(very OT) Ideal partition schemes (history of partitioning)

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 2020-08-29 at 13:24 -0500, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> On 8/29/20 1:08 PM, doug at safeport.com wrote:
> > Wow Poly, Doug, Steve, this is a thread to save. I guess only guys named 
> > Doug have used punched cards. Anyone else used paper tape?? The most 
> > inventive use of punched cards in my past, was when an Alogol system 
> > arrived without a terminal (or card punch) my boss, with a pocket knife, 
> > "punched" the character set. Then until the terminal arrived, tested the 
> > system by programming one card at a time into the card reader. The 
> > tedium was minimized by copious amounts of beer.
> 
> On a similar note: we had a group of ladies who were "typing" on punch 
> card typing machines. No regular person (programmer) was allowed access 
> to one. Then, after hours if you found bug and needed to make small 
> change, you were "editing" punch cards using point tipped razor to cut 
> new holes, and were plugging holes with those rectangular pieces punched 
> out of cards, found near card duplicator. "Doctored" like that card, 
> however, can damage card reader, so you put it through card duplicator 
> (which is more robust device than card reader), compare duplicate to 
> make sure it is what you need, and then you can leave your modified 
> program to run during night. Otherwise you will have to wait till 
> morning when card punch ladies come to work.

Forwarding to a pen pal who was involved in electronics already before
the transistor was invented.

What? How aged are you folks? I'm from 1966 and when I started with
computers, I already used 5 ¼ floppy disks.

Am I a youngster?

I'm used to analog audio and video engineering, analog photography and
computers with 5 ¼ floppy disks. I just started programming assembly
without a macro assembler, but after a relatively short time even a
macro assembler was available.

"Card reader" nowadays is for something else.

I used a hole puncher to write on both sides of a single sided 5 ¼
floppy disk, but have never seen a punch card in reality.