DavidB-AU Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 6 hours ago, Welly said: Whilst watching this interesting video of the physics of the Twin Towers collapses on 9/11, mention is made of the transit tunnels through the foundation - check out the choice of train! https://youtu.be/1NkBfLBov5Q?si=VIkPGVjTspRiLV6G&t=830 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Johnster Posted October 13, 2023 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 13, 2023 3 hours ago, Hroth said: Reminds me of the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark... Top men... 1 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pH Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 5 hours ago, RFS said: This picture brought a smile to me as a retired IT pro. It's of a US Federal Data Centre in 1959 where records are being stored on punched cards. It's estimated the total data stored here is about 4.3 Gb - ie equal to a small (by today's standards already!) flash drive. The pallets contain around 27,000 boxes of cards, each box having 2000 cards with 80 bytes of data each. Corporate (and individual programmers’) security blanket! 2 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Nick C Posted October 13, 2023 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 13, 2023 10 hours ago, RFS said: This picture brought a smile to me as a retired IT pro. It's of a US Federal Data Centre in 1959 where records are being stored on punched cards. It's estimated the total data stored here is about 4.3 Gb - ie equal to a small (by today's standards already!) flash drive. The pallets contain around 27,000 boxes of cards, each box having 2000 cards with 80 bytes of data each. and to think you can go onto any online store today and buy a 512GB microSD card - that's over 100 warehousefulls of punchcards, on a device the size of a fingernail... 2 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium kevinlms Posted October 13, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 13, 2023 11 hours ago, RFS said: This picture brought a smile to me as a retired IT pro. It's of a US Federal Data Centre in 1959 where records are being stored on punched cards. It's estimated the total data stored here is about 4.3 Gb - ie equal to a small (by today's standards already!) flash drive. The pallets contain around 27,000 boxes of cards, each box having 2000 cards with 80 bytes of data each. I want one - Actually I DONT! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold ian Posted October 13, 2023 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 13, 2023 (edited) 3 hours ago, kevinlms said: I want one - Actually I DONT! Transfer the cards to a USB stick and use the space for a model railway. Sorted. Edited October 13, 2023 by ian 3 4 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Ian J. Posted October 13, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 13, 2023 4 hours ago, Nick C said: and to think you can go onto any online store today and buy a 512GB microSD card - that's over 100 warehousefulls of punchcards, on a device the size of a fingernail... 512GB? https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultra-microSDXC-adapter-Performance/dp/B0B7NYN3N3?refinements=p_n_feature_browse-bin%3A1609175031%2Cp_89%3ASanDisk 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium J. S. Bach Posted October 13, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 13, 2023 6 hours ago, Nick C said: and to think you can go onto any online store today and buy a 512GB microSD card - that's over 100 warehousefulls of punchcards, on a device the size of a fingernail... But the IBM cards were useful; as bookmarks, notepads, etc. 2 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold ian Posted October 13, 2023 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 13, 2023 ...and hands up those who remember articles in the model railway press about using the chad (rectangular punchings) for bricks. 10 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold teaky Posted October 13, 2023 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 13, 2023 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67104820 80's pop. Never a good idea. 2 1 3 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stanley Melrose Posted October 13, 2023 Share Posted October 13, 2023 21 hours ago, RFS said: This picture brought a smile to me as a retired IT pro. It's of a US Federal Data Centre in 1959 where records are being stored on punched cards. It's estimated the total data stored here is about 4.3 Gb - ie equal to a small (by today's standards already!) flash drive. The pallets contain around 27,000 boxes of cards, each box having 2000 cards with 80 bytes of data each. Many years ago (mid 1970s) I managed a project to install a new general ledger system in a US multinational company operating in more than 100 countries. The master copy of the chart of accounts was filed in 21 boxes of punch cards that I kept in my office. How much power can one person have?? Those were the days - a bit later I carried a 29MByte single platter disk drive up a flight of stairs It cost me over £200 in osteopath fees to be able to walk freely after my back was strained by the weight of the disk drive. Our first GigaByte disk drives needed aircon and strengthened floors because of their power consumption and weight. Stan 5 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hibelroad Posted October 14, 2023 Share Posted October 14, 2023 Dangerous, seriously? I wonder what happens. 2 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium PeterStiles Posted October 14, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 14, 2023 35 minutes ago, Hibelroad said: I wonder what happens I can easily imagine it would suck up all the noxious chemicals and emit them slowly over night as you are cuddled up inside your very own 4.5 tog funeral shroud... 1 3 2 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium John Besley Posted October 14, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 14, 2023 1 hour ago, Hibelroad said: Dangerous, seriously? I wonder what happens. 4.5 TOG's ask Terry Wogan... 2 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CameronL Posted October 14, 2023 Share Posted October 14, 2023 (edited) 17 hours ago, Stanley Melrose said: Our first GigaByte disk drives needed aircon I remember the water-cooled IBM mainframes of the '70s and '80s. I never used punch cards. I got into the IT industry when the state-of-the-art storage medium was an 8" floppy disc. Then along came 5 1/4". We had a new customer whose hardware was all based around 5 1/4", but our development system was 8". So, when I was developing software I had to copy it onto 8", walk 50 yards through the office to a machine with dual drives, copy it from 8" to 5 1/4", walk 50 yards back to my desk and copy it onto the customer's 5 1/4" test system. To actually get the software to the customer we arranged for a courier to take the disks with the latest release to the client. By modern software, comms and storage standards that seems like sitting in a cave banging rocks together. Copying software to a floppy to pass it to another developer was known as "Frizbeenet". Edited October 14, 2023 by CameronL Added a bit 3 1 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium J. S. Bach Posted October 14, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 14, 2023 2 hours ago, CameronL said: ...snip... the state-of-the-art storage medium was an 8" floppy disc ...snip... I was given a new, never-been-raced 8" floppy drive; the darn thing is bigger than some of the latest laptops. It came with a control card but I never did anything with it as I was never able to source any 8" floppies. I still have it. 4 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeithMacdonald Posted October 14, 2023 Share Posted October 14, 2023 6 hours ago, CameronL said: ... copy it onto the customer's 5 1/4" test system. To actually get the software to the customer we arranged for a courier to take the disks with the latest release to the client. Oh, that brings back memories. 😀 We had one particularly awkward customer that always wanted the very latest version of our software immediately. And complained bitterly if there was any delay. Usually we sent it by Recorded Delivery. But one 31th March, we hit upon a Cunning Plan, and sent this fax at one minute past midnight. Note the importance of the timing! But the joke backfired. The next day, we had a phone call saying it hadn't worked, and now they couldn't get it out of the floppy drive. Oops! 🤕 1 16 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Hroth Posted October 14, 2023 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 14, 2023 1 hour ago, KeithMacdonald said: Oh, that brings back memories. 😀 We had one particularly awkward customer that always wanted the very latest version of our software immediately. And complained bitterly if there was any delay. Usually we sent it by Recorded Delivery. But one 31th March, we hit upon a Cunning Plan, and sent this fax at one minute past midnight. Note the importance of the timing! But the joke backfired. The next day, we had a phone call saying it hadn't worked, and now they couldn't get it out of the floppy drive. Oops! 🤕 Obviously the types who NEVER rtfm.... 3 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium melmerby Posted October 14, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 14, 2023 (edited) Did you know that there are 13 Nasa spec Hasselblad Cameras on the Moon? They only brought the film packs back. Edited October 14, 2023 by melmerby 3 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium melmerby Posted October 14, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 14, 2023 On 13/10/2023 at 20:23, teaky said: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67104820 80's pop. Never a good idea. Even worse, today was 90s day! 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CameronL Posted October 15, 2023 Share Posted October 15, 2023 14 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said: sent this fax People vastly overestimate the power of the fax machine. I worked for a time for a company who sold very high-end software to very large organisations. One of our customers was the Ministry of Defence - well, part of it because the MoD at the time was a very compartmentalised organisation. We were trying to spread our software to other bits of the MoD, and the account manager thought that a demonstration with live data would be a good idea. However, getting the live data at really short notice was a problem, because the MoD drone providing it didn't want to fax it (this was long before the Internet and emails). But, after several phone calls saying how essential this data was the MoD drone hit upon a solution that kept her happy. She put the data in an envelope and faxed the envelope to us. I did not feel comforted that the defence of the realm was in the hands of such people at all. 2 2 11 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Sidecar Racer Posted October 15, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 15, 2023 8 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold ian Posted October 15, 2023 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 15, 2023 Whilst working in support for accounting software back in the floppy era we would often ask the user for a copy of their data so that we could attempt to reproduce the problem on our system. One of the team asked a user to send them a copy of their data disk - and yes the disk mailer that arrived special delivery next day contained a neatly folded A4 sheet - a photocopy of the disk. 2 2 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium kevinlms Posted October 15, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 15, 2023 5 hours ago, CameronL said: But, after several phone calls saying how essential this data was the MoD drone hit upon a solution that kept her happy. She put the data in an envelope and faxed the envelope to us. I did not feel comforted that the defence of the realm was in the hands of such people at all. At least the data didn't fall into enemy hands. AKA a modern version of Dad's Army - Don't tell him, Pyke! 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium kevinlms Posted October 15, 2023 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 15, 2023 2 hours ago, Sidecar Racer said: 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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