From sauer at technologists.com Tue Mar 11 07:45:28 2025 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer (he/him)) Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 16:45:28 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Make your own virtual punchcard Message-ID: https://boingboing.net/2025/03/10/make-your-own-virtual-punchcard.html [50 years ago today I started working at IBM Yorktown. My boxes of punchcards from graduate work at UT-Austin were enroute with the movers from Austin, to be fed into VM-370 after they arrived. I wish I had kept those boxes as souvenirs.] Charlie -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/LinkedIn/mas.to: CharlesHSauer From whm at msweng.com Tue Mar 11 08:11:01 2025 From: whm at msweng.com (William H. Mitchell) Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 15:11:01 -0700 Subject: [COFF] Make your own virtual punchcard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: One of my first feelings of starting to master things, back at NC State in 1976, was when I learned how to add and delete characters from a punch card. William Mitchell Mitchell Software Engineering Occasional Adjunct Instructor at U of AZ CS Discord: whm#5716, Twitter: @x77686d, Skype: x77686d linkedin.com/in/x77686d > On Mar 10, 2025, at 2:45 PM, Charles H Sauer (he/him) wrote: > > https://boingboing.net/2025/03/10/make-your-own-virtual-punchcard.html > > [50 years ago today I started working at IBM Yorktown. My boxes of punchcards from graduate work at UT-Austin were enroute with the movers from Austin, to be fed into VM-370 after they arrived. I wish I had kept those boxes as souvenirs.] From classiccmp at earthlink.net Tue Mar 11 10:37:10 2025 From: classiccmp at earthlink.net (David C. Jenner) Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 17:37:10 -0700 Subject: [COFF] Make your own virtual punchcard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9f41afdd-fdc1-4cb4-a75e-8e3b19271814@earthlink.net> My first punch cards were in 1962, a first program for an IBM 709 Assembly Language class. We used 026 card punches. I wanted to emphasize a line in the comments region with an exclamation mark. Not finding one on the 026, I did what we were taught in typing class--type period, backspace, type apostrophe. My first program was, of course, rejected by the card reader. I think my box of program punch cards from many years of computing is somewhere in storage in my garage. As well as a box of unused, original cards from computing centers all over the country.^H' Dave On 3/10/25 2:45 PM, Charles H Sauer (he/him) wrote: > https://boingboing.net/2025/03/10/make-your-own-virtual-punchcard.html > > [50 years ago today I started working at IBM Yorktown. My boxes of > punchcards from graduate work at UT-Austin were enroute with the movers > from Austin, to be fed into VM-370 after they arrived. I wish I had kept > those boxes as souvenirs.] > > Charlie From crypto at glassblower.info Tue Mar 11 12:07:32 2025 From: crypto at glassblower.info (Tony Patti) Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 22:07:32 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Make your own virtual punchcard In-Reply-To: <9f41afdd-fdc1-4cb4-a75e-8e3b19271814@earthlink.net> References: <9f41afdd-fdc1-4cb4-a75e-8e3b19271814@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <180401db922a$59b4e270$0d1ea750$@glassblower.info> idk, when I type "TONY" into https://boingboing.net/2025/03/10/make-your-own-virtual-punchcard.html it does not match the output which I have at https://www.glassblower.info/crypto/tony-punch-card.jpg But maybe that's because, to find this punch card in my basement, in the 7th box which I looked in tonight, that box was in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory, with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard" :) My punch card is from Wharton's awesome KL-10 DECsystem-10, circa 1980, contemporaneous photos here: https://glassblower.info/Wharton-DECsystem-10/Wharton-DECsystem-10.html Tony Patti (ARPAnet NIC IDENT "TP4") crypto at glassblower.info -----Original Message----- From: David C. Jenner Sent: Monday, March 10, 2025 8:37 PM To: Charles H Sauer (he/him) ; COFF Subject: [COFF] Re: Make your own virtual punchcard My first punch cards were in 1962, a first program for an IBM 709 Assembly Language class. We used 026 card punches. I wanted to emphasize a line in the comments region with an exclamation mark. Not finding one on the 026, I did what we were taught in typing class--type period, backspace, type apostrophe. My first program was, of course, rejected by the card reader. I think my box of program punch cards from many years of computing is somewhere in storage in my garage. As well as a box of unused, original cards from computing centers all over the country.^H' Dave On 3/10/25 2:45 PM, Charles H Sauer (he/him) wrote: > https://boingboing.net/2025/03/10/make-your-own-virtual-punchcard.html > > [50 years ago today I started working at IBM Yorktown. My boxes of > punchcards from graduate work at UT-Austin were enroute with the > movers from Austin, to be fed into VM-370 after they arrived. I wish I > had kept those boxes as souvenirs.] > > Charlie From paul.winalski at gmail.com Wed Mar 12 02:41:03 2025 From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 12:41:03 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Make your own virtual punchcard In-Reply-To: <180401db922a$59b4e270$0d1ea750$@glassblower.info> References: <9f41afdd-fdc1-4cb4-a75e-8e3b19271814@earthlink.net> <180401db922a$59b4e270$0d1ea750$@glassblower.info> Message-ID: I had several boxes of punch cards from the early- to mid-70s, but I threw them out circa 1990 because the printed text at the top had faded away. I regret that now. I have only one punch card left, made at the Computer History Museum in 1986, back when it was still in Boston. Back in the day, AT&T and other companies sent a punch card along with their bills. You were supposed to mail the card back with your payment. My dad started receiving credit card bills for $0.00. He tried several times to get this fixed, to no avail. I was an undergrad at the time. I told him to send me the punch card that came with the bill. I would alter it and send it back to him. He was then to write an explanation of the billing problem on the back of the card and then mail it to the credit card company. My alteration was to make an invalid overpunch so that the card could not be read. The $0.00 bills stopped coming. I later found out the cause of the $0.00 problem. It comes from use in a COBOL program of a statement such as: IF BALANCE IS NEGATIVE THEN Commercial financial information is commonly stored using scaled packed decimal numbers. Packed decimal has a separate sign so there are two zero values--zero with positive sign and zero with negative sign. In this case, somehow the account balance was recorded as negative zero, and that tests TRUE for IS NEGATIVE. The proper way to code this is: IF BALANCE IS LESS THAN ZERO THEN -Paul W. On Mon, Mar 10, 2025 at 10:17 PM Tony Patti wrote: > idk, when I type "TONY" into > https://boingboing.net/2025/03/10/make-your-own-virtual-punchcard.html > it does not match the output which I have at > https://www.glassblower.info/crypto/tony-punch-card.jpg > > But maybe that's because, to find this punch card in my basement, in the > 7th box which I looked in tonight, > that box was in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused > lavatory, > with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard" :) > > My punch card is from Wharton's awesome KL-10 DECsystem-10, circa 1980, > contemporaneous photos here: > https://glassblower.info/Wharton-DECsystem-10/Wharton-DECsystem-10.html > > Tony Patti > (ARPAnet NIC IDENT "TP4") > crypto at glassblower.info > > > -----Original Message----- > From: David C. Jenner > Sent: Monday, March 10, 2025 8:37 PM > To: Charles H Sauer (he/him) ; COFF < > coff at tuhs.org> > Subject: [COFF] Re: Make your own virtual punchcard > > My first punch cards were in 1962, a first program for an IBM 709 Assembly > Language class. We used 026 card punches. > > I wanted to emphasize a line in the comments region with an exclamation > mark. Not finding one on the 026, I did what we were taught in typing > class--type period, backspace, type apostrophe. > > My first program was, of course, rejected by the card reader. > > I think my box of program punch cards from many years of computing is > somewhere in storage in my garage. As well as a box of unused, original > cards from computing centers all over the country.^H' > > Dave > > On 3/10/25 2:45 PM, Charles H Sauer (he/him) wrote: > > https://boingboing.net/2025/03/10/make-your-own-virtual-punchcard.html > > > > [50 years ago today I started working at IBM Yorktown. My boxes of > > punchcards from graduate work at UT-Austin were enroute with the > > movers from Austin, to be fed into VM-370 after they arrived. I wish I > > had kept those boxes as souvenirs.] > > > > Charlie > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu Wed Mar 12 09:07:50 2025 From: douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu (Douglas McIlroy) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 19:07:50 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Make your own virtual punchcard Message-ID: Mention of punched cards reminded me of some 1960s trivia. There were two formats for binary code on punched cards for IBM 700-series machines. In "row binary" two 36-bit words filled each of the 12 rows from bottom to top. In "column binary" successive thirds of a word ran downward in each of 3 successive columns. Bob Morris wondered what is the order of the permutation performed in row-to-column conversion. The order of the row-to-column permutation turns out to be 172. There are five cycles of that length plus an oddball of length 4. My souvenir card shows the oddball. If you convert a cycle from row binary to column binary, the output is the same as the input.* Each cycle is also invariant under 180-degree rotation.The 4-cycle is a simple parallelogram. One of the 5-cycles lines up in periodic diagonals. The other cycles show no easily described structure. The images of the two described cycles should be viewed in a fixed-width font. The punches in the 4-cycle are numbered in cyclic order. I keep a few souvenir punched cards. One bears that 4-cycle. * Well, almost the same. The first word on the card contains control information whose layout differs in the two formats. Doug ........................................................................ ........................................................................ ...........................................3............................ ........................................................................ ..............2......................................................... ........................................................................ ........................................................................ .........................................................4.............. ........................................................................ ............................1........................................... ........................................................................ ........................................................................ ..X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X.... ....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X.. .X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X ...X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X....X... 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Message-ID: Beating a nearly dead horse, I'm shipping this to COFF instead of TUHS to which it responds. > I find > > if (a == b && c == d) > > perfectly reasonable, but > > if ((a == b) && (c == d)) > > to be just silly. Amusing. IT's odd that no one has mentioned the use of spaces for grouping. When the operands of == are simple, I prefer to vary the spacingy spacing. It's less intrusive than extra parentheses and just as clear. if(a==b && c==d) or if( a==b && c==d ) K&R usually flank every infix operator with spaces, unlike classical mathematical usage, where spacing reflects operator precedence. I usually write a*b + c*d, not a * b + c * d, which wantonly flattens the parse tree. Here's an example from K&R, where uniform spacing hampers intelligibility. for (i = 0; s[i] >= '0' && s[i] <= '9'; ++i) n = 10 * n + (s[i] - '0'); The "extra" parens in the second line admirably show the intent of the subtraction. Other groupings are not so well indicated. I would write it like this: for(i=0; s[i]>='0' && s[i]<='9'; ++i) n = 10*n + (s[i]-'0'); (I'll admit that the juxtaposition ]>= is less than perspicuous.) Long identifiers constitute a level of grouping that takes precedence even over multiplication. So I may flank long identifiers with spaces. I suppose then + in a sum of products might deserve double spaces. That's probably a bridge too far, but double spaces after the semicolons in the "for" statement above seem justifiable K&R aren't absolutely rigid about spacing. In the following oddly mixed specimen, the first of three operands in a conjunction is spaced tightly, but the third is not; I guess they feel about != the way I do about long identifiers. i References: Message-ID: On Tue, Mar 11, 2025 at 10:22 PM Douglas McIlroy wrote: > Beating a nearly dead horse, I'm shipping this to COFF instead of TUHS > to which it responds. > > > I find > > > > if (a == b && c == d) > > > > perfectly reasonable, but > > > > if ((a == b) && (c == d)) > > > > to be just silly. > > Amusing. IT's odd that no one has mentioned the use of spaces for > grouping. When the operands of == are simple, I prefer to vary the > spacingy spacing. It's less intrusive than extra parentheses and just > as clear. > > if(a==b && c==d) or > if( a==b && c==d ) I definitely agree that judicious use of spacing can aid comprehension, though it can only be a hint to the programmer, since it's not semantically meaningful to the compiler. I would fear something like this, given a, b, and c bool: if (b||c && a) /* ?if (b or c) and a? */ Surely experience and good taste can find a happy medium here. > K&R usually flank every infix operator with spaces, unlike classical > mathematical usage, where spacing reflects operator precedence. I > usually write a*b + c*d, not a * b + c * d, which wantonly flattens > the parse tree. Here's an example from K&R, where uniform spacing > hampers intelligibility. > > for (i = 0; s[i] >= '0' && s[i] <= '9'; ++i) > n = 10 * n + (s[i] - '0'); > > The "extra" parens in the second line admirably show the intent of the > subtraction. Other groupings are not so well indicated. I would write > it like this: > > for(i=0; s[i]>='0' && s[i]<='9'; ++i) > n = 10*n + (s[i]-'0'); > > (I'll admit that the juxtaposition ]>= is less than perspicuous.) I personally like this elements of this style, but I have grown fond this: for (i = 0; '0' <= s[i] && s[i] <= '9'; ++i) n = 10*n + (s[i] - '0'); Which makes the range comparison obvious and mimics what I'd expect to see in a written formula using standard mathematical notation. Here, factors are clustered together without space, while terms are separated by spaces; again closer to the usual conventions for typeset mathematical formulae. > Long identifiers constitute a level of grouping that takes precedence > even over multiplication. So I may flank long identifiers with spaces. > I suppose then + in a sum of products might deserve double spaces. > That's probably a bridge too far, but double spaces after the > semicolons in the "for" statement above seem justifiable > > K&R aren't absolutely rigid about spacing. In the following oddly > mixed specimen, the first of three operands in a conjunction is spaced > tightly, but the third is not; I guess they feel about != the way I do > about long identifiers. > > i > The middle conjunct is a challenge. I'd probably squeeze out the > spaces. But I might instead try to hold it together with outer parens. Here, I think a single expression is trying to do too much. Assuming this extracted from a loop, one might write this as: while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) { if (i < lim - 1 && c != '\n') /* do something with c and increment i */ } Though I'm a fan of Dijkstra's guarded statements, which can be simulated in C via conditions and break: while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) { if (c == '\n' || i >= lim) break; /* Do something with c and i. */ } The question of indentation levels and characters for them comes up frequently. Here, I use 4 space indent because gmail won't accept tab literals, which I'm most accustomed to from Unix source code. Nowadays it doesn't matter that much, but I imagine in the early PDP-11 days it did, from a space saving perspective on small disks. I was always struck by how John Lions's commentary formatted the source code so that the first indentation level was 4 spaces, and subsequent levels 8 spaces (I think. My copy isn't to hand just now). I thought that was visually rather appealing. - Dan C. From beebe at math.utah.edu Thu Mar 20 09:55:32 2025 From: beebe at math.utah.edu (Nelson H. F. Beebe) Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2025 17:55:32 -0600 Subject: [COFF] [coff] new history of Netnews Message-ID: List members may be interested in this new article published today: Steven M. Bellovin Netnews: The Origin Story IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 47(1) 7--21 Jan/Mar 2025 https://doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2024.3420896 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe at acm.org beebe at computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: https://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au Thu Mar 20 11:34:34 2025 From: sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au (sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2025 12:34:34 +1100 Subject: [COFF] [coff] new history of Netnews In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Looks good, behind a paywall :( > On 20 Mar 2025, at 10:55, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote: > > List members may be interested in this new article published today: > > Steven M. Bellovin > Netnews: The Origin Story > IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 47(1) 7--21 Jan/Mar 2025 > https://doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2024.3420896 > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - > - University of Utah - > - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu - > - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe at acm.org beebe at computer.org - > - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: https://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe - > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jim at deitygraveyard.com Sat Mar 22 14:23:06 2025 From: jim at deitygraveyard.com (Jim Carpenter) Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2025 00:23:06 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [coff] new history of Netnews In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 9:34 PM wrote: > > Looks good, behind a paywall :( > You can read it at https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/netnews-hist.pdf . Jim From imp at bsdimp.com Sat Mar 22 14:35:58 2025 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2025 22:35:58 -0600 Subject: [COFF] [coff] new history of Netnews In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 10:23 PM Jim Carpenter wrote: > On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 9:34 PM wrote: > > > > Looks good, behind a paywall :( > > > > You can read it at > https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/netnews-hist.pdf . Thanks. I didn't know it started at Duke! Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: