Media
10.5" tape
7" tape
9-track tapes, 1/2", 6250bpi. At 6250bpi, a 2400 foot tape like the
one on the left can hold about 170MB. The latch on the plastic
protective cover is also used to hang tapes from a rack. The cover is
removed before mounting the tape. 9-track tapes were in use from
the mid-1960s through the 1990s, when cartridge tapes became popular.
These particular tapes were used with HP3000 systems, circa 1987.
DC6150 Cartridge tape
QIC 150 (Quarter Inch Cartridge) DC6150 cartridge tape, 150MB capacity.
Measures 5-7/8" x 3-7/8" x 5/8".
HP 13356A Disk Pack, 120Mb, used in the HP 7925 drive. The pack has 5
platters (9 data heads and a servo head).
Here's a picture of the 7925 next to a HP3000 Series II.
HP 97935 Disk Pack, 404Mb, used in the HP 7933 and 7935 drives. The pack has 7
platters (13 data heads and a servo head). This particular pack was used in
a HP9000 system.
Here's
a picture of a 7935, courtesy of the
HP Computer
Museum.
Wang 76MB cartridge disk pack, 9", used on CDC 9710-80 RSD drives,
Wang 2267V-1 and others. Inside the cartridge are 3 platters, with 5 data
surfaces and one servo surface. When inserted vertically into the drive, a
plastic shutter opens to allow the heads access to the platters. Circa 1982.
Nashua 4473 Disk Pack, 300Mb, 14". The pack has 12 platters, 10 of which
are used (19 data heads and 1 servo head). It was commonly used with drives
such as the
CDC 9766
and the
DEC RM05.
These drives were in common use around 1980-1982.
Nashua 4462 Disk Pack, 80Mb, 14". The pack has 5 platters, 3 of which
are used (5 data heads and 1 servo head). It was commonly used with drives
such as the Data General 6067 and 1143, and Burroughs B9484
8" Soft Sectored Diskette
8" Hard Sectored Diskette
8" Single-sided Diskette
8" diskettes. Elephant brand DSDD soft sectored diskette,
and a Data General hard sectored diskette. The hard sectored diskette
has an index hole for each sector on the track, while the soft sectored
diskette has a single index hole. 8" diskettes have a write-enable
notch, which must be covered in order to write to the diskette.
The index hole on double-sided diskettes is displaced farther to the
right than on single-sided diskettes.
5-1/4" Single-sided Diskette
5-1/4" Double-sided Diskette
8" and 5-1/4" Comparison
5-1/4" diskettes, double-density, single and double-sided. These diskettes
have a write-protect notch, which is covered to prevent writing
to the diskette. Single and double-density diskettes tend to have a
center reinforcement ring, while high-density (1.2MB) diskettes usually
do not.
SHARE Symbolic
SHARE Symbolic
SHARE Symbolic
FORTRAN Statement
FORTRAN Statement
FORTRAN Statement
IBM 5081
IBM 5081
IBM 8 Word
IBM 8 Word
IBM 8 Word
IBM Pre-scored
IBM Incident Report
IBM Incident Reorder
Data Tab 733727
Kansas University
Kansas University
Kansas University
Kansas University
Card Registration Gauge
Gauge Instructions
Card Removal Tool
Punch cards. I spent a lot of time at the keypunch in the early 70s,
entering FORTRAN programs. A sampling of card types is shown, along
with an aluminum IBM Card Registration Guage and a 129 Card Removal
Tool, better known as a
card saw.
The blue item is a card weight, and is used in a card reader or
sorter to hold the cards down in the input hopper. The cylinder
is the program drum from an 029 keypunch, and is used to hold the
program card.
The two card decks are for the IBM 1401,
and play music (Anchors Aweigh, and She'll Be Comin' 'Round the
Mountain) on the 1403 line printer. See the Computer History Museum
for audio files of the
1403
playing music.
IBM 96 column card
This is a 96-column punch card from IBM, which was introduced with the
System/3 in 1969. Information was punched in round (1mm) holes, in three
rows of 32 columns each. Data could be punched as 6-bit BCD or 8-bit
EBCDIC. A reader/punch was also available for the System/370 to handle
the new cards. This card only measures 3-1/4"x2-5/8". IBM also made
a
keypunch
for the 96-column cards, the model 5496 Data Recorder.
One of the ways to get some early computers up and running in the '60s and
early '70s was to read in a program punched on paper tape. The tape was laid
out in "tracks": rows of punched holes for 1s and blank paper tape for 0s.
The tapes would be read in either using a dedicated tape reader, or sometimes
by a teletype with attached reader/punch such as the ASR-33. These particular
tapes were punched at VCF East 4.0 in 2007, by the pictured ASR-33 attached
to David Gesswein's PDP-8/M.
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Old Technology Collection page.
Last updated on
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
