HD sizes increase and prices fall again

[Submeg]

Whoa thats cool, but a bit expensive for me at the moment. I will probably get two 500 GB disks.

[wilsonsamm]

and only thirty years ago people were still weaving core memory by hand. And 16 bits of memory would cost you the modern equivalent of £1.

[J T]

Punch-cards FTW

[Harrison]

Punch cards were great, well until you needed to edit the data...

[Demon Cleaner]

Or the program got a return code and you had to restart with the program. We also had that here at work, long time ago. You had boxes with programs on cards, and feeded them to the machine.

Also annoying was, when you dropped the box, and had to sort out the cards again in the right order

[v85rawdeal]

or worse...

One went missing!!!

[Demon Cleaner]

or worse...

One went missing!!!

Then you simply rewrite the small missing code and print/punch another one

[Harrison]

You still actually used punch cards until recently? Sounds like the admin of that system was holding out for one hell of a service pack for the latest OS before taking the plung and upgrading!

[Demon Cleaner]

You still actually used punch cards until recently?

No, of course not. But I still saw the punching machines, as we still have one as showcase in the entry of our administration.

But I'm already working there for almost 12 years now, and the older ones told me how they had to run their jobs.

And of course I also wrote programs in JCL where you have a program that you can call during your own (programs made by IBM), and we had one to print/punch (called IEBPTPCH). WE used it to print, which is the same procedure when you use it to punch like in the past.

[Harrison]

I see. Much like any long running OS, it has it's querky commands due to legacy commands still being used and adapted for modern purposes.