Anthony Horton17h ago
Inspired by a CD burning indirect age verification poll I saw this morning let's push things a little further back with a poll about cassette tape.
I don't know what a cassette tape is
I do know what a cassette tape is
I've listened to music on cassette tape
I've recorded music to cassette tape
I've loaded software from cassette tape
I've written software to cassette tape
Poll ends at .
Show threadMichael Gemar16h ago
@spacelizard @calvin I’ve never written software to cassette tape, but I *have* written it to *paper* tape.
Show threadMarjorieR
@michaelgemar @spacelizard @calvin ditto.
8:28amWeb
Show threadDavid Penington9h ago
@marjolica @michaelgemar @spacelizard @calvin
Ditto, including lots of NC machine tool "programs" onto paper tape in 1982/3. Paper tape was a near universal standard then, except some of the Russian NC machines needed very opaque black paper tape.
For machining blanks for experimental multifocal spectacles, the manager had linked micro PDP-11s into some of the machine's paper tape reader's circuits, giving us the (needed) ability to send more than 1000 feet worth of data with no pauses.
This was when physically massive hard drives were about 80Mb & the company's main computer had 1/2Mb of RAM.
Show threadMarjorieR2h ago
@DavidPenington @michaelgemar @spacelizard @calvin nothing so huge. Back in the early 1970s I was running a program (possibly a oil refinery model I was using to assess the cost of taking lead out of petrol in Japan) remotely on a timeshared mainframe in I think Texas. The program parameters were stored locally on paper tape.