ColI'm so old I remember when the internet didn't have commercials.
Harry@harrymuzz At my first job, the computer room temperature was controlled with double door air lock to enter. The computer was huge with punch card operators typing and huge floor to ceiling reel to reel tapes. The print outs were on large sheets of paper and took several runs for all the errors to be corrected. With programmers, inputters and clerks, there were about 8 staff. Nowadays a kid of 8 or 9 could do it all and more on a smartphone and 30 times quicker! Hard to believe but true.
Nick 'The Viking'Use a rubber band around a small deck.
If the deck was more than an inch thick, draw a diagonal line on one edge face so if they got scrambled you could reassemble without sobbing.
Too big for a rubber band?
There were purpose-made boxes.
Kelvin n0mql EN35ld@nlarson830 @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz
I signed up for a community college sort of computer programming class, 'cuz I was certain computers would be a huge part of my career (correct).
Looked at the shopping list for the syllabus of the COBOL class, & saw I needed to buy a box of punch cards.
Immediately dropped the class. I would've been cool with learning COBOL, but if they were still doing punchcards when I already had an XT with dual floppy drives, they were too backward.
@kelvin0mql @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz
I wouldn't be surprised if banks still used punchcards for their COBOL
C++ Wage SlaveI'm sure they don't. Mainframes are really up-to-date these days:
https://www.ibm.com/products/z17
And they offer at least 50 years of backwards-compatibility.
Jon 
@kelvin0mql @nlarson830 @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz I know what you mean! As a kid in school though, punch cards helped me understand how data is stored on other media. I think they could still be a good teaching resource.
Peter 💙 StevensUnder the floor is where I lurked until needed to wield the magic screwdriver.
@kibcol1049 I remeber the double doors, and the tape decks, first hardware I operated had 1 inch tape, and we had to skew the head with a large screwdriver , watching an oscilloscope to get lined up......The air con noise, that endless stationary ...........64k, K!! filled a small room.
Nature Punk@harrymuzz @kibcol1049 my first job in the industry was realigning the heads on 8" drives with a screwdriver you'd consider too big for working on your car these days :)
They were pretty much obsolete by this time but it just shows how quickly things change. These days there will be people starting their first jobs surprised that physical media is still used in their new workplace.
Dread Pirate John Scab🚫
Tim Hall@kibcol1049 @harrymuzz and if you went into the computer room (normally only to show a visitor round and impress them) you had to put a drawing pin into a cork board at the door, one for each person. So that in the event of a fire and the room being flooded with halon gas, they would know that there were unconscious people inside needing rescued quickly.
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz I don't think we had that. But we were told that when the klaxon went off we'd better be out of the door in as few seconds as we could manage.
@outinthehills @harrymuzz My last job had a massive computer room with banks of computers, servers, alarms and network stuff. Not being in IT now I only went in there occasionally for some minor maintenance tasks. It was a maze of alleyways and corridors. When the fire alarm went off you had 2 minutes to get out before the gas fire suppressant was released, flashing red lights and deafening klaxons increased panic as you struggled to remember the way out. Very scary!
@kibcol1049 @harrymuzz and visitors were always disappointed that there weren't lots of wall mounted tape drives spinning, that's what computer rooms looked like in films. It was much more like a launderette, with lots of big (blue) metal cabinets gently humming.
Andy Wootton@outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz Ours were top-loaders. (I have terrible memory but they were DEC RA-60s.)
@outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz
One of my customers was doing a promotional video. I was hidden behind their tape drives using the diag tool to make them go backwards and forwards.
vicarvernon@outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz my first job was in head office, adjacent to the computer room. It was all Very Underwhelming. There was great excitement in our department when we got the first desktop pc.
@kibcol1049 @outinthehills @harrymuzz
More scary was dealing with the printer output after the halon spread it EVERYWHERE!
Barbara Monaco@outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz
Really? I just read a murder mystery that included halon gas in a computer room in its plot. I thought it seemed far fetched, but what do I know. 🙃
Really? I just read a murder mystery that included halon gas in a computer room in its plot. I thought it seemed far fetched, but what do I know. 🙃
@Barbramon1 @outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz Halon gas in computer rooms was real. If the klaxon goes off you'd better hold your breath as you get out.
Alexand@TimWardCam @Barbramon1 @outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz
Totally real concern, we didn’t remove the Halon system where I worked until late-1990s. The DEC minicomputer cost more than the building and had to be protected! (Was still running the original COBOL too…)
I think they got a SUN UNIX box and replaced it around Y2K.
Not a Spring Onion@Barbramon1 @outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz
Ah, "The Grid" by Philip Kerr.
AKA "The Tower (1985) , but as a book."
@wakame @outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz It was a Michael Connelly mystery. The title escapes me at the moment. Have been reading a lot of Connelly.
@Barbramon1 @outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz I saw that plot-line updated recently, with an energy efficient house being used as a murder weapon.
Tuchowski@adipoeserPursch @woo @outinthehills @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz Pretty sure now that it was "Fair Warning".
Mike@kibcol1049 @harrymuzz My mother's friend worked with Univac in the 60's, the name always sounded so strange and dystopian. I worked for a while digitizing maps, I got kind of addicted to keypunch and flapping the cards through the reader. Made a nice sound.
John Harris@sunumbral @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz Ah, them. I still remember when they tried to claim ownership of the GIF file format.
I wonder where they (or probably more accurately, whatever's left of their IP) now?
Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)@rodneylives @sunumbral @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz Wasn't that Unisys? I remember the LZW compression patent debacle.
Dianora (Diane Bruce)@sunumbral @kibcol1049 @harrymuzz I remember punchcards but at Uni it was dialup on local serial lines. Remember Gandalf?