19 Oct
2002
19 Oct
'02
1:35 p.m.
Can anyone remember how many IBM cards fit in a box?
A card is nominally 8
thou thick, and a tray is about 16.5" long internally, so it must be
something of the order of 2000.
Yes.
But TRAYS, and drawers, were also available in 3000 and 4000 sizes.
Who remembers drawing a cross or a diagonal line on
the top of the card
deck, so you had some chance of re-ordering the deck if someone dropped the
box?
Depended a lot on how often it would be changed.
On a deck that would be changed OFTEN, you put ONE diagonal. Next time
that it changed significantly, you'd put a second diagonal. By the time
that you had a dozen different colors and directions of diagonals, that
deck would be overdue to be recopied to have nice fresh crisp cards.
The diagonals were NOT primarily for re-ordering! They were NOT really
adequate for single card positioning. They were to be able to
SEE whether re-ordering was needed (had they dropped the deck?)
You usually allowed space on the card (columns 73?-80) for a sequential
number that could be used with an 084 sorter for re-ordering.
Q: Remember how to dupe a deck on a 360? (If you had JCL cards, "/*"
could be misinterpreted as end of file). (A: load the data deck upside
down)
At many locations, different colors of cards had special meanings. When I
was working at Goddard Space Flight Center, I did not have appropriate
clearance for handling some of the colors of cards that I was working
with.
> Who remembers using a folded card (16 thou) to
check the points on their
> engine (nominally 15 thou)? Folded in three to check the spark plug gap
> (nominally 25 thou)??
And what did you use for adjusting your valves? (~ .006) Zig-zags?