Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London

[Rod Speed]

keithr wrote

Rod Speed wrote
keithr wrote
Rod Speed wrote
T.T. wrote

In the punch-card era you always had something in your shirt pocket to write on.

I still use the cards to write on even now.

Cut in half, they go in the wallet fine, now that T shirts dont have shirt pockets.

Apart from that, the whole concept was an abomination.

Specially when you dropped an entire box of cards which didnt have any numbering.

I used to run an IBM 360/50 in the evenings myself.

The printer automatically opened up when it ran out of paper.

One night, someone had a box of cards on the top of the printer.

You could hear the printer cover automatically opening up when it ran out of paper.

The poor bugger ran to the printer when he heard the cover opening.

Didnt get there in time. The box of cards had months of data on those cards.

At the CSIRO Dept of Computing Research back in the mid 70s the
hairy legged "Computer scientists" used to output all their jobs to
the card punch as well as the printer.

Pigs arse they did.

Hmm I don't remember anybody called rod speed at DCR,

Your problem.

so how would you know?

I did anyway.

Some offices were stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes of
cards. The cardpunch itself was a bastard to maintain, it was
always jamming or punching askew. I got the job of finding the
problem which turned out to be that the baseplate had been
completely worn out under the springs that braked the cards as they
were fed into the punching station. The baseplate was the thing
that the whole punch was built on and was a non replaceable part.
So I got the job of telling them that either they could buy a new
punch (secondhand as the punch was obsolete) or do without. There
was much sobbing and gnashing of teeth, we took the punch out and
they never punched another card again which made it obvious that
the millions of cards that they had punched were a total waste of
time and money.

ABS were using cards as input right up to the early 80s.

Yeah, the boxes of punched cards were used to move data between the
1620 and the 360/50 at the ANU, well before that time you are talking about.

I was at ABS from '73 to '76 and from '80 to '86. ANU, in my
experience were pretty anti-IBM, the academics preferred Univac.

Have fun explaining the hardware they had in the late 60s.

 

[Rod Speed]

keithr wrote

Rod Speed wrote
keithr wrote
Rod Speed wrote
T.T. wrote

In the punch-card era you always had something in your shirt
pocket to write on.

I still use the cards to write on even now.

Cut in half, they go in the wallet fine, now that T shirts dont have shirt pockets.

Depends on the type, some had oil impregnated into them.

None the ones I ever bought in large quantity ever did.

Left a nasty stain in your pocket and hard to write on.

A number of companies gave away cards of the same form factor as
punch cards but thinner an with the company logo as note pads.

I haven't seen a punch card in decades though.

I've still got about half a box of them left.

That shows you more as an old fart than a geek.

Nope, just shows they are convenient to write on.

 

[Rod Speed]

jmfbahciv wrote

Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote

Never said they were, just quite expensive to maintain because they werent that reliable.

Much more expensive to maintain than what replaced them.

Keypunches were very reliable unless you abused them extremely.

Like I said, with a decent collection of punches, there was always one or two with a problem.

That's very odd. My shop had a dozen 26s and one or two 29s.

I was talking about just 029s.

It was very rare to have one with a down IBM card on it. Those
keypunches were used by students who had minimal training about
the care and feeding of keypunches. The most common mainentance
problem was when a student forgot to flip the switch which lifted the
wheels off the drumcard. But that was fixed in a couple of minutes.

And the cost of having them on maintenance contract was substantial.

How many did you have?

Rather more than you were tallking about.

 

[jmfbahciv]

Charlie Gibbs wrote:

In article <PM0004966DCB8D7702@aca218f1.ipt.aol.com>, See.above@aol.com
(jmfbahciv) writes:

Charlie Gibbs wrote:

I finally wrote my own assembler. Although it had a number of very
nice features that were missing from the stock assembler, its primary
goal (which I achieved) was to run twice as fast. It was a bit
easier to scrounge 20 minutes of machine time than 40.

Curious (20 min vs 40 min). Could make a guess of how many minutes
were the threshold? 30 mins?

I don't think there was a threshold so much as programmers had the
lowest priority for machine time, and the quicker I could get in and
out, the more likely I could wheedle access.

Wheedling worked?

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Rod Speed wrote:

jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote

Never said they were, just quite expensive to maintain because they
werent that reliable.

Much more expensive to maintain than what replaced them.

Keypunches were very reliable unless you abused them extremely.

Like I said, with a decent collection of punches, there was always one or
two with a problem.

That's very odd. My shop had a dozen 26s and one or two 29s.

I was talking about just 029s.

It was very rare to have one with a down IBM card on it. Those
keypunches were used by students who had minimal training about
the care and feeding of keypunches. The most common mainentance
problem was when a student forgot to flip the switch which lifted the
wheels off the drumcard. But that was fixed in a couple of minutes.

And the cost of having them on maintenance contract was substantial.

How many did you have?

Rather more than you were tallking about.


Sheesh! Can't you answer a question with a fact?

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Charlie Gibbs wrote:

In article <PM0004968176B23B37@aca28b04.ipt.aol.com>, See.above@aol.com
(jmfbahciv) writes:

Rod Speed wrote:

jmfbahciv wrote

Keypunches were very reliable unless you abused them extremely.

Like I said, with a decent collection of punches, there was always
one or two with a problem.

That's very odd. My shop had a dozen 26s and one or two 29s. It was
very rare to have one with a down IBM card on it. Those keypunches
were used by students who had minimal training about the care and
feeding of keypunches.

In our student area, there were usually one or two punches down
due to jams. For me, this was a benefit, for I knew how to
clear them. In a student area with long lineups for a punch,
it was as if one had been reserved for me; I'd walk past the
lineups, sit down at the jammed punch, clear it, punch my cards,
and leave the punch available for someone else.

The most common mainentance problem was when a student forgot to flip
the switch which lifted the wheels off the drumcard. But that was fixed
in a couple of minutes.

If you cared to dig down inside the machine and retrieve the missing
star wheels, and knew how to re-attach them...

Sure. Neither of the above two breakages required a field service

call...usually.

/BAH

 

On 03 Dec 10 10:26:36 -0800, "Charlie Gibbs"
<cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

In article <em4df6draa96s38lv6hud9f1pialqb3bt0@4ax.com>,
ArarghMail011NOSPAM@NOT.AT.Arargh.com (ArarghMail011NOSPAM) writes:

On Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:00:20 +0000 (UTC), Roland Hutchinson
my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:

Develop an OCR program that's good enough to use for the purpose (but
still requires careful proofreading of its output): years, possibly
decades of work.

The program is already developed, and the output is pretty good, so
far. It's just that it is S L O W.

Slow is no problem - get a scanner with a sheet feeder, fire it up,
and go to bed. It's the preuf reeding that's the killer.
The program isn't that smart. It uses TIF files for input. It has

a numer of other drawbacks one of which is that it does a poor job
of deskewing the image.

Besides, scanners that can read B sized paper that have feeders
aren't all that cheap.
--
ArarghMail012 at [drop the 'http://www.' from ->] http://www.arargh.com
BCET Basic Compiler Page: http://www.arargh.com/basic/index.html

To reply by email, remove the extra stuff from the reply address.

 

[Rod Speed]

jmfbahciv wrote

Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote

Never said they were, just quite expensive to maintain because they werent that reliable.

Much more expensive to maintain than what replaced them.

Keypunches were very reliable unless you abused them extremely.

Like I said, with a decent collection of punches, there was always one or two with a problem.

That's very odd. My shop had a dozen 26s and one or two 29s.

I was talking about just 029s.

It was very rare to have one with a down IBM card on it. Those
keypunches were used by students who had minimal training about
the care and feeding of keypunches. The most common mainentance
problem was when a student forgot to flip the switch which lifted
the wheels off the drumcard. But that was fixed in a couple of minutes.

And the cost of having them on maintenance contract was substantial.

How many did you have?

Rather more than you were tallking about.

Sheesh! Can't you answer a question with a fact?

Everyone can see you are lying, as always.

 

[Rod Speed]

jmfbahciv wrote:

Charlie Gibbs wrote:
jmfbahciv wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
jmfbahciv wrote

Keypunches were very reliable unless you abused them extremely.

Like I said, with a decent collection of punches, there was always
one or two with a problem.

That's very odd. My shop had a dozen 26s and one or two 29s. It
was very rare to have one with a down IBM card on it. Those
keypunches were used by students who had minimal training about the
care and feeding of keypunches.

In our student area, there were usually one or two punches down
due to jams. For me, this was a benefit, for I knew how to
clear them. In a student area with long lineups for a punch,
it was as if one had been reserved for me; I'd walk past the
lineups, sit down at the jammed punch, clear it, punch my cards,
and leave the punch available for someone else.

The most common mainentance problem was when a student forgot to
flip the switch which lifted the wheels off the drumcard. But that
was fixed in a couple of minutes.

If you cared to dig down inside the machine and retrieve the missing
star wheels, and knew how to re-attach them...

Sure. Neither of the above two breakages required a field service call...usually.

Irrelevant to whether they had to be on maintenance contract anyway.

 

[jmfbahciv]

Rod Speed wrote:

jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote

Never said they were, just quite expensive to maintain because they
werent that reliable.

Much more expensive to maintain than what replaced them.

Keypunches were very reliable unless you abused them extremely.

Like I said, with a decent collection of punches, there was always one
or two with a problem.

That's very odd. My shop had a dozen 26s and one or two 29s.

I was talking about just 029s.

It was very rare to have one with a down IBM card on it. Those
keypunches were used by students who had minimal training about
the care and feeding of keypunches. The most common mainentance
problem was when a student forgot to flip the switch which lifted
the wheels off the drumcard. But that was fixed in a couple of minutes.

And the cost of having them on maintenance contract was substantial.

How many did you have?

Rather more than you were tallking about.

Sheesh! Can't you answer a question with a fact?

Everyone can see you are lying, as always.

You seem to be having a conception problem. A simple, "I can't remember"
answer would have sufficed.

You must go through a carton of kleenix every day.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Rod Speed wrote:

jmfbahciv wrote:
Charlie Gibbs wrote:
jmfbahciv wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
jmfbahciv wrote

Keypunches were very reliable unless you abused them extremely.

Like I said, with a decent collection of punches, there was always
one or two with a problem.

That's very odd. My shop had a dozen 26s and one or two 29s. It
was very rare to have one with a down IBM card on it. Those
keypunches were used by students who had minimal training about the
care and feeding of keypunches.

In our student area, there were usually one or two punches down
due to jams. For me, this was a benefit, for I knew how to
clear them. In a student area with long lineups for a punch,
it was as if one had been reserved for me; I'd walk past the
lineups, sit down at the jammed punch, clear it, punch my cards,
and leave the punch available for someone else.

The most common mainentance problem was when a student forgot to
flip the switch which lifted the wheels off the drumcard. But that
was fixed in a couple of minutes.

If you cared to dig down inside the machine and retrieve the missing
star wheels, and knew how to re-attach them...

Sure. Neither of the above two breakages required a field service
call...usually.

Irrelevant to whether they had to be on maintenance contract anyway.

They didn't have to be on a service contract but it was wise to
have a contract early on.

It's not irrelevant when you have a dozen keypunches which are used
12-14 hours/day. One down keypunch can create student unrest.

/BAH

 

[Rod Speed]

jmfbahciv wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote

Never said they were, just quite expensive to maintain because they werent that reliable.

Much more expensive to maintain than what replaced them.

Keypunches were very reliable unless you abused them extremely.

Like I said, with a decent collection of punches, there was always one or two with a problem.

That's very odd. My shop had a dozen 26s and one or two 29s.

I was talking about just 029s.

It was very rare to have one with a down IBM card on it. Those
keypunches were used by students who had minimal training about
the care and feeding of keypunches. The most common mainentance
problem was when a student forgot to flip the switch which lifted
the wheels off the drumcard. But that was fixed in a couple of minutes.

And the cost of having them on maintenance contract was substantial.

How many did you have?

Rather more than you were tallking about.

Sheesh! Can't you answer a question with a fact?

Everyone can see you are lying, as always.

You seem to be having a conception problem.

You clearly need to retake Bullshitting 101.

A simple, "I can't remember" answer would have sufficed.

It would not have been accurate, fool.

<reams of your puerile shit any 2 year old could leave for dead flushed where it belongs>

 

[Rod Speed]

jmfbahciv wrote

Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Charlie Gibbs wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote

Keypunches were very reliable unless you abused them extremely.

Like I said, with a decent collection of punches,
there was always one or two with a problem.

That's very odd. My shop had a dozen 26s and one or two 29s.
It was very rare to have one with a down IBM card on it. Those
keypunches were used by students who had minimal training
about the care and feeding of keypunches.

In our student area, there were usually one or two punches down
due to jams. For me, this was a benefit, for I knew how to
clear them. In a student area with long lineups for a punch,
it was as if one had been reserved for me; I'd walk past the
lineups, sit down at the jammed punch, clear it, punch my cards,
and leave the punch available for someone else.

The most common mainentance problem was when a student
forgot to flip the switch which lifted the wheels off the drumcard.
But that was fixed in a couple of minutes.

If you cared to dig down inside the machine and retrieve
the missing star wheels, and knew how to re-attach them...

Sure. Neither of the above two breakages required a field service call...usually.

Irrelevant to whether they had to be on maintenance contract anyway.

They didn't have to be on a service contract

Depends on the capabilitys of the individuals involved.

but it was wise to have a contract early on.

It's not irrelevant when you have a dozen keypunches which are used
12-14 hours/day. One down keypunch can create student unrest.

What I said in more words.

 

[Charlie Gibbs]

In article <PM0004969540AC5BEF@aca2b946.ipt.aol.com>, See.above@aol.com
(jmfbahciv) writes:

Charlie Gibbs wrote:

In article <PM0004966DCB8D7702@aca218f1.ipt.aol.com>,
See.above@aol.com (jmfbahciv) writes:

Charlie Gibbs wrote:

I finally wrote my own assembler. Although it had a number of
very nice features that were missing from the stock assembler,
its primary goal (which I achieved) was to run twice as fast.
It was a bit easier to scrounge 20 minutes of machine time than 40.

Curious (20 min vs 40 min). Could make a guess of how many minutes
were the threshold? 30 mins?

I don't think there was a threshold so much as programmers had the
lowest priority for machine time, and the quicker I could get in and
out, the more likely I could wheedle access.

Wheedling worked?

Sometimes. At other times a more direct approach was more effective:
"Do you want this fix or not?"

--
/~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

 

[Frank Slootweg]

keithr <keith@nowhere.com.au> wrote:

On 3/12/2010 5:48 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
jmfbahciv<See.above@aol.com> wrote:
Frank Slootweg wrote:
jmfbahciv<See.above@aol.com> wrote:
Frank Slootweg wrote:
jmfbahciv<See.above@aol.com> wrote:
Frank Slootweg wrote:
[...]
Scanning it with OCR sofware is much easier and has
remarkably good/reliable results.

Sometimes. Think about the listings generated by ribbon ink.

I have had some remarkable results with my lowly EPSON
(Perfection V30) scanner. Also on very old policies which were
printed by a (ribbon ink) line-printer,

Do you know which one? How did you eliminate the lines?

No, I don't know which line printer, I only have the printouts.

OK. Some were pretty good at printing and others were awful. I was
curious.
[...]
FWIW, the policies were printed on - somewhat translucent - 'white'
paper.

How wide was the paper? Or was it TTY paper?

It was A4 format, i.e. about the US 8.5x11" format.

Doesn't sound like line printer output, that was usually 135 column
sprocketed paper (a few were 80 columns)

It was probably the other way around. We computer geeks needed 13X
column width for our silly source code, etc., but the real/business
world was happily printing documents for their customers, and that was
US-letter/A4.

Anyway, all the 13X column line printers I remember, could also do 80
column by just moving the right-hand sprocket.

80 column is 8.5 inch wide US letter format. A4 is a little bit less
wide, so no problem. For US-only line/sprocket-feed printers, where the
right-hand sprocket could not be moved far enough left to accomodate
normal A4 (with tear-offs) paper, there was paper where the left or
right tear-off was a little wider, resulting in A4 width between
tear-offs.

To those trying to remember names of printers, IIRC one popular brand
was Data Products. IIRC my (ex) employer - HP - sold rebadged Data
Products printers.

 

[Joe Thompson]

On 2010-12-05, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:

Anyway, all the 13X column line printers I remember, could also do 80
column by just moving the right-hand sprocket.

I had a Seikosha 9-pin dot-matrix printer (ca. 1990) that worked this
way. If your fanfold was 8.5 inches wide, you would set it left; if it
was 11 inches wide, set it right. You could set it anywhere in between
but there would be no reason to.

After a few false starts I developed the habit of rough-aligning by
hand, threading the paper onto the sprocket, then using the holes
themselves as a guide for proper alignment.

I remember one of the ads for that printer in _Computer Shopper_ showed
a sheet of aluminum with the logo printed on it, allegedly by the bare
pins of the printer in question (the idea was to show that the printer
was tough). -- Joe
--
Joe Thompson -
E-mail addresses in headers are valid. | http://www.orion-com.com/
"...the FDA takes a dim view of exploding pharmaceuticals..." -- Derek Lowe

 

[Charles Richmond]

On 12/5/10 2:34 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:

[snip...] [snip...] [snip...]

To those trying to remember names of printers, IIRC one popular brand
was Data Products. IIRC my (ex) employer - HP - sold rebadged Data
Products printers.

I guess Data Products was a common third-party printer that was
"re-badged" by different companies. At a PPoE, I worked in a lab
with a Harris 800 (later a Harris 1200 with ECL) that had a Data
Products line printer re-badged as a Harris. I do *not* remember
us ever having any trouble with our Data Products printer.

You *could* buy the same printer from Data Products directly for
*less* money, but then you could *not* get Harris to cover the
thing on their service agreement. So you were constrained to buy
the higher priced re-badged model.

Later, Harris started re-badging those cheap Wyse terminals. One
of the labs at my PPoE just bought *twice* as many of the cheapest
Wyse terminals directly from Wyse. (I think they were about $50
each.) Harris would *not* cover these under their service
agreement, but if one broke... the lab just threw it away and got
another one out of storage. Cheaper to replace than pay the
service agreement for the re-badged version.

--
+----------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond |
| |
| plano dot net at aquaporin4 dot com |
+----------------------------------------+

 

[Charles Richmond]

On 12/5/10 2:16 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

In article<PM0004969540AC5BEF@aca2b946.ipt.aol.com>, See.above@aol.com
(jmfbahciv) writes:

Charlie Gibbs wrote:

In article<PM0004966DCB8D7702@aca218f1.ipt.aol.com>,
See.above@aol.com (jmfbahciv) writes:

Charlie Gibbs wrote:

I finally wrote my own assembler. Although it had a number of
very nice features that were missing from the stock assembler,
its primary goal (which I achieved) was to run twice as fast.
It was a bit easier to scrounge 20 minutes of machine time than 40.

Curious (20 min vs 40 min). Could make a guess of how many minutes
were the threshold? 30 mins?

I don't think there was a threshold so much as programmers had the
lowest priority for machine time, and the quicker I could get in and
out, the more likely I could wheedle access.

Wheedling worked?

Sometimes. At other times a more direct approach was more effective:
"Do you want this fix or not?"

Yeah... You could say: "Okay, I don't really need to put in this
software fix. Only 40% of the paychecks will come out wrong, and
we can fix all that later..."

--
+----------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond |
| |
| plano dot net at aquaporin4 dot com |
+----------------------------------------+

 

[jmfbahciv]

Rod Speed wrote:

jmfbahciv wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote

Never said they were, just quite expensive to maintain because they
werent that reliable.

Much more expensive to maintain than what replaced them.

Keypunches were very reliable unless you abused them extremely.

Like I said, with a decent collection of punches, there was always one
or two with a problem.

That's very odd. My shop had a dozen 26s and one or two 29s.

I was talking about just 029s.

It was very rare to have one with a down IBM card on it. Those
keypunches were used by students who had minimal training about
the care and feeding of keypunches. The most common mainentance
problem was when a student forgot to flip the switch which lifted
the wheels off the drumcard. But that was fixed in a couple of minutes.

And the cost of having them on maintenance contract was substantial.

How many did you have?

Rather more than you were tallking about.

Sheesh! Can't you answer a question with a fact?

Everyone can see you are lying, as always.

You seem to be having a conception problem.

You clearly need to retake Bullshitting 101.

Not me.

A simple, "I can't remember" answer would have sufficed.

It would not have been accurate, fool.

So you are one of those people who believe that withholding data
and information gives you more power.

reams of your puerile shit any 2 year old could leave for dead flushed
where it belongs

Not cartons of Kleenix but railroad cars full.

/BAH

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:

Rod Speed wrote:


A simple, "I can't remember" answer would have sufficed.

It would not have been accurate, fool.

So you are one of those people who believe that withholding data
and information gives you more power.


reams of your puerile shit any 2 year old could leave for dead flushed
where it belongs

Not cartons of Kleenix but railroad cars full.

Barb, really -- he just isn't worth the effort.
--
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)