[Simh] Of DEC and cards

[Timothe Litt]

I don't have numbers, but I do have experience. 

I ran into quite a few card readers on DEC gear - fewer (but some) punches.

8s, 11s, 10s, 20s, and VAX - they were gone by alpha.

The card readers were most often specified for migrations - people who had a
business process, or even just software to move from a card environment.
Perhaps a 360/70, or 1130.  Remember that even into the early 80s, phone
bills came with an "IBM" card that went back with your check; Mass driver's
licenses were created with punch cards...

I sometimes thought that a card reader should have been bundled with the
COBOL and RPG compilers...There were some RFQs where it was clear that
you had to have a card reader just to check a box - you'd go to the site
years
later and see layers of undisturbed dust on the dust cover :-)

Then there were the people who used DEC gear to write (and especially debug)
jobs that would run on the more expensive mainframes.

The compilers (FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG) all had strict card image modes as well
as looser "interactive" modes.  Not just standard conformance, but to deal
the the card sequence fields at the right end.

The CR10A would read 1000 cards/min (833 at 50 Hz) - and was noisy enough
to be heard over the fans/AC of a 10 in a machine room.  It was rather
finicky;
the Documations were more reliable.  Most models on the 11s were slower,
but IIRC there was a 1,200 CPM model. 

The CP10 did a whopping 200 CPM - or 365 if only the first 16? columns were
punched.  Punching was always slower - and mechanically more challenging.

The 10/20 MPB and GALAXY batch systems supported the model of preparing
jobs on cards - and feeding them in a continuous stream.  Some university
environments used that into the 80s.  Being DEC, the "JCL" was trivially
simple;
nothing like the IBM nightmares of complexity. 

OTOH, and probably more consistent with your experience, card equipment was
almost unheard of when the DEC HW ran Unix...

On 13-Feb-20 11:38, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 10:50 AM Timothe Litt <litt at ieee.org
> <mailto:litt at ieee.org>> wrote:
>
>     Among others, DEC OEM'd Documation card readers.
>
>     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se0F1bLfFKY
>
> Mark - sorry to go a little direct (simh) topic here [this sort of
> belongs on Warren's COFF mailing list), but since the Card discussion
> started here as I'm kinda curious and will ask it.
>
> Did DEC actually sell that many?   In my years of working around DEC
> gear starting in the late 1960s, I think I saw a card read/punch only
> once on a PDP-6 IIRC, but it might have been a KA10.   I don't think I
> ever saw one on a PDP-8/11 or Vaxen.
>
> I certainly saw and used them on IBM 1401/360 systems, the
> Univac 1100s and CDC's.  I have not so fond memories of the IBM 1442,
> much less a 26 and 29 keypunch (and a couple of great stories too). 
>
> That said, when I think of DEC gear, my memories are of paper tape or
> either the original DEC-Tape units or a couple of cases the old
> cassette tape units DEC had on some of the laboratory PDP 11/05s.
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