[HECnet] punched tape

[h vlems]

Paul, we share a common background. I learned Algol on a B6700, which succeeded the ELX8. Some of the flexowriters were still there, early 1976.
The B6700 could read and punch papertape but mostly for data I think. Programming was done on cards. If you were lucky your account was upgraded for CANDE and you could use a terminal.  
hans

It is called the TU/e for decades but my generation still says TH...

Van: Paul_Koning at Dell.com
Verzonden: vrijdag 19 april 2013 20:46 PM
Aan: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Beantwoorden: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Onderwerp: Re: [HECnet] punched tape



On Apr 19, 2013, at 1:48 PM, Lee Gleason wrote:

> 
> How many people on this list have ever used paper tape at a job? My first computer job we used it to control phototypesetting machines. When an 11/70 was added to the mix of gear there, we ordered it with paper tape readers and punches on it to help in transitioning away from the paper tape only gear it was replacing.

That was probably 6 bit tape -- most typesetters I've seen that were fed with tape used 6 bit tape.

My first programs were written on paper tape -- Flexowriter editing papertape typewriter/reader/punch machines, with a character set optimized for Algol 60. That was at the Technical University Eindhoven, then known as THE -- which is where the operating system by that name came from. It was a batch system: paper tape in, line printer output. Magnetic tapes available in theory but rarely used, plus a drum for paging. Processor was a Philips (Electrologica) EL-X8, a 27 bit machine with a rather exotic I/O architecture that I never really understood. 

BTW, Flexowriters are great machines. Teletype Corporation never built anything remotely as reliable as those -- certainly not the cruft known as Model 33, and even a Model 35 isn't as good.

Semaphores (in the computer science sense) were invented there.

paul