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Booting the IBM 1401: How a 1959 punch-card computer loads a program

27 pointsby parsecsover 4 years ago

1 comment

londons_exploreover 4 years ago
This system seems crazy inefficient - you could halve the number of cards immediately if the machine had a &#x27;load code&#x27; mode which just repeatedly executed &#x27;load card to memory address, setting word marks from the final column&#x27; instructions.<p>I guess the developers expected most cards to be data cards, and no programs to be too big or complex so storage efficiency wasn&#x27;t important.