Working Daze by John Zakour and Scott Roberts for May 27, 2021

Yep, True. 1 computer would take up an entire floor in a Building. Like 50+ years ago. (Unfortunately Our U.S. Government STILL USES the same Antiquated computers.)

Been there used that (IBM 360)

LOL! The first computer I programmed on was an IBM 1130. I wanted to have one of my very own. Of course, it would not fit in my room at home, and I certainly could not afford the electric bill. Not to mention what grief I would get from parents about the noise from the line printer… KA-CHUNK! KA-CHUNK! KA-CHUNK! …

(I knew that relying on the Selectric on the console was a bad idea because the IBM service guy was there about once a week to fix the Selectric.) 10 years later, I got one of the first Apple IIs. My first printer was … an IBM Selectric connected with an RS-232 interface!

My first was an IBM 1620, also known as the CADET. Anyone remember what “CADET” stands for?

Building a big customer database, eh.

and that was back in the day where everyone wore hats …

Now we have more computing power on our desks.

We put a Collins computer in for Air Canada in the late 60’s. Took several weeks and a lot of techs. The hard drive was about the size of a small SUV and a 1 meg storage was hand wound cores and the size of a small suitcase. However!

Art Collins in his wisdom said the system would be built in ATR boxes. It was quicker to swap out a module back then than it is to get into your average desktop these days

https://d2pxk6qc9d6msd.cloudfront.net/WP152.jpg

The golden age, when there was a mix up in billing, a customer service rep, would tell you, “The computer won’t let me do that”.

I remember in a 70’s TV show the main characters bought an ugly clock and the store computer made a billing mistake. The company took everything in their home but the clock they bought.

I remember those! That looks like the version that was downsized.

Ha! Now the entire IT department could arrive in an Uber.

The first computer I used was an HP-2000F owned by the school district. It was the size of a refrigerator and had 8KB of core memory, 64K of drum memory, and a 5 MB hard drive. Booting up was done with front panel switches. The school district computer room also had a Hollerith card punch machine that I used to write Fortran programs. Or I could write BASIC programs using ASR-33 teletypes in the school’s computer room. 72 baud speed (10 characters per second). Output was on rolls of paper.

Been there, done that. There was always the clown that put two go to commands in the card stack. Put the computer into an endless loop. As an aside, my first personal computer was a Sinclair ZX-81

BTW, does anyone else remember Fortran, Cobal, and the other dead languages? (Outside of Latin)

My company had an IBM computer. Took up a large room and had to have it’s own air conditioning. And, a team of programmers. I developed a program I wanted written. Took them weeks, then they got ticked when I asked for minor tweaks!

I remember my husband’s first day as a programmer for GE. He was SO excited! They were letting him work on their biggest and newest computer….it had a whole 16k of memory LOL.

Reminds me of a IBM 1410 I trained on; we later upgraded to a 7010…

My first programming job was on Data General Nova mini computers running RDOS and on a Univac 9000 series mainframe.

My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20 (my tv was the monitor) with the programs and data on tape cassettes. My first real desktop was a Franklin!

New york state colleges used system 360 in 1974

The second truck has the punch cards and the tape reels