General Chat

For anyone really interested in old computers, the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) is worth a visit.

http://www.tnmoc.org/

From 1956 to 1961 I worked for the Admiralty wage department. We had a huge mainframe computer, really noisy and all the clock card information was put onto punch tape. It seemed really modern then. (I didn't actually work on the computers. However later, in the 70s I did some home working putting information onto punch cards.

When I joined a well known High St Bank in 1970 they were reaching the end of the program to convert over to computerised ledgers for customer accounts. I think the aim was for all branches to be converted before decimalisation the following year.

The in-branch terminal was a Burroughs TC500, the size of a tea chest, with a punch tape reader for loading the programs necessary for different accounting tasks. Tapes got damaged on an almost weekly basis and operators became expert at loading partly damaged tapes to keep things working.

They were more like glorified teleprinters rather than computer terminals as we know them and the mechanical keyboard and printer made a tremendous clatter as the operator hammered away. The golf ball print heads were also susceptible to becoming detached and it wasn't unknown for them to fly across the office at great speed. No H&S then, either....!

When I started using computers we used punched paper tape to input programs. The first computer I used had its own building to accomodate it.

This is the one:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.184505938397358.1073741829.176855309162421&type=3

The 1981 census was completed using punch cards, I know because my team coded, punched and verified a large percentage.

I bought my son an Aquarius computer when he was 4, used tapes for individual games.

When my niece was young, she saw some of my old LPs..............

:Wow, that's a big CD" :-D :-D :-D

Cor! Great stuff. Mentioned "Punch Cards" - our council main frame used such in 1960s/70s. I used to punch my own cards in mid 1970s to enable me to obtain info relevant to my job at the local college. Bought son a ZX81 (Sinclair?) in 80s very unreliable but interesting

Tap recorders? Are they used to record morse code? :-S

omg this thread just made me think of the old tap recorders
wounder what the kids would think of them now

and today's kids

:-D :-D :-D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk

I agree with the kid who said "I don't want to do this any more"..... I think I said that several times in the 1970s lolol

:-D