Comments on: Shellshock

By: Kevin Prince

Kevin Prince — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 10:16:54 +0000

Punched tape – loved it. Sending murray code ry as a test signal on the old T100. Even had a tuning fork to get the mechanical bits whirring at the right frequency to transmit at 50 Baud. Even better the output was 80-0-80v so you could hook it up to the metal framed operators chair, step back and watch the fun!

After that used 8″ floppy disks to back up Plessey 256K bubble memory units – when the 256th K was saved the next save just pushed the oldest stuff off the stack and it was gone forever.

Happy days, and they were indeed. Mind you, less said about my morse the better.

Kev

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 21:17:55 +0000

Paper tapes. Now you’re making me feel really old…

By: John P.

John P. — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 21:06:48 +0000

I’ve still got an 8″ floppy disk in the back of the cupboard. It was for the DEC PDP/8 I first learnt programming on at school and had a time sharing OS on it so that you could have someone on the console and then another person using the keyboard on the line printer next to it. Meanwhile, someone else could prep a program on punch tape using the teletype. The only virus involved there was the bogey you flicked at your mate …

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 08:59:47 +0000

I remember 8″ floppies. My first job used those; using SORD hardware and an early 4GL called “PIPS3″.

I also remember the time when the highest bandwidth transatlantic data transfer was to fly on Concorde with a bag of magnetic tapes.

By: Claudiu Draghia

Claudiu Draghia — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 08:54:23 +0000

NICE ONE !!! but who remembers that floppy disks were either 8, 5 or 3.5 inch ?