# Uhh huh *nods*



## poorandunlucky (Dec 22, 2017)

*does a little victory dance*


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## ralphbsz (Dec 23, 2017)

It is sad that our computers have become so complicated that a seemingly simple task is so hard that a victory dance is appropriate when one gets anything to work.

We should really go back to storing things on punched cards, and organizing our data by using cardboard boxes or cabinets with drawers.  Life was easier then.  Instead of encryption keys, we had locks on our file cabinets (and the key usually forgotten at home or locked inside the drawer).

Have you ever carried a program to the computer to be executed, but dropped it on the floor, and then had to spend several hours sorting the cards to get the program back together?  Been there.  After that, you get into the habit of religiously overpunching line numbers in the last 8 columns, and marking the deck with a diagonal line across the top with a felt pen, so a dropped deck can be sorted faster manually, and really fast by putting it into a sorting machine.  That was a good habit.

Here is a bad habit from those times: Commenting your source code by writing the comments with felt pen on the cards.  Works great, until you duplicate your source code, because the card duplicator only copies the holes, not the written comments.


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## fullauto2012 (Dec 23, 2017)

Not gonna lie... 
I did a victory lap when I finally got mine to work.
Still have a problem getting reddis to work.
But, IT WORKS! 
Congrats...


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## poorandunlucky (Dec 23, 2017)

ralphbsz getopt : Yo guis remember when you had to have your punch cards telepgraphed in order to connect to the Internet?  I can't believe we can get more than 4 KB per day...

fullauto2012 

I'm not happy because I got it working, I'm happy because I got it.

You people are weird, and definitely should get out more.


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## poorandunlucky (Dec 23, 2017)

Sometimes I joke and say that FreeBSD has Plug 'n Play support for punch card readers lol


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## ronaldlees (Dec 27, 2017)

ralphbsz said:


> It is sad that our computers have become so complicated that a seemingly simple task is so hard that a victory dance is appropriate when one gets anything to work.
> 
> We should really go back to storing things on punched cards, and organizing our data by using cardboard boxes or cabinets with drawers.  Life was easier then.  Instead of encryption keys, we had locks on our file cabinets (and the key usually forgotten at home or locked inside the drawer).
> 
> ...



LOL.  Yes, and I remember the little rolls of punched paper (for those not ancient enough - they looked a little like the transaction journal paper rolls on old cash registers).  We thought it was a great step up.  We could edit our code by (quite literally) - cutting and pasting (or taping).


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## Snurg (Dec 27, 2017)

poorandunlucky said:


> Sometimes I joke and say that FreeBSD has Plug 'n Play support for punch card readers lol


1974-introduced CP/M-80 still had the `PUN:` and `RDR:` standard devices, both were character I/O.
For example, what would be Unix's
`cat /dev/rdr > myfile`
would have been written back then
`pip rdr: myfile`
if you wanted to read in your paper "media".
(pip stems from pipe. For example, back up drive A: to B: was done by pip a:*.* b:*.*)

So I guess there will have been such drivers for early Unixes, too.
But if contemporary FreeBSD still has such, I'd be amazed to learn.


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## tingo (Jan 2, 2018)

ronaldlees said:


> LOL.  Yes, and I remember the little rolls of punched paper (for those not ancient enough - they looked a little like the transaction journal paper rolls on old cash registers).  We thought it was a great step up.  We could edit our code by (quite literally) - cutting and pasting (or taping).


Paper tape like this?


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## ronaldlees (Jan 2, 2018)

tingo said:


> Paper tape like this?View attachment 4265



Seems like it was a smaller roll.  But, memory may fail ... it's been soooooo long ago.


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