Never own a hard drive again

[45_Colt]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

Just had to go and do it

Yes, I remember, DEC-10's, punch cards, paper tape, fat-fingering in programs on mini's. Jeez, those where the days. 160 baud modems, 300 was the latest 'fast' setup. Acoustic couplers, yikes, then the 14.4 modems came about...

Funny part was, knowing the low level computer architecture helped years down the road. Little-endian, big-endian, bit mapped words, DB programmers didn't have a clue about that stuff. But was in fact a part of their every day life.

Now I'm semi-retired and still haven't been able to get away from it (self-employed).

45_Colt

[FISH4BUGS]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

Oh I certainly do. I started with an IBM 5120 and a program called BRADS. I didn't know squat about computers (1980ish) but the President of the company wanted the inventory computerized. Guess who got the job.
I went on to develop a rudimentary MRP system, then graduated to IBM 370/158 mainframe with punch cards running a full blown MRP system, then got into the first IBM PC's. 64k dual 360k floppies running WordStar 1.0, and started computer consulting in 1982 and have been at it since then. Great way to make a living all these 40 years.....
....but I still use a flip phone.

[scattershot]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

First computer I ever saw was in the mid- 60s, and it took up the whole first floor of a pretty good sized office building.

[SeabeeMan]

Absolutely! I'm the IT guy for a small school district in NW WI and we are currently replacing every single spinning platter drive with SSD in our lab computers, a move which will buy us at least 2-3 more years of life out of them. My recent gaming PC build has M.2. NVME drives right on the motherboard.

The only standard drives I still use for anything are a few 6-8TB externals I use to backup my computers. A complete image of the operating drive goes on one partition, with all my media from my storage drive in another. Then that one goes in the gun safe, the one that was in there comes out and gets an identical backup, then that one goes off site.

[Scrounge]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

May to October of 1986, I worked on an IBM System 360/70 for Uncle Sam. It ran the radar at Eglin AFB, Site C-6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglin_AFB_Site_C-6 IIRC, it had 16KB of magnetic core memory, and 16 analog delay lines. There was a card in the system that fried, and the replacement cost about $5k. That was a bit less than a third of my annual income that year. Traces blown off the card, and many of the components anywhere from lightly toasted to quite well fried. I rebuilt it, and got it running again. IIRC, they Winchester drives on their system. At the time, I had a Commodore C-64, with 64KB of RAM, IIRC about 32KB of ROM, with dual 1571 5-1/4" floppy drives. In one of the boxes in storage, I've still got a C-64, monitor, and at least of a couple of the 1571 drives. Seems to me they were 160KB each... Got an ice chest full of floppy drives. Been playing with computers since 1978 or so. RCA Cosmac Elf was my first computer, TRS-80 Model 1 Level 1 my first appliance computer... A few years ago, I cleared out all the carcasses of PC-clone computers from my house. Something like 300 of them. I'm not an addict! I can quit any time!

Bill <--- I got better. There are only 5 desktops under or on my desk, and three laptops, two inkjet printers, and probably I still have 30 or 40 hard drives laying about... And IIRC, there's a anti-static bag with a Pentium Mobo in the front workshop. I said better, not cured!

[varmintpopper]

I remember, Started with a Burroughs B-26


Good Shooting

Lindy

[Land Owner]

What an avalanche of off-topic "memories" sprang from comments about not knowing the term, or use, of SSD.

Lotus 1-2-3 was the forerunner of MicroSoft Excel.
Norton was the King of software to untangle PC "problems".
Software was simpler.
VAX computers were huge machines.
CPU-connect charges were high.
Punch card chad produced the most generous "rain" as college football confetti - what a mess!
Programming was taught in Fortran, COBAL, and C++ that were first and foremost compact and without the deadly "endless do-loop".
This was the dark ages before the Internet.

MUCH LATER
RAM, ROM, and storage slowly increased.
The Internet was "born".
Dial-up was slow.
AOL gave away its browser software CD's in every convenience store across America. I had about 300 of them (and others), was going to put them downrange and shoot them as targets, then thought better of not adding that much plastic to my environment.

[Daekar]

Just to reiterate, neither SSDs nor spinning drives are 100% reliable. It's not if they'll fail, but when. If you want to keep something important, it MUST be in at least two places at once, preferably more.

[KenH]

So far nobody has mentioned the old single sided 5-1/4" disks. Remember cutting a notch so both sides could be used? Seems like it was 1986 when I got the first C-64 with disk drive and TV for monitor. Now I've got those NVME SSDs on the MB for better speed. Makes my regular SSDs seem slow. Here's what I've got in my "Radio" box.

1 TB NVME HD: Access time: 0.03 sec, Read rate: 5.5 GB/s

500 GB SATA SSD: Access time: 0.08 sec, Read rate: 2.3 GB/s

1 TB SATA HD (spinner): Access time: Access time: 0.09 sec, Read rate: 1/2 GB/s

[MaryB]

So who remembers 80 column punch cards, Hollerith code, 256K 'MAIN Frame' the size of 3 refrigerators? Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL coding languages. Paper tape programs were sent to banks, Savings and Loans to run teller machines (1980's), paper tape programs were also punched for the early CNC machines.

I learned to program on paper tape and a teletype machine, dial up account to the U of MN mainframe where I had a whopping 256k of storage(typical student got 32k... I was not typical...) on the drive. At home I had an Altair 8800, green screen monitor, and a floppy drive when they came out. And an acoustic modem to access my account at the U of MN... I wrote a rudimentary word processor and some of my code made it into a commercial product! My teacher didn't have a clue, just gave me an A and shook his head. He couldn't read the code, if it went beyond Print "hi" he was lost...

[elmacgyver0]

Ah, yes, Commodore 64!
It was truly amazing what those could all do with 64 kilobytes of memory.

[georgerkahn]

Bion, one of the labs where I worked had drives which took eight-inch (8") floppies. They were king of the hill, so to speak, as -- if my memory serves me correctly -- they had a 1 meg (plus a little) capacity -- which, at the time, was moot -- as everyone there -- with their 30meg hard drive desktops -- were confident that, in any one's lifetime -- they'd never even come close to filling it!
Interesting, and perhaps a bit germane to this site, is IBM's first marketable hard drive was called "The Winchester" -- named in honor of the Model 94 Winchester .30WCF rifle. Yup -- the term Winchester comes from it having 30MB of fixed storage and 30MB of removable storage! (Betcha nothing in today's Political Correct and Then Some world would be named after a firearm, eh?)
geo

[popper]

The 'crunch' to all computer memory is the interface. SATA helps as it is a 'pipe' structure vs a block structure. Still gets slowed by the processor 'interface'. SSD is NVRAM. It is faster as there is no rotating disk waiting to 'find' the data. Both have limited lifetime. Boot time is faster as it doesn't load into ram (in most systems).

[Rapier]

When a super speed Stata drive blows up, it is real special. Good to have a steel cabinet.....been there done that.

[slim1836]

We had 80 line punch cards where I worked in the 70's, key punch operator was the best, never missed a stroke. Computer room was climate controlled and tape driven. Phone dial up and boxes of cards fed into the computer but if the phone link went down, the process started over. I hated those times, glad I was a cartographic draftsman.

I did take Basic Computer in college but hated it so I went a different way. Basic, Fortran, and Cobalt could kiss it in my book, I wanted the outdoors so I went with construction inspection.

Skip to today, My computer runs off Windows 7 and has been dying for years. I need another computer badly but they want to sell you a computer, then have you pay to update it yearly. Nope, not going to do that, it's like paying to rent programming. I'm not smart enough to understand all that's involved now a days. I just want a computer that works when I turn it on.

Same with printers, I have gone through several and each one has gone south. Same issues, the print looks like carp or does not print at all. Granted, I don't use it much, but when I need to, it doesn't work. Throw it out and get another and a year later, same issue. I have run the "clean heads" program until I'm blue in the face, cleaned the ink faces, but there is only so much I can do. I am printer-less as I type.

Same with internet service. I am wireless and have two extenders to help boost the signal, what a jumble of carp. I am offline more than on.

I hate techno stuff but most of us rely on them, wish I knew what to do. I just don't understand all this stuff, I'm just a simple man trying to make things work. Like Dillon stuff, buy once, but what to buy? I'll bet that others are in the same boat.

Slim

[DougGuy]

Slim I know you must have seen quite a few threads that detail users frustrated and somewhat under the learning curve, and eventually the replies steer the thread into suggestions to move to Linux Mint. This is actually the easiest and simplest way to get away from M$ and their forced upgrades, and their dropping support for classes of chipsets that cause the user to be forced into buying new hardware so winblowz will run on it.

Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition looks and feels and runs like Win7. The start menu would look very familiar to win7 users in how it opens and displays menus. Simple and intuitive. You can get Linux Mint on a bootable USB stick, and if your machine will boot from a USB stick, you can boot to linux and run the full blown version while you can see how it's laid out and see if you like it.

If you shut down without clicking on the "Install Linux Mint" icon, the computer will go right back to how it was before you booted linux from the USB, and will not have any knowledge of it ever running linux, as it doesn't change anything or write anything to the hard drive.

If you want to send me a USB stick I will put Linux Mint on it and send it back, you boot to it and see how you like it.

[slim1836]

PM sent to DougGuy.

Slim

[rockshooter]

I started in the early 1970s working as a field engineer for Burroughs Corp. Repaired mechanical comptometers, then switched to L series computers in banks, paper tape, 80cc cards, then the fancy 96 cc, Bull punches, sorters, cassettes. When the Teton Dam broke in Idaho, I took PCBs home and washed them in my dishwasher. Time flies!
Loren

[Land Owner]

PM sent to DougGuy.

Slim

Which is why I favor this site...folks willing to help folks "get by".

[MaryB]

We had 80 line punch cards where I worked in the 70's, key punch operator was the best, never missed a stroke. Computer room was climate controlled and tape driven. Phone dial up and boxes of cards fed into the computer but if the phone link went down, the process started over. I hated those times, glad I was a cartographic draftsman.

I did take Basic Computer in college but hated it so I went a different way. Basic, Fortran, and Cobalt could kiss it in my book, I wanted the outdoors so I went with construction inspection.

Skip to today, My computer runs off Windows 7 and has been dying for years. I need another computer badly but they want to sell you a computer, then have you pay to update it yearly. Nope, not going to do that, it's like paying to rent programming. I'm not smart enough to understand all that's involved now a days. I just want a computer that works when I turn it on.

Same with printers, I have gone through several and each one has gone south. Same issues, the print looks like carp or does not print at all. Granted, I don't use it much, but when I need to, it doesn't work. Throw it out and get another and a year later, same issue. I have run the "clean heads" program until I'm blue in the face, cleaned the ink faces, but there is only so much I can do. I am printer-less as I type.

Same with internet service. I am wireless and have two extenders to help boost the signal, what a jumble of carp. I am offline more than on.

I hate techno stuff but most of us rely on them, wish I knew what to do. I just don't understand all this stuff, I'm just a simple man trying to make things work. Like Dillon stuff, buy once, but what to buy? I'll bet that others are in the same boat.

Slim

Laser printer, work on the same principal as a copy machine with toner. Don't print for a month? No problem! No heads to dry up and clog! I went laser 15 years ago and will never go back to inkjet junk. A black and white lase printer can be found for around $100, well worth it with the length of time a toner cartridge lasts and how long the printer can last. My current one is 6 years old!