2 Nov
2006
2 Nov
'06
9:04 a.m.
On 2 Nov 2006 at 10:25, M H Stein wrote:
And considering the cost of CPU time and the fact that
input data was
still on punched cards in most cases, it was usually more efficient and
cost-effective to still sort the cards off-line and then copy/merge to/with
tape.
I suppose that relibility was about the same--the chance of creating
a mangled card in unit-record gear was probably about the same as
that of mangling it in a 1442.
Ah, fond memories of carrying stacks of 5-6000 cards
across the room
to the collator (or, later, the high-speed card reader), not to mention the
inevitable day when you bumped into someone and scattered half a
megabyte of data across the data centre floor and under the machinery;
now _that_'s fragmentation!
Not to mention the joy of loading trays of cards holding your magnum
opus onto an I/O cart and watching the clerk racing with it across
the raised computer floor hit a loose filler strip... :)
Cheers,
Chuck