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On Thu, 2009-10-15 at 08:02 +0100, tom wrote: > > This was a single bit computer that turned a light on saying 'Hardware > Fault' and was programmed with stacks of punch cards rearranged > randomly by the operators. > I still remember seeing a guy walk into the computer centre with a stack of punched cards, and... oops! Oh dear, he tripped and the cards fell on the ground with some of them going into a puddle! :-) Shame, but I must admit I did laugh. I was very careful myself after that when carrying cards. Oh, and the other thing of course was that the cards had your userid and password punched onto them, so you actually 'logged in' to the mainframe. Since the cards were put into a pigeon-hole after being punched and/or read, anyone could look at your cards and see the userid/pwd. Security really wasn't much of a problem back then :-) John. -- John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK Tel: +44 (0)1752 587287 Fax: +44 (0)1752 587001 -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html