When I went back to school in 1980 the head of the computer department was
an old IBM guy.  He had acquired an IBM 1401 computer along with a 1402 card
reader/punch and a 1403 printer.  The first term consisted of learning how
to program the thing.  It sure gave us a fundamental understanding of things
on a hardware level.

The IBM 1401 was a hot computer in 1958.  It had 4K of core memory
(non-volatile magnetic donuts for you young folks who've never heard of it)
expandable to 16K.  It was the size of a couple of upright freezers side by
side.  Later they developed a hard disk for it that had a 36 inch platter
and the arm was actuated hydraulically.  I don't remember the size but it
wasn't more than 500K.  The 1401 had 6 bit bytes with a parity bit and a
word mark bit so there were only 64 characters.  With the work marks you
could do add/subtract on arbitrary length numbers up to the limits of
memory.  There was no multiply or divide command, you had to write that
yourself.  Also the machine was decimal, not binary which made it simpler
for some of my classmates to understand since they didn't have to learn
binary at the same time.

The operating system consisted of pushing the start button.  That would read
the first card in the card reader into addresses 0-79 then start executing
at address 0.  After that you were on your own.  What you would do is write
code to copy the first bit of your program to higher address locations then
read the next card and branch back to address 0.  Once your program was
loaded then you branch to the start of your program.  We had a FORTRAN
compiler for it that consisted of 2 decks of cards.  You'd load the first
deck and run your program through it.  That would punch an intermediate deck
that you would run through the second part of the compiler to get you
program in punched cards.  You could also program it by flipping switches on
the front panel to set the address and value and pushing a button.  Handy
for fixing typos in programs.

I could go on but this message is long enough.

Dave

David Werth
Garmin AT, Inc
Salem, Oregon
dave.werth AT garmin DOT com
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Ruskowsky [mailto:jimr AT JEFFERIES DOT COM] 
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 7:55 AM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Fw: [Networker] Most Popular Backup Tapes

Oh my, it seems I've opened up a can of worms.   I was one of the lucky 
few
at college to be a guinea pig for using DEC Rainbows 

Albert Eddie Contractor AFRPA CIO/IT <Eddie.Albert AT AFRPA.PENTAGON.AF DOT 
MIL> 
wrote on 05/25/2006 10:31:04 AM:

> > Geez! You guys with those cassette tapes had all the luck! I 
> > got stuck taking courses in assembly language and FORTRAN on 
> > punched cards and paper tape. Fortunately, i eventually found 
> > a way to use a "modern"  crt to do my homework in a text 
> > editor and submit the jobs via batch, then punch the media in 
> > order to submit the assignment for a grade.
> 
> While in the Marine Corps we had hardened (i286) PCs (Green Machines)
> that had ticker tape messages. Print to ticker tape, delivered read on
> ticker tape reader. /ALE

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