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From: faunt@spar.UUCP (Doug Faunt)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <164@spar.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Mar-86 18:27:57 EST
Article-I.D.: spar.164
Posted: Thu Mar 27 18:27:57 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Mar-86 05:46:38 EST
References: <14700001@hplabsb.UUCP> <6466@utzoo.UUCP>
Reply-To: faunt@spar.UUCP (Doug Faunt)
Organization: Schlumberger Artificial Research, CA
Lines: 22

In article <6466@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>And then there's the old trick of manipulating an IBM 029 keypunch so
>that it punches cards which are all holes.  Great bookmarks; I still
>have a few.
>
>
>(For the benefit of the fuzzy-cheeked youngsters in the crowd, punchcards
>need a certain amount of mechanical strength to survive machine handling.
>All-holes cards are weak and tear easily.  Normal punchcards are constrained
>to have [as I recall] at most one punch per column in rows 1-7, so that the
>central region of the card is mostly solid.)
>-- 
>				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
>				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry

Don't talk about youngsters, children.  029's were the NEW keypunches,
and we had a 024 in the computer room for duping COLUMN-BINARY cards,
which could legitimatley ((SP?)I don't think so, but the spelling checker
likes it) have all holes punched in a column.  There were also
ROW-BINARY cards that contained 24, 36-bit words per card, with 8
columns for sequence punching.  Sequence punching was rather like
backing up your diskette today.  The joys of BCD.