Hybrid Computertab machine data centers 799

In the late 1970's and early 1980's I used a UNIVAC 90-60 in both batch and time-sharing modes. The student keypunch room where I punched most of my FORTRAN and COBOL programs had an 084 sorter, a collator whose number I can't recall, a card-to-printer accounting machine for listing card decks, an interpreter, and other ancillary equipment for handling cards and paper (burster, decollator, binding equipment, etc.)

At the time, students were encouraged to do as much with the tab equipment as possible to minimize the workload on the computer.

One limiting factor was simply the number of terminals that worked at any given moment. When I started, the standard terminal was a teletype model 33 ASR. Several teletypes were limited to "off-line" use for the production of paper tapes. You would punch a tape with your BASIC (or FASTFOR) program and wait for an "online" terminal to become available. Once an "online" teletype was available, you grabbed it, did a conversational signon, entered the language processor, then transmitted your tape. To my way of thinking, this was a mix of both conversational and batch computing. I often punched the results on tape as well, that way I could reproduce the output (on an offline TTY) without having to run the program again.

Later (because of maintenance issues?), the model 33 teletypes were replaced with model 43 teletypes. The model 43 TTYs didn't have the punch or reader, so the offline TTYs were eliminated. At about the same time, we started getting a few "glbutt teletypes" like the ADM-3 and ADM-5 CRT terminals. We had these for less than a year before we started getting microcomputers. The microcomputers replaced the mainframe for BASIC programming and early systems courses.

The UNIVAC was in use until they replaced it with a VAX 11-780 in 1984.

Oh, one other gizmo we had in the room with all the tab equipment was a card-to-tape system made by Mohawk Data Systems. This allowed you to submit your batch programs and data on mag-tape instead of punch cards. The system operator's never liked to mount student tapes, so I rarely used the card-to-tape system. I never figured that out, since they never unpleasant womaned about card jobs.

Some other machines we had access to included a hacked 129 keypunch that would put sequence numbers in your card decks automagically, and a real end that consisted of a Hazaltine CRT terminal hooked up to some sort of single board computer and an old model 24 keypunch. You could key and edit text on the CRT, when completed you hit XMIT on the terminal and the SBC punched a deck of cards on the keypunch. The model 24 didn't print on the cards, so the next stop was the interpreter, then the accounting machine. Finally, after a desk check, you could submit your cards to the operator for batch processing. Typical batch turn-around during the day was a little over an hour -- not really all that bad from what I've heard.

This was all at Edinboro University of PA from around 1978 to 1984.