Old Enough To Remember?
- Thread starter Shuey
- Start date
We had ATlantic (28) 2, 5, and 8; ELgin (35) 3, 5, and 8; and MIlton (64) 3, 4, and 6.
Mophead
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Anyone remember the draft lottery? Only drawing I ever got lucky with. Mine was toward the last of the second set of dates. Never got a draft notice. Buddy of mine was number 3 out of the hat. He went for six years of National Guard instead of the jungle.
Uncle Phil
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Oh yeah, mine was 93 or 95 so I joined the USMC.Anyone remember the draft lottery? Only drawing I ever got lucky with. Mine was toward the last of the second set of dates. Never got a draft notice. Buddy of mine was number 3 out of the hat. He went for six years of National Guard instead of the jungle.
I figured if I was headed to the jungles I might as well be with the boys that knew how to shoot.
I ended up stateside for my entire tour programming their computers.
I do remember the Instant chocolate containers, we use the other end of the spoons.
I do remember the Draft, very well. My brother ended up number 1. joined the Air Force and still ended up over in Thailand. I graduated in 74, missed it by that much. Did have friends that dropped out to serve. They were never the same. Suicide and drugs, one cleaned up and is getting old peacefully.
Don't remember what happened to my card though.
Those were the times then, I think every generation has them
I do remember the Draft, very well. My brother ended up number 1. joined the Air Force and still ended up over in Thailand. I graduated in 74, missed it by that much. Did have friends that dropped out to serve. They were never the same. Suicide and drugs, one cleaned up and is getting old peacefully.
Don't remember what happened to my card though.
Those were the times then, I think every generation has them
Mophead
Site Supporter
Fourtran and punch cards?Oh yeah, mine was 93 or 95 so I joined the USMC.
I figured if I was headed to the jungles I might as well be with the boys that knew how to shoot.
I ended up stateside for my entire tour programming their computers.
Uncle Phil
Site Supporter
Fortran - No, Punch cards - Yes - I could make an IBM 029 card punch sit up and dance! (remember you could program them also)
I worked on converting the USMC IBM 1401 Autocoder to IBM 360 Cobol.
Had to support the JUMPS payroll system with Unit Record machines supplying the input.
The issue was we could not change the programs (written in Kansas City), all we could do is write programs to fix the bad data.
I wrote a manual for our shop on debugging IBM 360 memory dumps to figure out what went south.
You reminded me of one of my fondest memories of my time at the University of Waterloo. If you were lucky while taking a break in the Math building, you could hear the uncontrolled screams and wailing of some poor sod who just dropped a stack of cards.
I was lucky: I had access to the widget terminals with data storage on the university's mainframe.
I was lucky: I had access to the widget terminals with data storage on the university's mainframe.
Uncle Phil
Site Supporter
Interesting side note on punch cards -
In my workshop I have one of those old punch card cabinets - the ones that were really heavy duty and the drawers were double-rollered for the weight.
It has made me a mighty fine toolbox with lots of drawers for separating your tools into categories.
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talk about memories!
We learned COBOL and Fortran and had to program via punch cards. Started while at LSU in 1969, USAF after I ran out of money, then thru grad school. I remember early on in grad school, one student had a project on punch cards that filled two cardboard card boxes.....running across the quadrangle toward the computer room....in the rain...holding onto his books, two long card boxes, and his umbrella. Guess what? He dropped everything, fortunately onto the sidewalk at that instant and spilled/mixed up hundreds of punch cards. Hundreds of scrambled, wet punch cards. What a blessing when floppy discs became available shortly afterward.
You kids don't know what you missed.
Uncle Phil
Site Supporter
Another interesting tidbit -
We were a 'split' shop - half of us were military and half were civilians (GS14s IIRC).
When the powers in charge figured out I could fix problems in the middle of the night a lot 'cheaper' than paying the GSs guess who got called?
The trick was you had to make the changes via punched cards and you only got so many shots since you had to turn over the deck to operations.
I got very good at desk checking card decks and logic.
But I was one of the few Marines in my unit that got to 'sleep in' on occasion.
We were a 'split' shop - half of us were military and half were civilians (GS14s IIRC).
When the powers in charge figured out I could fix problems in the middle of the night a lot 'cheaper' than paying the GSs guess who got called?
The trick was you had to make the changes via punched cards and you only got so many shots since you had to turn over the deck to operations.
I got very good at desk checking card decks and logic.
But I was one of the few Marines in my unit that got to 'sleep in' on occasion.
Uncle Phil
Site Supporter
And my first civilian job (small Honeywell system) I had a card deck I called 'Sock Dryer'.
If I rode in on my bike and my socks got wet, I would hang them behind the fan blower motor on the back of the card reader.
I'd insert that deck and by the time it finished reading my socks would be dry.
Yup, good old FORTRAN & COBOL
That actually came in handy a few years later. I spent a year as a computer operator for Jarman Shoes. We had an IBM System 3 Model 10 which occupied most of the large room we had. It was blessed with a huge multiplatter hard drive: the cartridges had to weigh 30-40 pounds.
A small army of data entry operators entered all production, payroll, sales and inventory information (they owned several national retail store chains) into punch cards.
The IBM beast ran 24 hours a day & my shift ran 24 hours on alternate days. If the machine burped or farted in the middle of the night, were to call the programmers to fix the issue. The chief programmer was a nice older Texan gentleman who was unfortunately a severe alcoholic and who's speech was badly hampered. When sober, he had a smooth Texas drawl that would have put Matthew McConaughey to shame.
The two assistant programmers were two Chinese brothers... very smart & very pleasant but their English was terrible. Over the phone in the middle of the night they were all very difficult to understand with regards to addressing the issue. I and the other operator taught ourselves the programming language for our system so we were able to fix all but the most severe problems & all three programmers got a good night's sleep.
ST1100Y
Site Supporter
Yeah... there is that...
I remember them going off in the 60's!
Passbook saving accounts where the teller would stamp the date and amount in the book. If you lost it, too bad.
ST1100Y
Site Supporter
Nationwide test alarm of the 'civil defense signals' is still happening every October over here...
And in the countrysides all volunteer fire departments have them on their station houses, so those attending/on call can drop whatever they're doing and rush in...