[cctalk] Head-less computers (Was: TOP POSTING

[2^6 lines of irrelevance omitted] On Sat, 12 Dec 2015, Mike wrote: graphics! Instead of a screen, you looked at "paper" (a flat, thin, slightly flexible product made form ground-up dead trees). There was a campaign called "The Paperless Office" set up by the papermills to sell more paper, by claiming that xerox machines, and using fax machines instead of post office, would "save paper" (actually intended to "save paper industry") Sometimes, it was non-simultaneously interactive, using a device called a TTY. You typed in a command, and it did it, and then it typed its answer. PI SYNTAX ERROR PRINT PI 0 PRINT 2 + 2 4 or DOWN YOU DON'T FIT THROUGH A TWO INCH SLIT and N YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES ALL ALIKE Sometimes, it was printed reports. A thick fan-fold pile of continuous form paper that listed all of your SYNTAX ERRORs Sometimes, it was special forms (also fanfold continuous), such as your paycheck. Sometimes, it was a deck of punched cards. (They are "PUNCHED cards", not "PUNCH cards", once there are some holes in 'em - "PUNCH card" can only mean blank cards to feed the PUNCH with). Those went into drawer in a room full of special file cabinets, or into the input of another machine, such as a different machine such as "accounting machine" (which was used as a dedicated printer), or the card reader of another computer. Inter computer communication was handled by a "gofer" carrying, or pushing a cart full of, decks of punch cards. Each deck of cards, if less than 2000 in a box, was inadequately secured with rubber bands and had diagonal lines made with magic markers, to recognize the rearrangements after the deck or box got dropped. That process was later upgraded to "sneaker-net". Sometimes, it was a reel of tape. Used in similar ways to punched cards, except that the storage room was called a "tape library", and other than a tape number, and maybe owner's name, there weren't any diagonal lines across them. There were "tape hangers" that wrapped around the outside of the reel, and small plastic "rubber" rings near the hub called "write rings". The tape drives were the iconic image that filmmakers used instead of computers, which "don't look like a computer". Sometimes, it was a big picture! Take the deck of cards or tape to another machine that was dedicated to operating a "PLODDER". It would be a large table, or a lorge roller (and since late 1960s sometimes a machine that wrote to 16mm or 35mm film!). The plodder moved "pids" (rapidograph like pens) around, responding to commands summarized as N, S, E, W, UP, DOWN (oft subverted into manufacturer proprietary commands). Large libraries of subroutines would convert into those primitives from commands such as LINE, CIRCLE, GRID, PLOT xxx V yyy. Sometimes, the owner of some small machines, or the paid operator of some larger machines, would have a "FRONT PANEL", that was full of blinkenlights. When the operator wasn't feeding the printers (trying to start a new box of paper without turning off the printer), they could stare at those lights. Occasionally, an operator might start screaming or giggling uncontrollably when the computer told them a good joke, such as program counter repeating itself. Sometimes, they controlled dedicated equipment (such as looms, milling machines, spaceships, etc.) RARELY, there was voice output. A quarter of a century ago, I had a friend who used a VOTRAX. She had a laptop with a big gaping hole where a screen had once been. The first email that she sent me (she believed that the proper quoting was "NO QUOTES!"), said: WINDOWS SUCKS MOSAIC SUCKS CAN I BORROW AN AXE? Like her, if you know what you are doing, you do not need a screen. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com