[OT] paper on Retro ?

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Sat Oct 19 13:35:01 2002

> Can anyone remember how many IBM cards fit in a box? A card is nominally 8
> thou thick, and a tray is about 16.5" long internally, so it must be
> something of the order of 2000.

Yes.
But TRAYS, and drawers, were also available in 3000 and 4000 sizes.


> Who remembers drawing a cross or a diagonal line on the top of the card
> deck, so you had some chance of re-ordering the deck if someone dropped the
> box?

Depended a lot on how often it would be changed.
On a deck that would be changed OFTEN, you put ONE diagonal. Next time
that it changed significantly, you'd put a second diagonal. By the time
that you had a dozen different colors and directions of diagonals, that
deck would be overdue to be recopied to have nice fresh crisp cards.

The diagonals were NOT primarily for re-ordering! They were NOT really
adequate for single card positioning. They were to be able to
SEE whether re-ordering was needed (had they dropped the deck?)
You usually allowed space on the card (columns 73?-80) for a sequential
number that could be used with an 084 sorter for re-ordering.


Q: Remember how to dupe a deck on a 360? (If you had JCL cards, "/*"
could be misinterpreted as end of file). (A: load the data deck upside
down)


At many locations, different colors of cards had special meanings. When I
was working at Goddard Space Flight Center, I did not have appropriate
clearance for handling some of the colors of cards that I was working
with.


> > Who remembers using a folded card (16 thou) to check the points on their
> > engine (nominally 15 thou)? Folded in three to check the spark plug gap
> > (nominally 25 thou)??

And what did you use for adjusting your valves? (~ .006) Zig-zags?
Received on Sat Oct 19 2002 - 13:35:01 BST