Here's the other Laser Warning Sign I promised..

[Larry Allred]

That was great! I'll have to put it next to my warning sign that says "do not look into laser with remaining eye."

[Jeff Belany]

I also remember punch cards and turning them in at the University computer main frame to be run. They would give you a number and you could call and see if your program had been run. Also remember standing with my relatively small stack of punch cards and seeing upper classmen turning in trays of cards to be run -- couldn't imagine it!! And on top of that, if you made ANY small error in spelling or syntax the whole program would fail to run and the computer wouldn't even give you a clue where the error was -- just failed. Very frustrating.

Another blast fromt he past -- at the same university I worked in a lab making videos -- using 2" open reel video tape decks!! BTW -- the 'portable' decks we had used 1" open reel video machines. Quite a load to haul.

Jeff in northern Wisconsin

[Dan Hintz]

Jeff,

Don't forget about the horror on people's face when the tech behind the counter tripped and spilled the card deck, requiring a multi-hour long reshuffling session.

[Joe Paul]

I have a photo in an old album somewhere of my Father sitting in his B-24 bomber in Italy in WWII with this sign posted just above his head. He had that sign framed and in his shop for many years afterward. I wish I knew where it ended up. Thanks for the memories and the wording. I'm going to recreate it and it will have a place of honor in my shop from now on.

JP

[Bill Cunningham]

Jeff,

Don't forget about the horror on people's face when the tech behind the counter tripped and spilled the card deck, requiring a multi-hour long reshuffling session.

Never had the pleasure of punch cards, I got into small computers with the Altair, and H-8.. The Altair was just binary switches and a button, but the H8 was Octal.. The start code has been burned into my mind to the extent that I still remember it 35 years later 040100 (go) Then, they brought out Benton Harbor Basic.. hahahah.. Moved on to compiled basic in the early 80's, then C in the mid 80's and got to the point where I had good enough hand crafted C libraries that could do running translations from my old G-Wiz Basic to C on the fly..
I wrote the first Ham radio Packet bulletin board in Canada, designed to be used with the AX.25 protocol. Haven't been anywhere near packet radio in the last 20 years, don't even know if it's still a viable communication system..