I'm So Old I Can Remember...

[wayne49]

IBM punchcards and 8" floppies. Programs on cassette tape. Dial up internet.

I remember when there was just either Hollerith punch cards or paper tape for data and code.

An IBM 1620 computer, about the size of a chest freezer, had 4K RAM. Punch cards in, punch cards out. The output cards could be fed to a printer. I don't remember seeing what kind of electrical plug it had, must have been industrial sized.

A common user interface was an ASR-33 teletype. That's the noisy clacking machine in early movies that announces a dramatic event by printing details on a roll of paper. Torn off with a dramatic flair, then read aloud to all present. "The Germans have bombed Pearl Harbor!"

A 1200 baud modem was fast. Compared to the standard 300 baud modem. There was only one station in the terminal lab in the U of Minn's IT building that had a 1200 baud modem, the rest were 300 baud, you had to be there at the right moment to take the seat.

No network for consumers, just individual dialup bulletin boards, each run out of someone's bedroom. Lots of phone numbers to track.

There was no Internet, just the nascent ARPANET, used only by institutions involved in research into weapons of mass destruction.

As opposed to the Internet which is a weapon of mass distraction (and private data collection).

Oh yeah, black rotary phones with no answering machines. Primitive.

 

[bullfrog]

The first guidance system I worked with had a gold drum like the old record players which stored binary information off a punched paper tape and used a light beam to align the gyros once a year based on sighting the North Star. As it was several stories underground light had to travel down through a tube and through a window in the side of the missile. We still managed 1/8 mile accuracy at almost 3,000 miles. Since it produced a 1 1/2 mile diameter crater with a ground burst it was close enough.