On Fri, 15 Dec 2000 09:24:04 CST, "John R. Grant" said:
<cringe> that would be 9600 bit per inch GCR format 9-track tape, don't you think? </cringe>
At least in the IBM world, the options for 7-track were 200/556/800 bpi with even or odd parity, and mode=normal/data converter/translator. For 9-track the options are 800 NRZI, 1600 PE, and 6250 GCR. I still have 21 9-track tapes in my office that I need to do something with, as our last system with 3420-style round tapes is being decomissioned in the next few months. -- Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech
Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
On Fri, 15 Dec 2000 09:24:04 CST, "John R. Grant" said:
<cringe> that would be 9600 bit per inch GCR format 9-track tape, don't you think? </cringe>
At least in the IBM world, the options for 7-track were 200/556/800 bpi with even or odd parity, and mode=normal/data converter/translator. For 9-track the options are 800 NRZI, 1600 PE, and 6250 GCR.
I still have 21 9-track tapes in my office that I need to do something with, as our last system with 3420-style round tapes is being decomissioned in the next few months. -- Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech
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-- Hello; Real Men use punched paper tape to store programs and load the boot block, after toggling its binary location on the system console register :) The Gods Who Walk Among Us program in machine code by toggling it in at the console. (I still have some punched paper tape somewhere. I remember feeling impressed when I graduated to punched cards. They didn't tend to crack if you had a string of all bits set to one.) On the other hand, I did tens of thousands of lines of code on IBM punched cards and I never once recall a bug caused by a chad, hanging or otherwise. Regards Marshall Eubanks Multicast Technologies, Inc. 10301 Democracy Lane, Suite 201 Fairfax, Virginia 22030 Phone : 703-293-9624 Fax : 703-293-9609 e-mail : tme@on-the-i.com http://www.on-the-i.com
Hello all -
Real Men use punched paper tape to store programs and load the boot block, after toggling its binary location on the system console register :) The Gods Who Walk Among Us program in machine code by toggling it in at the console.
(I still have some punched paper tape somewhere. I remember feeling impressed when I graduated to punched cards. They didn't tend to crack if you had a string of all bits set to one.)
On the other hand, I did tens of thousands of lines of code on IBM punched cards and I never once recall a bug caused by a chad, hanging or otherwise.
Further to my previous post, we used to use punched paper tape as the absolute fall-back to boot the acquisition sytem (we didn't take disks to sea back then). We had a heck of a time keeping the tapes dry.... ;-) Hugh -- Radiator: the most portable, flexible and configurable RADIUS server anywhere. Available on *NIX, *BSD, Windows 95/98/2000, NT, MacOS X. - Nets: internetwork inventory and management - graphical, extensible, flexible with hardware, software, platform and database independence.
In other words: <satire> Actor: "With my IBM(TM) punched cards, I never had a problem with chads" (screen fades to blue) (IBM eBusiness Solutions logo fades in) Announcer: "Get the punched cards that let you stay in your office, instead of leaving it to the next guy" (end of commercial) </satire> And of course, the video of the actor is in black and white.... -Paul PS: I think it would be vaguely funny for April 1st if IBM ran a few ads for really really old IBM stuff, like a really really old typewriter, or a paper tape punch as an eBusiness storage solution or something like that. Taking old stuff and acting like it is top of the line, and using modern advertising and marketing technologies to do it. "With the remarkable power of the PC/XT, I can get my work done much quicker", etc ;-) At 11:20 AM 12/15/2000, you wrote:
On the other hand, I did tens of thousands of lines of code on IBM punched cards and I never once recall a bug caused by a chad, hanging or otherwise.
Regards Marshall Eubanks
By Popular request I have moved my signature to: http://198.87.147.223/paulsig.txt Paul Timmins paul@timmins.net http://www.timmins.net/ ICQ#: 15422024 - Home 21888714 - Work Laptop "By definition, if you don't stand up for anything you stand for nothing" ---Paul Timmins
I have a hanging chad story. I worked for GE subbing to NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center in the late 60's. Our group programmed the Atlas first stage simulations. We had such a program. Never found the bug until one of the operators dropped the deck. We would not have found it then except he (they) tried to put the deck back together :) I do not rememver if this was a 7090 or a GE-235 program. Whichever system it was an IBM keypunch that did the deed. As I recall both systems did checksums so I guess in the "open" position it must have closed its neighbor.
At 11:20 AM 12/15/2000, you wrote:
On the other hand, I did tens of thousands of lines of code on IBM punched cards and I never once recall a bug caused by a chad, hanging or otherwise.
Regards Marshall Eubanks
_____ Douglas Denault doug@safeport.com Voice: 301-469-8766 Fax: 301-469-0601
Hello all - On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
On Fri, 15 Dec 2000 09:24:04 CST, "John R. Grant" said:
<cringe> that would be 9600 bit per inch GCR format 9-track tape, don't you think? </cringe>
At least in the IBM world, the options for 7-track were 200/556/800 bpi with even or odd parity, and mode=normal/data converter/translator. For 9-track the options are 800 NRZI, 1600 PE, and 6250 GCR.
I still have 21 9-track tapes in my office that I need to do something with, as our last system with 3420-style round tapes is being decomissioned in the next few months.
Slightly off topic, but interesting nonetheless. I once worked on a marine seismic data acquisition system in the North Sea oil fields, and we ran the system 24/7 when we were on a job. We generated 9-track 6250 GCR tapes at the rate of about one tape every 10 minutes. We used to buy and ship the tapes by the container load (and we used a Cray to process the data...). cheers Hugh -- Radiator: the most portable, flexible and configurable RADIUS server anywhere. Available on *NIX, *BSD, Windows 95/98/2000, NT, MacOS X. - Nets: internetwork inventory and management - graphical, extensible, flexible with hardware, software, platform and database independence.
participants (5)
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doug＠safeport.com -
Hugh Irvine -
Marshall Eubanks -
Paul Timmins -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu