Anyone with any old skills that they might want to dust off...

[JohnRBaker]

The last time they were looking for people with programming experience in COBOL was back when they were all worried about Y2K and how some older, and in particular, financial programs, were going to make the transition, but now it appears to have become relevant again. That being said, it's been over 20 years and I'm sure the pool of knowledgeable people has dwindled somewhat over those years. Anyway, if you know COBOL, there might be some work out there for you, and it probably could be done from home:

Wanted urgently: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-programmers-new-jersey-trnd/index.html

Sorry, this story is a bit late, but...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[looslib]

I had a box of cards with Fortran Hollerith formatted lines that would print Snoopy sitting on his doghouse with bullet holes in the roof saying "Curse you Red Baron" and the current year calendar printed below. It took some special control characters to tell the printer to not print the page breaks but print all 66 lines on a page as Snoopy took up 3 pages and the calendar was a forth page.
First Fortran class is in the fall of 1970 on a CDC-3300 at Northeastern. Used Fortran up to the mid-80's but by then we were on terminals.
Used a lot of punch cards when I was a NC programmer at Corning Glass writing IBM APT-Ac programs to cut stainless steel and Inconel molds for glass products. The heat of the glass would eventually cause the molds to crack as they went through the heat and cooling process.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[IRstuff]

Ooh, I forgot; even though I never completed a punch card deck, I did program a Mcrodata MD-104 memory tester using PAPER TAPE! We had a dedicated ASR33 teletype terminal with a paper tape reader/puncher that we used to create the tapes for the MD-104. Otherwise, we had a bunch of neon-lit pushbuttons for manual programming or patching of an already uploaded paper tape program. At some point in time, we got a standalone paper tape unit that we could run from our network computers. Don't remember whether we did much splicing of paper tapes.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

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[JohnRBaker]

For those who many not be familiar with paper tape, it was used for years to transfer not only computer programs, but more often, NC toolpath data for machine tools:

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[robyengIT]

paper tape was used for telex too

 

[JohnRBaker]

Hence the inclusion of the punch/reader in teletype terminals, which were often used as the master control console with early computer systems, as seen below as part of a General Automation SPC-16 set-up, an early (circa 1973-76) 16-bit minicomputer designed for commercial use by small businesses:

The first system that I was allowed to actually use hands-on had a teletype as the master console and that was where any system-level error messages would be sent, and it was so loud that when it did start 'typing' out a message, everyone would freeze as it would invoke a moment of fear since that sound was often a precursor to a system crash.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[IRstuff]

The ASR-33 had a blindingly fast 330 baud link, which probably as fast as the print head could handle. Of course, a few years later, I got a Hayes modem that ran at a smoking 1200 baud

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[EdStainless]

With both cards and tape when you thought it was ready the first thing that you did was put it through a reader and then proof the output. Don't waste time submitting a job that won't run.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[racookpe1978]

The Navy's SSN688 Submarine sonar/fire control "computers" had a paper tape reader in the Sonar Spaces to "reload" their sonar programs and contact detection, tracking and fire control programs "if" the magnetic hard drives ever really failed at sea. Didn't have the huge paper tapes on board to reload the programs from, but the hardware (tape reader) was there!

I too learned programming on IBM 80 character (2000 Florida Palm Beach County) voting punch cards. We were told that, in the basement of the engineering building, for graduate students only, there was ONE computer with a cathode ray screen where you could actually type in commands and see them executed.

 

[drawoh]

Here is my college CNC project, complete with the punched paper tape.

--
JHG

 

[JayMaechtlen]

Ah, memories.
At Cal Poly, first Fortran class was punch cards, second I found out about the terminals and TECO.
At Amada, all our CNCs were punched paper tape. We had various primitive program prep systems, I think most of them were developed in some form of BASIC at first.
I created my first training materials using Wordstar on a CPM machine, output to a dot matrix printer.
The first CNC machine I ran that didn't use paper tape was the Prima Optimo system, in 78-ish. That was a whole 'nother adventure.

Jay Maechtlen

http://www.laserpubs.com/techcomm