On Tue, 2005-07-19 at 18:30 +0200, Joachim Fahnenmueller wrote: > > > There's no way a card reader will fit into a la > > > > > > Never mind. Showing my age again.. > > > > Damned, you know, when I saw that subject, I thought, "Who the > > hell has a card reader in their house? Those things are *huge* > > and noisy... And how would you interface it to a PC?" > > > > At least he didn't ask how to interface a BTAM unit to his laptop. > > > Please keep in mind that not everybody is a native speaker. To me (not English > either) it was quite clear what he could mean.
It's also quite clear, I suspect, to those who never experienced the "joys" of the IBM punch card era. My first computer programs were written at a keypunch machine (kind of like a terminal, but the size of a desk) that punched holes in a pile of pieces of cardboard, one 80 char max line per card then handing the pile to a mortal behind a desk who put them into what was then known as a "card reader" -- the portal into the giant 60 bit CDC 6400 supercomputer. With **100 megabytes** of actual magnetic core memory. The fear of program bugs was nothing compared to the fear of dropping those cards and getting the lines out of order -- the 50's and 60's (and 70's, to a student) definition of data loss. -- Glenn English [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG ID: D0D7FF20
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