21 May
2019
21 May
'19
12:51 p.m.
On 5/21/19 12:34 PM, William Donzelli via cctalk wrote:
I might think far more "obsolete" than
"bad idea". It worked very well
for the mainframe folks.
...except when it didn't. On more than one occasion, I recall watching
some poor soul with a cart balanced with long (3 foot) trays full of
cards, hitting a lifted separator strip in the raised floor. Over goes
the cart, the cards spread in every direction, and the pusher sitting in
the middle of it all, close to tears.
If you happen to chance across any old card decks and note traces of a
diagonal line drawn across the top, that's the reason--a visual aid for
reassembling a spilled deck.
I think the integration folks eventually moved to 4-wheel carts instead
of the 3-wheel ones for exactly this reason. Their job was integrating
new code and patches into the existing product base. The trip with the
cards was to make a tape of the data, so that the trip didn't have to be
repeated.
--Chuck