Reply to: Nostalgia not what it used to be

[Lockhouse]

The absolute joy when the rubber band holding the card deck together finally rots & they cascade all over the floor.

Just back from the punching bureau, 1500 lines of your finest COBOL ordered sequentially on punched cards. Senior op goes to load it into card reader watched by said programmer, fake tumbles and the whole lot goes on the floor. Cue apoplectic developer fit, then twenty seconds later he wondered why we were all doubled up laughing.

Sight unseen, just prior, the cards had been switched out for jumbled up old ones.

What wags we were.


p.s. I've not retired yet either. Learnt to code longhand on paper coding sheets, crossing zeroes and topping and tailing I's. One compile a day.

[BR14]

Ah, not playing with diodes any more then grandpa?

no son, - arthritis.

[LondonManc]

no.
i've kept up, which is why i'm working with the latest software and hardware.
and not that toytown windows/apple/android crap either.

Ah, not playing with diodes any more then grandpa?

[Zigenare]

You are still using a strain of OS/2 today if you use modern windows.

OS/2 - Wikipedia

First time I saw OS/2 it was obviously the future, OS/3 which was based on an illicit night of passion with VMS and became NT.

Thing that made the difference was NT 3.51 was much cheaper than OS/2 or Netware. One could have a server (normally a workstation with go faster stripes not a real sever that came later) that ran pretty well as a workstation for a few hundred quid. Combine that with M$ getting in bed with Dell & HP for drivers it was a no brainer. No hunting for the right premium card to run under OS/2 or Netware.

I was at IBM Hursley Park working on OS/2 for a while. The IBM version, obvs!

[DoctorStrangelove]

Ah but doubtless you would have made a diagonal line across the top of the stack with a felt pen, so they'd be easy to sort!

The card deck would have been SQCMed to put line numbers from 73 to 80 if it was source code or PGS (program image).

But it was still a pain in the arse.

Mostly quicker to repunch it.

[Zigenare]

Ah but doubtless you would have made a diagonal line across the top of the stack with a felt pen, so they'd be easy to sort!

I remember a batch compiler system, where you would feed a Cobol program into the card reader for overnight compilation and check the results the next morning, only to find you had omitted a full stop somewhere and the compile had failed!

I heard of someone who spent hours and hours trying to debug a Cobol program by poring over printouts, baffled at how it could possibly fail, until eventually they twigged that one full stop was a small blemish in the paper and wasn't actually in the program!

We had a nice lady at Ferranti who was very adept at sorting punch cards with a knitting needle.

[OwlHoot]

The absolute joy when the rubber band holding the card deck together finally rots & they cascade all over the floor.

Ah but doubtless you would have made a diagonal line across the top of the stack with a felt pen, so they'd be easy to sort!

I remember a batch compiler system, where you would feed a Cobol program into the card reader for overnight compilation and check the results the next morning, only to find you had omitted a full stop somewhere and the compile had failed!

I heard of someone who spent hours and hours trying to debug a Cobol program by poring over printouts, baffled at how it could possibly fail, until eventually they twigged that one full stop was a small blemish in the paper and wasn't actually in the program!

[darmstadt]

the HMC has a web GUI now, too.
scary
cheers for that link,might have a play.

Was using the new one on a z15 last week. We actually wrote an interface into the HMC so you didn't need to use the IBM web GUI as it was too complex for what we were doing. We just wanted to change memory and amount and type of processors quickly.

[BR14]

I occasionally bring up OS/2 as a VM for nostalgic reasons plus I quite like using it. There were calls to opensource a while ago but as IBM were still using in some products, i.e. the HMC which are now Linux it instead went here: ArcaOS 5.0 from Arca Noae is the new release of OS/2 for the 21st century

the HMC has a web GUI now, too.
scary
cheers for that link,might have a play.

[darmstadt]

I occasionally bring up OS/2 as a VM for nostalgic reasons plus I quite like using it. There were calls to opensource a while ago but as IBM were still using in some products, i.e. the HMC which are now Linux it instead went here: ArcaOS 5.0 from Arca Noae is the new release of OS/2 for the 21st century

[clearedforlanding]

I miss getting paid around 40 pounds per floppy disk I inserted as soon as the nlms started installing. The server room was a highly paid youth club.

Netware 3.12, I still dream about you.

[BR14]

Aye, but could you burn pirate software cds on them :-)

naw, ye couldnae.
fairy nuff.

[TestMangler]

can't remember, really.
i think it was a Goal systems product.
i replaced a wall of operator screens with four or five workstations with it though.
and was exceedingly well recompensed for it.

3270 emulation doesn't need much processor power anyway, it just gets you into the Real computer(s).

Aye, but could you burn pirate software cds on them :-)

[BR14]

I hope you were using ELEP2 for that and not some crappy 16 bit Windows equivalent running in compatibility

can't remember, really.
i think it was a Goal systems product.
i replaced a wall of operator screens with four or five workstations with it though.
and was exceedingly well recompensed for it.

3270 emulation doesn't need much processor power anyway, it just gets you into the Real computer(s).

[TestMangler]

i liked it for running multiple 3270 terminals in one box.

I hope you were using ELEP2 for that and not some crappy 16 bit Windows equivalent running in compatibility