How I used to get my Apps in the 80's

OZApps

This is how I used to get my apps in the 80's and this is my collection/backup of my apps.

tkhnoman

Backups that is older than me...

OZApps

@tkhnoman,

Caroline

Do you have any KiddiSoft tapes? My mother reckons she invented the word "compumag" with her monthly Speccy magazine.

ArtLeeApps

one of my "old" bosses, told me a stories about when he programmed, and had to book time for the machine, and insert his programs that were stored on "punch cards"... he dropped a box once and had to sort them... and it was quicker to use your car and take a reel of data to a customer than to transfer on the network. ... )

techdojo

I remember those, used to have whole boxes of C90's back in the day before I managed to get a 1541 disk drive!

SinisterSoft

@ArtLeeApps I used to have to give my Cobol code to an operator on pages on a grid paper - with one space per character. They typed each line in onto punch card, they then gave the sheet to the next operator who typed in the same lines. They used this as a verification system.

You would then get two stacks of cards, a card for each line of code x2.

The cards were then fed into the card reader and if the two sets of cards didn't match then that line was rejected. It would be then re-created and re-entered.

All this was done for the ICL2904.

http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/gallery/ral76/med/r28665m.jpg

I think the double data entry system was used because in Cobol if you get a single PIC statement wrong then you can get thousands of errors.

ArtLeeApps

@SinisterSoft, geez how things have changed now, you can copy/paste whole applications in seconds

The boss i mentioned did come from an ICL/Fujitsu (Britian) (a David Oswald) ... who then founded Oasis/Oswald Associates, that i worked for, writing code for Hospital Costing Systems.... the closest i got was a ICL DRS3000 DRS4000 machine runing Unix/Zenix, but by then it was all on DAT cartridges (modern times !)

OZApps

Ahhhh DATs...

ArtLeeApps

i had a pile of them, and did cyclic backups

OZApps

I used them for data backups and also remember them being used by the broadcasting stations, I think airlines also used them for their in-flight music.

Garyk1968

ahhh memories Oz!

Used to fit a ton of zx81 games onto a C90. My mate used to record his voice before each one with what the game was, it was always something like 'space invaders...call it A' so we would then type in Load "A" and press play