cave played on an IBM type main-frame designed by Ippolito.
I little dwarf had to be killed and then find a magic wand to get across a bridge and do something that I cannot remember.
That's age for ya!