Continuous Reboots Plague Windows XP SP3 Users

Some of my earlier programming classes were done using punched cards. It was
a pain to get used to the old manual typewriters then try to use the punch
card machines which were electric. You'd end up banging the heck out of the
keys, till you learned to hit them softer. Of course then when you went back
to the manual typewriter, it'd take a bit to realize that you weren't typing
anything because you weren't hitting the keys hard enough.

Nothing worse than not numbering your cards to save time, but then end up
with a large stack of cards in a shoebox that you promptly managed to drop
on the floor.

We had one card punch machine in our electronics lab that had been rebuilt a
few times to the point where the portion that stamped the writing across the
top of the card had the wrong letters on the right keys.

The cards still worked fine (the holes were in the right places), but the
printed characters across the top were pure gibberish. Of course that came
in real handy when someone wanted to borrow your cards to see how you had
written your program. Hmmmmm. now that I think about it, maybe it was an
early form of copy protection?

I don't think I still have any of my punched cards, but I still have a few
programs on paper tape.


"Tony Harding" <ToHard@nowhere.org> wrote in message
news:482aa6ad$0$25024$607ed4bc@cv.net...
> William R. Walsh wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>>> With more to come. There are some really bad bugs in Leopard
>>> that may not get fixed until the next major release.
>>
>> Not to drag things too far off-topic (feel free to ignore this posting if
>> you want to see only Dell items!)
>>
>> I still haven't seen much trouble from the desktop version. That said...
>>
>> ...
>>
>> The server version of Mac OS X 10.5 is miserable in every way, shape and
>> form. After what I've been through with it, I've felt very inclined to
>> fold,
>> spindle and mutilate.
>
> Wow, does that ever date you! (and me, too, of course, admitting that I
> know the origin of "fold, spindle and mutilate"!
>
> A real blast from the past.
>
> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched cards?

Tony Harding wrote:
> William R. Walsh wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>>> With more to come. There are some really bad bugs in Leopard
>>> that may not get fixed until the next major release.
>>
>> Not to drag things too far off-topic (feel free to ignore this posting if
>> you want to see only Dell items!)
>>
>> I still haven't seen much trouble from the desktop version. That said...
>>
>> ...
>>
>> The server version of Mac OS X 10.5 is miserable in every way, shape and
>> form. After what I've been through with it, I've felt very inclined to
>> fold,
>> spindle and mutilate.
>
> Wow, does that ever date you! (and me, too, of course, admitting that I
> know the origin of "fold, spindle and mutilate"!
>
> A real blast from the past.
>
> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched cards?

I have a stack of them on my desk. I use them occasionally for
bookmarks, and have also cut up some to make flash cards for tutoring.

If I searched around a bit, I could also find my old box of punched tape
splices (of course I haven't actually used them in maybe thirty years).

On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@notmyisp.com>
wrote:

>> A real blast from the past.
>>
>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched cards?
>
>I have a stack of them on my desk. I use them occasionally for
>bookmarks, and have also cut up some to make flash cards for tutoring.
>
>If I searched around a bit, I could also find my old box of punched tape
>splices (of course I haven't actually used them in maybe thirty years).

In 1985 I took the last semester of PL/I that used cards. I remember
walking around the computer lab seeing students with huge stacks of
cards to read in.

Prior to that I was lucky in that next to my high school there was a
vocational school and I was allowed to take some computer classes
there. They had all of the hardware to sort the cards.

So I got to see the tail end of card usage.

Oh, before that at my Dad's engineering company they used cards so
when I went in there on Saturdays I saw them used in a production
environment.

My mother made a hideous Christmas wreath using punch cards sprayed
with gold paint.

In news:e01n24d28knl1f1218rc94u2f0pe323n92@4ax.com,
journey typed on Wed, 14 May 2008 19:34:25 -0500:
> On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@notmyisp.com>
> wrote:
>
>>> A real blast from the past.
>>>
>>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched
>>> cards?
>>
>> I have a stack of them on my desk. I use them occasionally for
>> bookmarks, and have also cut up some to make flash cards for
>> tutoring.
>>
>> If I searched around a bit, I could also find my old box of punched
>> tape splices (of course I haven't actually used them in maybe thirty
>> years).
>
> In 1985 I took the last semester of PL/I that used cards. I remember
> walking around the computer lab seeing students with huge stacks of
> cards to read in.
>
> Prior to that I was lucky in that next to my high school there was a
> vocational school and I was allowed to take some computer classes
> there. They had all of the hardware to sort the cards.
>
> So I got to see the tail end of card usage.
>
> Oh, before that at my Dad's engineering company they used cards so
> when I went in there on Saturdays I saw them used in a production
> environment.
>
> My mother made a hideous Christmas wreath using punch cards sprayed
> with gold paint.

Ah... the good old days! :-D

P.S. Journey... it only sounds like I am about 15 years ahead of you. So
I was still probably a kid when you were born. :-)

--
Bill

BillW50 wrote:
>
> In news:e01n24d28knl1f1218rc94u2f0pe323n92@4ax.com,
> journey typed on Wed, 14 May 2008 19:34:25 -0500:
> > On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@notmyisp.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >>> A real blast from the past.
> >>>
> >>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched
> >>> cards?

I have about fifty boxes of 2,000 punched cards each in the basement

Fortran II, Fortran IV, FAP, GMAP, BAL, SNOBOL, and most uselessly
some binary mixed in for machines you'll never see again.

Chiefly just stuff stashed in my NJ office when I moved to Ohio.

Thereafter everything was on a HD somewhere.

I also have a dozen 800bpi NRZI and 1600bpi PE tapes in a closet.

Never throw anything out.
--
rhhardin@mindspring.com

On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

Left grad school in 74 w/Master in Civil Engineering concentration in
Structures. Went to work w/ Brown & Root doing off shore drilling
platforms. Punch cards were a way of life.

Bob Levine wrote:
> Hank Arnold (MVP) wrote:
>
>> You took the words out of my mouth. Even the holy MAC OS has had
>> patches and updates....
>
> With more to come. There are some really bad bugs in Leopard that may
> not get fixed until the next major release. And for all you want to say
> about Microsoft, at least they allow you buy and use an older O/S. Apple
> refuses to sell or even allow the installation of Tiger on new machines.
>
> If the roles were reversed and Microsoft tried to pull that, there'd be
> quite an uproar.

I doubt that very much, Microsoft has a history of throwing its weight
around and doing pretty much what it wants.

Timothy Drouillard wrote:
> Some of my earlier programming classes were done using punched cards. It
> was a pain to get used to the old manual typewriters then try to use the
> punch card machines which were electric. You'd end up banging the heck
> out of the keys, till you learned to hit them softer. Of course then
> when you went back to the manual typewriter, it'd take a bit to realize
> that you weren't typing anything because you weren't hitting the keys
> hard enough.
>
> Nothing worse than not numbering your cards to save time, but then end
> up with a large stack of cards in a shoebox that you promptly managed to
> drop on the floor.

Oy, you're a true veteran of punched cards, Tim!

> We had one card punch machine in our electronics lab that had been
> rebuilt a few times to the point where the portion that stamped the
> writing across the top of the card had the wrong letters on the right keys.
>
> The cards still worked fine (the holes were in the right places), but
> the printed characters across the top were pure gibberish. Of course
> that came in real handy when someone wanted to borrow your cards to see
> how you had written your program. Hmmmmm. now that I think about it,
> maybe it was an early form of copy protection?

"It's not a bug, it's a feature" - LOL, a foreshadowing of Microsoft?

I fell into a time warp a couple of days ago while doing some serious
spring cleaning, I found a bunch of backups from 1992 on 5.25" diskettes.

journey wrote:
> On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@notmyisp.com>
> wrote:
>
>>> A real blast from the past.
>>>
>>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched cards?
>> I have a stack of them on my desk. I use them occasionally for
>> bookmarks, and have also cut up some to make flash cards for tutoring.
>>
>> If I searched around a bit, I could also find my old box of punched tape
>> splices (of course I haven't actually used them in maybe thirty years).
>
> In 1985 I took the last semester of PL/I that used cards. I remember
> walking around the computer lab seeing students with huge stacks of
> cards to read in.
>
> Prior to that I was lucky in that next to my high school there was a
> vocational school and I was allowed to take some computer classes
> there. They had all of the hardware to sort the cards.
>
> So I got to see the tail end of card usage.
>
> Oh, before that at my Dad's engineering company they used cards so
> when I went in there on Saturdays I saw them used in a production
> environment.
>
> My mother made a hideous Christmas wreath using punch cards sprayed
> with gold paint.

LOL, very creative, but OY!

Ron Hardin wrote:
> BillW50 wrote:
>> In news:e01n24d28knl1f1218rc94u2f0pe323n92@4ax.com,
>> journey typed on Wed, 14 May 2008 19:34:25 -0500:
>>> On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@notmyisp.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> A real blast from the past.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched
>>>>> cards?
>
> I have about fifty boxes of 2,000 punched cards each in the basement
>
> Fortran II, Fortran IV, FAP, GMAP, BAL, SNOBOL, and most uselessly
> some binary mixed in for machines you'll never see again.
>
> Chiefly just stuff stashed in my NJ office when I moved to Ohio.
>
> Thereafter everything was on a HD somewhere.
>
> I also have a dozen 800bpi NRZI and 1600bpi PE tapes in a closet.
>
> Never throw anything out.

Whoa, sounds like you have a museum there, Ron.