The History of the Floppy Disk

[Lockhouse]

I learned to code on paper coding sheets which used to get sent away and get punched at the bureau (I punched my own JCL cards). As I was just a grunt my programs used to come back full of errors whereas the senior guys used to get their cards double punched (i.e. verified). We were only allowed one compile a day so it used to have a real impact on my productivity but it did teach me not to make too many mistakes.

We also had printouts of all the programs in huge racks of one part stationery and the convention was if you made a change to a program you had to take a complete printout and hang it in the racks. Pretty much all coding was designed using the printouts and coding sheets and not on the actual computer which had a pretty primitive line editor and a 2mb of core memory (1mb plus a 1mb add-on that cost over £100,000).

[SupremeSpod]

Apple II, I always remember some keen member of my A level class having 5-6 drives linked in a stack to run his great Cobol A level project application.

Sigh........

One of the nicest bits of 6502 I've ever seen was written for the Apple II - Sweet16 - Steve Wozniak is a genius.

[Scrag Meister]

The History of the Floppy Disk - Input Output

Worth a read for all nostalgic geeks

Apple II, I always remember some keen member of my A level class having 5-6 drives linked in a stack to run his great Cobol A level project application.

Sigh........

[mudskipper]

You could decorate the office at Christmas with paper tape streamers and punch card stars.

[OwlHoot]

Ah, Data Processing was fun then.

WHS - I knew someone who wasted several days trying to debug a COBOL program, staring at a hard-copy print out analyzing it line by line for hours on end but could find nothing wrong, until eventually it turned out there was a dark blemish in the paper of exactly the size and location of a full stop that should have been present but wasn't. Classic

[ctdctd]

You're psychic?

Circle, Square, Triangle?

Cube

What do I win?

[xoggoth]

How did I know there would be a z reply even before clicking?

[geoffreywhereveryoumaybe]

Prefer the History of Mr Polly

With the classic line, "Little dog!" he said, and moved doorward hastily. "Eating my bicycle tyre, I believe".

[expat]

The History of the Floppy Disk - Input Output

Worth a read for all nostalgic geeks

they enabled developers and users to stop using the dreaded paper tape (which were easy to fold, spindle, and mutilate, not to mention to pirate) and the loathed IBM 5081 punch card

Don't agree. If your source was on cards you could fix a bug by punching 1 new card, which I often did on a non-interpreting hand punch with 12 keys - 1 for each hole position, and you just had to remember which holes made which character. Or you'd get your compile back with errors, a day later.

Ah, Data Processing was fun then.

[SimonMac]

The History of the Floppy Disk - Input Output

Worth a read for all nostalgic geeks