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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAuldGrump" data-source="post: 1812456" data-attributes="member: 6957">Heh, I've used punch cards. (Believe it or not there were punch card readers for the Apple ][. I got to be the lucky kid to transfer data from an ancient DEC to the more powerful and smaller Apple ][. The DEC was old enough to have a 200 baud modem designed to handle four computers at once, because one machine had no use for so much speed!) Also data drums, stringy floppies, tape drives, hard sectored drives, and (horrors) a paper reel reader. (Like a very narrow punch card on very fragile paper, wrapped around a reel like an old fashioned tape player. Worst Idea For Data Storage Ever.) Though I only had to use APL once... To get the machine to transfer its data to the cards in a format the Apple could read. (All previous data having been saved on the aforementioned paper reels. Having to tape the paper strip, then poke a hole through the tape to copy the holes the tape covered was one of the most annoying jobs I ever had.) I had an easier time programming the Altair than trying to get readable data (most of it ignored for years before being copied over, and I am sure it was ignored again afterwards) out of that darned machine.The Auld Grump, what was the topic again? Oh yes... Glad to see the boards back up, I have been having enough problems with my connections lately that I wasn't sure that my machine wasn't at fault.*EDIT* Mostly because of an ongoing battle between XP SP2 Firewal and my remembering to turn it off while downloading stuff...</blockquote>

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