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What 5 Megabytes of Computer Data Looked Like in 1966 ~ Vintage Everyday (www.vintag.es)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Seems about right. One card had 80 columns, a byte for each one, so 5,000,000 bytes divided by 80 would be 62,500 cards.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    The IBM 503, the last valve computer, that Cobol and Fortran, the first languages were developed on, had 20 bit words.

    So an 80 column card could fit 4 words across. Thats why teletypes and terminals had 80 coulmns of text - so they were the same size as punch cards.

    Fortran only used 72 columns, so the last 8 were unused.

    It seems weird, but on early computers bytes were not based on multiples of 8 or 4 (like 8 but, 16 bit, 32 bit etc). Some computers had 15, 10, 7, 25, even 50 bit words.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I remember our first personal computer had 40 columns on the screen, but we ended up getting an 80 column graphics card for it.

    I taught myself basic, but the first language I took in college was fortran, and it was on cards. A bit of an aberration: they had moved on to somewhat more modern equipment, but the lab was being upgraded, so they reverted you the card system for a semester temporarily. It was out of date, but not wildly so at the time.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    One line of code was called a card - - if I remember correctly that was 1,000 years ago, maybe less, i'm not sure now 😆. Thanks for recalling me the 80 characters per line, fond memories, takes me way back.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Well, it might or not be a line of code - depends a lot on the language. It's 80 bytes, and a byte is one character. You could have continuation cards if your line was more than 80. That wasn't ever needed for assembly language, rarely for Fortran, but very common for COBOL.

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