SIGforum.com    Main Page  Hop To Forum Categories  The Lounge    Does anyone remember computer paper tape?
Page 1 2 3 
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
Does anyone remember computer paper tape? Login/Join 
Baroque Bloke
Picture of Pipe Smoker
posted
My first post-college job was with Control Data Corp, a computer manufacturer. At CDC’s computer school I had access to one of their small computers, the CDC 160-A. It served as a peripheral controller for CDC mainframe computer, the CDC 1604, to control magnetic tape drives, line printers, and Hollerith card readers and card punches.

The CDC 160-A was a neat little machine, built into a modified office desk:

www.bitsavers.org/pdf/cdc/160/...l_Brochure_Nov62.pdf

A paper tape reader is seen at the right side of the desktop. A paper tape punch, not visible, is in the left desk drawer. A machine-language computer program could be entered into the computer via the central console which had four-digit octal displays, and four three-button sets right below to enter 12-bit program words of four octal digits. Also switches to start and stop the program. And a button to step through the program, one instruction at a time, for debugging.

After a program had been entered and debugged, it could be output to paper tape, after which it could be reloaded from the paper tape reader.

I spent many hours creating interesting (to me) programs on the CDC 160-A. Those were fun days!

Of course the processing power of my MacBook Air laptop is much greater than that of the CDC 160-A. Currently I’m having fun relearning an ancient baroque programming language, SNOBOL4. Ancient, but the best language ever for dealing with text. PERL is next-best, but it’s far behind.



Serious about crackers
 
Posts: 9622 | Location: San Diego | Registered: July 26, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
quarter MOA visionary
Picture of smschulz
posted Hide Post
In college I/we wrote our programs and recorded them with IBM cards.
To re-run the routine we just loaded the cards (or gave them to the "operator" on duty to run).
We also got a print out from the dot matrix printer.
 
Posts: 23340 | Location: Houston, TX | Registered: June 11, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
and this little pig said:
posted Hide Post
When I was in Tech School in '68, the NC machines all had a paper tape reader on them. One of our classes had us "debug" a program by reading the tape by eye. That class was the last time I had to read tape!!!
 
Posts: 3406 | Registered: February 07, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
and this little pig said:
posted Hide Post
quote:
To re-run the routine we just loaded the cards

Ever drop the deck???? LOL Don't ask how I know!!!!
 
Posts: 3406 | Registered: February 07, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Ammoholic
posted Hide Post
Yes. I used paper tape in college to feed the G-code program into a CNC mill. Fun times. Definitely beats cards. Can you imagine dropping a stack of cards and having to put them back in order?
 
Posts: 7183 | Location: Lost, but making time. | Registered: February 23, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Dances With
Tornados
posted Hide Post
When I was in College, late 1970's, I had a part time job at a Cardiology Clinic in OKC. They had recently purchased a Digital PDP15 (IIRC) computer Mainframe.

It was huge, took up most of a controlled room.

My job was to come in late afternoon, print out the next days paper tickets for the patients and to back up the computer. The disc drivers were HUGE, when they revolved the "fingers or arms" as they called them, flew over the disc platters. When one of those "crashed" it was a bad problem. I was instructed to call my boss immediately and he'd come in and grab a spare. IIRC we had 3 of those disc drive machines, 12 disc platters, and every evening I'd back up 3 of the 12, and rotate those 3 trios for backup purposes.

This was absolutely high tech in OKC in the late 1970's, and I loved it.

I didn't do any programming, my boss did that. I do recall the soft ware, it was named MIIS, Meditech Informative Information System, again IIRC.

We had a dumb terminal in the ER of the hospital across the street. Occasionally I had to carry a pager (remember pagers?) and if the ER could not connect I'd have to go over and see if I could get it going. Pretty heady stuff for a young college kid having ER Docs staring at me while I worked on it.

Anyway, after all that ramble, to start the mainframe PDP15 I had to insert a paper tape in the machine, run it through and that would start up the computer.
 
Posts: 12033 | Location: Near Hooker Oklahoma, closer to Slapout Oklahoma | Registered: October 26, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of konata88
posted Hide Post
I remember using cards. Very mean to play 52 pickup back then. Kind of turned me off to programming. Visual Basic users today - no idea what the beginnings were like.




"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it." L.Tolstoy
"A government is just a body of people, usually, notably, ungoverned." Shepherd Book
 
Posts: 13187 | Location: In the gilded cage | Registered: December 09, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Age Quod Agis
Picture of ArtieS
posted Hide Post
Yup. DEC PDP series machine. Somewhere, I have a Star Trek game on paper tape.



"I vowed to myself to fight against evil more completely and more wholeheartedly than I ever did before. . . . That’s the only way to pay back part of that vast debt, to live up to and try to fulfill that tremendous obligation."

Alfred Hornik, Sunday, December 2, 1945 to his family, on his continuing duty to others for surviving WW II.
 
Posts: 13016 | Location: Central Florida | Registered: November 02, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
In the USN we had paper tape machines. Vacuum tube gear and Nixie Tube displays.

quote:
four three-button sets right below to enter 12-bit program words of four octal digits

You'd get pretty good at entering the data quickly.

How about the large spools of magnetic tape? Remember the end of tape marker? The sound the thing made when it didn't have the End of Tape reflector and got to the end of the tape.


____________________________________________________

The butcher with the sharpest knife has the warmest heart.
 
Posts: 13511 | Location: Bottom of Lake Washington | Registered: March 06, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
No double standards
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by smschulz:
In college I/we wrote our programs and recorded them with IBM cards.
To re-run the routine we just loaded the cards (or gave them to the "operator" on duty to run).
We also got a print out from the dot matrix printer.


That was my first computer class in college. Write out the program long hand, punch the cards, run the cards through the reader to program the computer (or to provide a diagnostic printout).




"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it....While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it"
- Judge Learned Hand, May 1944
 
Posts: 30668 | Location: UT | Registered: November 11, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Nullus Anxietas
Picture of ensigmatic
posted Hide Post
I remember it. I never used it for computer programming, though. Used it a lot for TTY, though.



"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher
 
Posts: 26009 | Location: S.E. Michigan | Registered: January 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
About 1990-2000 had used this BTR device attached to a 386-16 PC to make and read NC programs (G-code) for a very old, but very accurate, WEDM machine.

https://youtu.be/wALFrUd6Ttw

From 1983-1987 I had used these old paper tapes to loadprograms into the NC Mills that I operated.


--Tom
The right of self preservation, in turn, was understood as the right to defend oneself against attacks by lawless individuals, or, if absolutely necessary, to resist and throw off a tyrannical government.
 
Posts: 1623 | Location: Lehigh County,PA-USA | Registered: February 20, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
No double standards
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by odin:
quote:
To re-run the routine we just loaded the cards

Ever drop the deck???? LOL Don't ask how I know!!!!


IIRC the IBM cards had a section (optional) to punch in a card number, so after you dropped the deck you could get them back in the correct order.




"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it....While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it"
- Judge Learned Hand, May 1944
 
Posts: 30668 | Location: UT | Registered: November 11, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Live for today.
Tomorrow will
cost more
Picture of motor59
posted Hide Post
Something like this?



...hooked up to a computer much like this:



...upon which I wrote my first programs back in high school in the early 70's.




suaviter in modo, fortiter in re
 
Posts: 3167 | Location: Exit 7 NJ | Registered: March 21, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Itchy was taken
Picture of scratchy
posted Hide Post
I used to fix paper tape punches and readers along with teletype asr-33s. First job, at Pertec Computer Corp.


_________________
This space left intentionally blank.
 
Posts: 4125 | Location: Colorado | Registered: August 24, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of IntrepidTraveler
posted Hide Post
motor, where did you go to school?

High school, mid 70s, exact same teletype machine, but I believe it was hooked up to a PDP11, if this old memory serves.

Reading Senior High School, Reading PA.




Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.
- Dave Barry

"Never go through life saying 'I should have'..." - quote from the 9/11 Boatlift Story (thanks, sdy for posting it)
 
Posts: 3367 | Location: Grapevine TX/ Augusta GA | Registered: July 15, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Ammoholic
Picture of Skins2881
posted Hide Post
I've seen the Univac computer at the Smithsonian museum, does that count? I'm of the AOL Spamming your mailbox generation, I had a state of the art 2400 baud modem.



Jesse

Sic Semper Tyrannis
 
Posts: 21278 | Location: Loudoun County, Virginia | Registered: December 27, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Just because you can,
doesn't mean you should
posted Hide Post
A Player piano is an early version of that technology.


___________________________
Avoid buying ChiCom/CCP products whenever possible.
 
Posts: 9932 | Location: NE GA | Registered: August 22, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
Never used tape but I have a lot of experience with cards. Wow, I'm older than dirt Frown
 
Posts: 7761 | Registered: October 31, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
Paper Tape= Dit Dot Bombs Big Grin


____________________________________________________

The butcher with the sharpest knife has the warmest heart.
 
Posts: 13511 | Location: Bottom of Lake Washington | Registered: March 06, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata Page 1 2 3  
 

SIGforum.com    Main Page  Hop To Forum Categories  The Lounge    Does anyone remember computer paper tape?

© SIGforum 2024