Lost dive logs after Orange Grove

[FW]

I'm assuming you didn't log dives for the first 10 years because they didn't have paper yet?

[Greenwood_60]

I would have done the same thing, if they had computers when I started diving, (nevermind email)

You could have had a punch card dive log!

[FW]

You could have had a punch card dive log!

I was diving before punch cards... I did register at college with punch cards, though.

[Sludge]

Heck, Forrest, they used punch cards at registration when I was in college.

[MORGAN]

Heck, Forrest, they used punch cards at registration when I was in college.

Yup, me too. And there was a "computation center" where you could take complex mathematical problems to be computed. You would set up the problem with pencil and paper, and a work-study student would transfer it onto punch cards with a thing that looked like a manual typewriter. They'd run the punch cards through the computer and give you the answer, sometimes even the same day!

Mike

[FW]

Heck, Forrest, they used punch cards at registration when I was in college.

OK, then you must be really old

[Skorpiov]

You mean my skills as a keypuch operator are not in demand? I get a kick out of guys at work talking about they've been in IT longer than Windows. I started on Vax systems with Keycard readers. It took all day to get a keypunch machine to make 2 changes to some code, waiting half a day for the deck to make it to the reader, and several more hours to wait on the code output so you could do it all again. Testing one change could take you a couple days just to see if it would run. And heaven forbid you should drop your deck and have to reorder the cards. Anyone else use pencil numbering on the cards in case this happens?

I still have a slide rule that works really well.

thats pretty old...

[MORGAN]

I have a slide rule, too, but I forgot how to use it. Though somewhere in a box of books in the attic I have a little book that explains it.

[FW]

...guys at work talking about they've been in IT longer than Windows...

I just had to make a change on a program I wrote in the early '80s. The compiler only runs under DOS, but I managed to make the update. And yes, the '80s isn't that old. When I started college in 1962, there was a computer science class in the course catalog, but they didn't get the school computer installed until the following semester. We learned how to "program" sorters, gang punches, etc. The "programming" was moving wires on a big board in the side of the machines :roll

When the computer finally arrived (IBM), it took up a huge room, with it's own AC unit. It sat up on a false floor, to run cables to peripherals. It came with 4 rack cabinets. Each cabinet had 4K of magnetic core storage. That made a total of 32K of ram. Not 32Gig, or even 32Meg, but 32K, for an entire university! Backup was on magnetic tape, and the hard drive had removable media, with five disks the size of LP records, with a total of 1Meg of storage. I think my wristwatch has more that 32K of memory

To boot it, you had to put a stack of punch cards in the card reader.

Don't forget to watch for a lost logbook

[stairman]

I leave my logbooks at home as well. Ill fill em out with dive puter info and other stuff that went on when I get back from a trip. I use small spiral notebooks and write down quite a bit about the dive and the day. Id hate to lose em since when Im too old to dive and laid up I can relive all the old times .