L
Lew
Umm, that's 6250 cpi, not feet.RedGrittyBrick said:
The distinction is apparently not standard.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym>
The distinction is apparently not standard.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym>
N
Nigel Wade
RedGrittyBrick said:
6250 was a density in bpi (following on from 800, and 1600bpi). The length was
2400ft. for a normal tape, shorter 1200ft tapes were available although not
that common.
M
Mike Schilling
Eric said:
The last one make sense: it makes you fear the Geeks, even bearing
gifts.
R
RedGrittyBrick
Lew said:
Dang! You are right. Must get my memory retensioned. I shall rummage for
my various sized reels and have a look. Maybe it was 1200 ft and 300 ft
reels or something.
Language degradation[1] isn't geographically or demographically uniform
[1] All right, change, happy?
R
RedGrittyBrick
Nigel said:
TFTC
M
Martin Gregorie
The technical description of this makes me think it was merely a smaller
and quieter version of a MCF (Magnetic Card File).
Real MCFs used magnetically coated alloy or Mylar sheets rather than the
similarly sized pieces of super-wide mag tale the 2321 seems to have
used. Hence my comment about noise as the cards were snatched out of
their silos, read and/or written and hurled back.
ICL and NCR used them. For those of you with an interest in archaic
computing machinery, here's an NCR brochure:
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/NCR/
NCR.CRAM.1960.102646240.pdf
R
Roedy Green
Aka salad picker. It was a peculiar random access device containing
strips of mag tape arranged is a sort of salad spinner. I would pluck
out a piece of tape and run it past a read head. It was intended as a
high capacity, slow speed hard disk. They jammed frequently.
There was also the NCR CRAM. It consisted of a stack of magnetic
cards with rods running through the stack. Somehow the rods caused
one of the cards to fall, and be sucked around to be read, then
replaced on the stack. It has been so long I have forgotten precisely
how it worked.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method."
~ John von Neumann (born: 1903-12-28 died: 1957-02-08 at age: 53)
R
Roedy Green
You did a lot of work with punch cards and mag tapes where you had to
process things sequentially. Most programs were based on merging two
or more sequential files, with data replacing or adding, or updating.
Even sorts were done by repeated merges using perhaps 6 tape drives at
a time merging blocks into ever longer blocks until you had one sorted
block.
On of the fun things was scheduling the tapes so that the data ended
up on the desired reel.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method."
~ John von Neumann (born: 1903-12-28 died: 1957-02-08 at age: 53)
R
Roedy Green
Michigan Time Sharing, an OS for the IBM 360 for the university
environment. UBC used it.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method."
~ John von Neumann (born: 1903-12-28 died: 1957-02-08 at age: 53)
R
Roedy Green
General Purpose Simulation System
A language for writing simulation models, e.g. traffic lights,
supermarket queues, elevator banks etc.
It was interpreted and dog slow. I wrote a replacement based on PL/I
macros to implement the syntax I called QSL.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method."
~ John von Neumann (born: 1903-12-28 died: 1957-02-08 at age: 53)
R
Roedy Green
Mr. Ahmdahl also ran a company that made clones of IBM mainframes. He
deserves credit for cracking IBM's monopoly. IBM fought very hard to
keep every shop 100% IBM, down to the keypunches and card stock.
He is still alive and kicking at 86.
Xerox also made an ALMOST 360 clone. Their index registers
automatically shifted depending on the width of the operand. The
compatibility was then primarily in data file layouts and structures.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method."
~ John von Neumann (born: 1903-12-28 died: 1957-02-08 at age: 53)
E
Eric Sosman
Roedy said:
I still can't see why a Pakistani place some fifty miles
from Islamabad makes the list. Was the abacus invented there,
or what?
If you'd written "Amdahl," with only one aitch, then I'd
ave hunderstood.
R
Roedy Green
Singer computers with their "delay line" storage.
Royal McBee knitting needles to do boolean logic.
Wang dedicated word processors
PL/I
drums
IBM 2741 golf ball terminal
CRJE (cree-jee)
CICS (kicks)
Xerox Star
CPM
Digital Research
Z80
S-100
APL
custom 6-bit encodings
Vector display terminals
plated wire memory
white coats
fan-fold paper
Thinking back, hardware has improved much more than I expected it
would, but software construction much less than I expected.
The main improvement is one I championed in an article in Byte
Magazine in 1985-10, the inclusion of standard libraries as part of
the language distribution. The business code I advocated (handing
zips, phones, currency, international addresses etc.) is still not
there.
The technology I appreciate most is the large flat panel full colour
display. Since 1969, I have dreamed of them being cheap enough to
surround myself in 3D with them. People thought I was a bit cracked in
the head when I suggested my employer BC Hydro should create an
experimental programming pod with surround screens to see what effect
it had on productivity. I thought programming would be so much easier
if you could have everything you want to see spread out before you.
But oddly as fast as hardware expands my viewing surface, IDE
designers fill up the space with crap I don't want.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method."
~ John von Neumann (born: 1903-12-28 died: 1957-02-08 at age: 53)
J
John B. Matthews
[...]
Featured here:
<http://www.computerhistory.org/brochures/companies.php
?alpha=m-p&company=com-42bc20992be7c>
It looks like the notches represent a binary code. Shifting rods
laterally in the same pattern would release one card. I imagine using a
Gray binary code, or some other single-distance code, would reduce
jamming.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_code>
Mechanical selecting and sorting was all the rage in that era. We'd
register for classes on punch-card sized forms having holes spaced
around the edges. A student worker would notch the edges using the
requisite code and stack the cards in a long, drawer-like box.
Inserting rods lengthwise through the correct holes and lifting would
leave matching cards in the box. It was labor-intensive but not
laborious, perfect for work-study.
Featured here:
<http://www.computerhistory.org/brochures/companies.php
?alpha=m-p&company=com-42bc20992be7c>
It looks like the notches represent a binary code. Shifting rods
laterally in the same pattern would release one card. I imagine using a
Gray binary code, or some other single-distance code, would reduce
jamming.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_code>
Mechanical selecting and sorting was all the rage in that era. We'd
register for classes on punch-card sized forms having holes spaced
around the edges. A student worker would notch the edges using the
requisite code and stack the cards in a long, drawer-like box.
Inserting rods lengthwise through the correct holes and lifting would
leave matching cards in the box. It was labor-intensive but not
laborious, perfect for work-study.
A
Arved Sandstrom
Mike said:
Timeo petrones etiam dona ferentes.
AHS
D
Dave Searles
Arved said:
I find it mystifying that several people here feel so strongly that they
need to defend Roedy's original use of undefined terms that they are
willing to get personal.
Particularly when Roedy himself has responded much more reasonably.
Apparently it's a mainframism, perhaps specifically a COBOLism. There's
a whole generation of developers -- some of them senior ones -- that
have cut their teeth starting on more modern systems than that; micros
and workstations, mostly, and then servers and clusters. Including
plenty of well-rounded ones. I myself know Java, C, C++, a couple
assemblies, multiple Lisps, shell, Python, and at least one each in the
categories imperative, functional, and OO, having started out with C.
But I don't know COBOL.
This sort of veiled insult is exactly what this newsgroup doesn't need
right now. There was another blowup just recently in the Java 5 EOL
thread when someone called someone's "assumptions invalid" or similarly.
Have none of you learned your lessons from what happened there? Turning
the subject around from Java (or whatever) to someone's perceived
shortcomings will never achieve any worthwhile aim. It will just start a
fight that ends with the sound of a dozen plonks.
D
Dave Searles
Arved said:
"To fear rocky as yet votive offering bearing"?
D
Dave Searles
RedGrittyBrick said:
TFTC?
A
Arved Sandstrom
Dave said:I find it mystifying that several people here feel so strongly that they
need to defend Roedy's original use of undefined terms that they are
willing to get personal.
Particularly when Roedy himself has responded much more reasonably.
Apparently it's a mainframism, perhaps specifically a COBOLism. There's
a whole generation of developers -- some of them senior ones -- that
have cut their teeth starting on more modern systems than that; micros
and workstations, mostly, and then servers and clusters. Including
plenty of well-rounded ones. I myself know Java, C, C++, a couple
assemblies, multiple Lisps, shell, Python, and at least one each in the
categories imperative, functional, and OO, having started out with C.
But I don't know COBOL.
I can't say I know COBOL either. In fact I would generally describe my
background as being close to yours. However, ISAM is not even close to
being a mainframism or a COBOLism, as you put it...it's a term that
someone with a decent level of familiarity with databases (I don't mean
SQL, I mean databases) ought, IMHO, to have at least vaguely heard of.
I didn't write anything that was intended to "get personal". I could
have used a term other than "boutique coder" I figure - perhaps "niche
programmer" is closer to what I meant. Think of that as simply being on
the other end of the spectrum from "well rounded" and you'll see that
there's no insult meant. I used to be a "niche programmer" way back when
myself.
What exactly was the insult? _You_ used the term "practitioners in the
field", and to me that means a software developer, not someone who only
knows one programming language. I based my expectation on that.
AHS
A
Arved Sandstrom
Dave said:
What online translator came up with that?
AHS