Patching (it's quite literal!)

[viking33]

Yep, it was 5-bit.


Speaking of gluing, and in keeping with the topic; here is a literal loop.


(Bad practice but it got the attention on the other end. )

I will get these images printed out on Plastic (waterproof) paper at the UPS print shop up at Bloor and Christie.
(They call it "waterproof", but it's really tear-proof)
(read that how you will )
Tears
Chris

That was the way we ran a repeatable test to detect occasional errors.
Just put a circular "Fox tape" ( The quick brown fox, etc. ) in the TD and let it run. Go out for a coffee beak and check it out.

[ChrisGreaves]

Just put a circular "Fox tape" ( The quick brown fox, etc. ) in the TD and let it run. Go out for a coffee beak and check it out.

So. You left it chaddering away at 10cps ....

[AlanMiller]

The non-programmatic infinite loop. Very useful!

Alan

[GeoffW]

It must have been quite easy to sabotage a program.

You're not wrong there ... especially when punch card decks were placed in insecure places, awaiting batch processing overnight.
I'm sure this happened to one of mine, which opened and accessed some VERY important documentation files.
I was horrified to be told that "I" had deleted them. I still remember seeing the JCL code
disp=(old,delete)
on the punch card. I would NEVER have used that on files not owned by me, ALWAYS choosing the safe shared file option of
disp=shr

I know it was sabotaged, just never found out by whom.

Alan

I never experienced a sabotaged program. But at University, as one of the faculties who received just a single run overnight, it was a simple matter to grab one of the decks from people who had four runs a day, and copy the account details card at the front of the deck, enabling us to get four runs a day. A sort of primitive hacking which I've never previously owned uo to.

But overnight was a luxury compared to when I first learnt programming. We had cards with perforated homes which we punched with a paper clip, and sent by mail to be processed. One week turnaround for a compile.

[AlanMiller]

We had cards with perforated homes which we punched with a paper clip, and sent by mail to be processed. One week turnaround for a compile.

Some of my Uni experience was with Minitran using mark sense cards - marked with a pencil as opposed to punched. The undergrad facility was a project maintained by grad students. Having had previous Fortran experience, I found our first exercise rather simple and was surprised to get an error message with some sort of suggestion. I couldn't see the error so ran it again... same error message. Rechecked and ran it a third time, this time receiving the very useful diagnostic, "You must be a f@%^wit." Finally, in frustration, I made a fresh copy of the "offending" card, without alteration to the code, and it ran perfectly as expected.

I discovered the PhD student in charge of the show, and found him drinking coffee with a group of similar snooty fellow PhDs. I confronted him with (first) the original deck and outputs, asking him to find the error, and why the need for the offensive message, presumably thought to be extraordinarily clever and witty by its author. He laughed heartily along with his cohorts and suggested I go back and study some more, or something similar. I then produced my "ace", which showed clearly the card reader was suspect. I left him with the simple message, "So who's the f@%^wit now?" A frustrating but also quite satisfying introduction to Uni computing.

Alan
Alan

[GeoffW]

Minitran was the language we used- I think marked sense cards came later. We used portapunch cards.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONECS" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This article gives 1974 as a start date, which is not correct. I did this, as my introduction to programming, in 1970.

I certainly never had messages like yours!

[AlanMiller]

Yes, I'm sure it was around before '74, but the system I used may have started then. The uni system I used was for undergrads and was run as a "project" for grad students. Hence the attempts at the "witty" diagnostics ... which backfired badly on them once they tried it out on me!

Alan

Edit - Now looking at your reference, it seems like we were victims of the same system!