Punch Cards.

[Tim]

On Thu, 2008-04-03 at 23:44 +0100, Nicholas Robinson wrote:
> The typical session started with bootstrapping RIM into the PDP 8e and then 
> loading the BIN loader off paper tape. Assuming you didn't make a mistake 
> hand-loading the 30odd 12 bit instructions in the RIM loader and the paper 
> tape didn't jam/fall out of the reader/stop for no apparent reason, you were 
> in business and could then load another paper tape with something more 
> interesting on it, like BASIC or Algol or an assembler (subject to the 
> jams/falls/stops noted before). If the optical paper tape reader (300 or so 
> cps) failed then we had to resort to the old teletype reader which was rated 
> at 10 cps, but always seemed slower. Even with only 8k core memory, it still 
> took a long time to load a big programme.
> 
> Ah, how the younger ones on the list must be enjoying reading about the lives 
> of the when-we's. 

Who've never had the displeasure of trying to load programs from audio
cassette tape on a personal computer from the 1980s...  On a friend's
C64, it was almost guaranteed that anything that took longer than two
minutes to load would foul up and require multiple attempts.  Even
without screw-ups, it was awfully slow.

Now, with these kids and their Windows box, they still get to experience
something like that (even if applications are quick to start), with
prolonged boot-ups, and all those reboots...  :-p

-- 
(This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's
 important to the thread.)

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