The Last Bug? (Face down, nine-edge first)
Seth Breidbart
tlsp...@athena.mit.edu (Terry Spurling) writes:
>In article <Mar.26.18.21....@pilot.njin.net>
>rhut...@pilot.njin.net (Roland Hutchinson) writes:
>>The jargon file refers to a poem that I remember from ages ago:
>>
>>> `The Last Bug', which ends:
>>>
>>> He died at the console
>>> Of hunger and thirst.
>>> Next day he was buried,
>>> Face down, 9-edge first.
>>
>>Has someone out there got a complete version?
The version I remember (which spread through IBM in 1970) is:
THE LAST BUG
"You're out of your mind",
They said with a shrug.
"The customer's happy. What's
One little bug?"
But he was determined.
The others went home.
He spread out the program
Deserted, alone.
The cleaning men came.
The whole room was cluttered
With memory dumps, punched cards,
"I'm close," he muttered.
The muttering got louder.
"Simple deduction.
I've got it. It's right. Just
Change one instruction."
It still wasn't perfect
As year followed year
And strangers would comment,
"Is that guy still here?"
He died at the console
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried
Face down, nine-edge first.
And the last bug in sight,
An ant passing by.
Saluted his tombstone
And whispered, "Nice try."
Seth se...@fid.morgan.com
Lars Wirzenius
> Face down, nine-edge first.
I have now heard (read) this 'nine-edge' several times and I'd like to
know, what exactly it is. My guess is that it has something to do with
punched cards, probably the short edge (the long one would be 80
positions, the short one 9, i.e. 8 bits + parity). Is this anywhere close?
Could someone please enlighten me?
Thanks.
--
Lars Wirzenius wirz...@cc.helsinki.fi
Dave Pierson
(Lars Wirzenius) writes...
>I have now heard (read) this 'nine-edge' several times and I'd like to
>know, what exactly it is. My guess is that it has something to do with
>punched cards, probably the short edge (the long one would be 80
>positions, the short one 9, i.e. 8 bits + parity). Is this anywhere close?
>Could someone please enlighten me?
hmmmm been a long time, and i SHOULD leave it to Doug Jones 8)>>
Long way there were 80 postions.
Short way, there were 13 postions(?)
9 edge was the "bottom" of the card. For cards punched with decimal
data a punch in the "bottom" row signifed a numeric 9. Many cards had the
numeric values of each punch postion printed on them, so this came to be called
the "nine-edge". The significance was that in MOST readers, the "nine-edge"
had to be read first for the data to make sense. Card decks (mostly) were
loaded (as the poem says) "face down, nine-edge first".
USUALLY the cut corner was at the "top" of the card. As recently
discussed, the cut corner postion was NOT standardized, though _usually_ it was
"top left".
Cards had several formats, where several rapidly approaches a large
number... (which i leave to someone else...)
________________________________________________________________
/ |
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|1 |
|2 |
|3 |
|4 |
|5 |
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|8 |
|9 |
----------------------------------------------------------------
Usual Alpha codes involved one punch in one of the top rows (rows
go across, columns up_and_down), plus a numeric punch. Multiple punches in the
top rows got control characters. Raw Binary, was different, leading to "lace
cards".
thanks
dave pierson |the facts, as accurately as i can manage,
Digital Equipment Corporation |the opinions, my own.
600 Nickerson Rd
Marlboro, Mass
01752 pie...@cimnet.enet.dec.com
"He has read everything, and, to his credit, written nothing." A J Raffles
Rich Alderson
>In article <29...@ylum.Morgan.COM>, se...@Morgan.COM (Seth Breidbart) writes:
>> Face down, nine-edge first.
>
>I have now heard (read) this 'nine-edge' several times and I'd like to
>know, what exactly it is. My guess is that it has something to do with
>punched cards, probably the short edge (the long one would be 80
>positions, the short one 9, i.e. 8 bits + parity). Is this anywhere close?
>Could someone please enlighten me?
Hollerith cards had room for 13 rows of 80 columns of data. The rows were
conventionally referred to, from top to bottom, as 12, 11, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7, 8, 9. The digits 0-9 were usually printed; the top two rows were either
blank, or printed with some indication of the data contained on the card.
The phrase "9 edge first" simply means "bottom of card first."
Numbers were simply entered by punching the appropriate row. Alphabetics were
encoded as follows:
A-I 12 + 1-9 (a 12-punch plus one other digit in the same column)
J-R 11 + 1-9
S-Z 0 + 2-9
On the IBM 1401, a simple 12-punch was "+", a simple 11-punch was "-", and the
combination of 0 + 1 was "/". The other characters were at least 3 punches in
the same column; not all were used on the 1401: A zone, a digit from 2-7, and
an 8.
The "zone" punches--that 12, 11, and 0--matched up nicely with the internal
6-bit characters in the 1401, which were described in the manuals as consisting
of the bits BA8421. A 12-punch lit the B & A bits, an 11-punch lit B, and a
0-punch lit A. The digits 1-9 lit the appropriate binary bits. I think that I
remember that a simple 0 lit not only the A bit, but also the 8 and 2 bits, for
redundancy.
(There was a C parity bit--even parity--and two bits used by the system to mark
WORDS and GROUPS, since this was a variable-word-length machine.)
Oddly enough, a later system, the System/3, used a peculiar little card on
which three rows of 32 columns by 6 positions could be punched. This was
called the "96-column" card, and used the 1401's internal representation for
the actual punches!
More than you wanted to know, probably.
Rich Alderson
Seth Breidbart
wirz...@cc.helsinki.fi (Lars Wirzenius) writes:
>In article <29...@ylum.Morgan.COM>, se...@Morgan.COM (Seth Breidbart) writes:
>> Face down, nine-edge first.
>
>I have now heard (read) this 'nine-edge' several times and I'd like to
>know, what exactly it is.
The rows, from top to bottom, were numbered 12, 11, 0, 1, ..., 9.
Thus, the bottom edge was referred to as the 9-edge. The top edge was
referred to as the 12-edge. "Face down, 9-edge first" were the
instructions for loading cards into various flavors of card readers.
Seth se...@fid.morgan.com
Rich Alderson
>Hollerith cards had room for 13 rows of 80 columns of data. The rows were
>conventionally referred to, from top to bottom, as 12, 11, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
>6, 7, 8, 9. The digits 0-9 were usually printed; the top two rows were either
>blank, or printed with some indication of the data contained on the card.
Gawd. Duh, I can count.
They of course had *12* rows of data. (Twit!)
--
Rich Alderson 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take
Tops-20 Mgr. such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
AIR, Stanford --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alde...@alderson.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
Steve Lamont
>> Face down, nine-edge first.
>
>I have now heard (read) this 'nine-edge' several times and I'd like to
>know, what exactly it is. My guess is that it has something to do with
>punched cards, probably the short edge (the long one would be 80
>positions, the short one 9, i.e. 8 bits + parity). Is this anywhere close?
>Could someone please enlighten me?
________________________________________________
/FACE DOWN, NINE-EDGE FIRST |
|]]]] ] ] ] ]]]] ]] |
| ] ] ] ] ] ] |
| ] ] ]] |
|1]1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111|
|222222222222222222222222]22222222222222222222222|
|33]333333]333333333333333]3333333333333333333333|
|44444]44444444444]444444444444444444444444444444|
|555]5555]55]5]]5]55]5555555555555555555555555555|
|]66666]]6666666666666]66666666666666666666666666|
|777777777777777777]77777777777777777777777777777|
|888888888]8888888888888]888888888888888888888888|
|999999999999]999999999]9999999999999999999999999| <---- nine-edge
|________________________________________________|
It's the way the cards went into the hopper. Put `em in any other way and
you're likely to ABEND. :-)
spl (the p stands for
punchin' `em on an 026)
--
Steve Lamont, SciViGuy -- (408) 646-2752 -- a guest at network.ucsd.edu --
NPS Confuser Center / Code 51 / Naval Postgraduate School / Monterey, CA 93943
"The only way to deal with exploiters is to terrorize the bastards."
- The late Congressmember Phillip Burton
John Opalko, N7KBT
>know, what exactly it is. My guess is that it has something to do with
>punched cards, probably the short edge (the long one would be 80
>positions, the short one 9, i.e. 8 bits + parity). Is this anywhere close?
begin(creaky_old_man_voice);
Well, sonny, you're on the right track, but you're going in the wrong
direction. It does refer to punched cards (IBM cards, as we used to
call them), but you have the layout of the beastie a little wrong.
The long edge is, indeed, 80 positions (assuming the standard run-of-the-mill
System/360-type card), but the short edge has *12* positions, not 9.
The card has ten numbered rows, numbered from "0" near the top to "9" at the
bottom. There are two more unmarked rows at the top called "11" and "12".
So, "face down" means what you think. "Nine edge first" means the bottom
edge first. Top first would be "twelve edge first".
Here's a quick overview of how the cards were punched:
The digits 0 through 9 were encoded as a single punch in the appropriate row.
The letters A through I were a 12 punch and a punch in row 1 for A, 2 for B,
etc.
The letters J through R were an 11 punch and a punch in row 1 for J, etc.
The Letters S through Z were a punch in the 0 row (called a 10 punch in
this context), and a punch in row *2* for S, 3 for T, etc.
An 11 punch by itself was a hyphen, a 12 by itself was an ampersand, and I
think the 0-1 multipunch was a slash.
Other characters were encoded by various combinations of two or more punches
in a single column.
end(creaky_old_man_voice);
Thanks for the opportunity to show off. :-) I'm surprised I remember this
stuff.
John Opalko
APOLOGY: The above is *horribly* IBM specific, but, hey, that's what I was
working on at the time. I went right from IBM mainframes to *real* computers
(PDP-11/70's running V6 UNIX), so I don't know what other punched card
standards are (were) out there.
Paul L Schauble
practice to use the corner cut to distinguish different types of card within
a file. E.g., master cards cut on the right and detail cards cut on the left,
so that the masters would stand out.
++PLS
Joel B Levin
|(There was a C parity bit--even parity--and two bits used by the system to mark
|WORDS and GROUPS, since this was a variable-word-length machine.)
Word mark only. There were 8 bits: the canonical list that rings in
my memory is "C, B, A, 8, 4, 2, 1, wordmark". There was a character
called "group mark" which was of more significance than other special
characters, though I don't remember why. It was one of the three-hole
characters and was generally found with word mark set. In print it
was represented by a sort of cross-of-Lorraine mark (a vertical bar
crossed by three horizontal lines).
|
|More than you wanted to know, probably.
or wanted to remember :-)... Thanks
/JBL
=
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