Timeline for What was the use case for the 96-column punch cards introduced with the IBM System/3?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
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| Nov 20, 2021 at 1:06 | comment | added | Raffzahn | @another-dave added a bit more historical and encoding information to my answer. Hope it helps. | |
| Nov 20, 2021 at 0:39 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Nov 20, 2021 at 0:22 | comment | added | Raffzahn | @another-dave Oh, it was 8 bit per character with an EBCDIC like encoding. If you look close at a 96 col card (right side of this picture )you note that a column does not contain 3 six hole groups but 4. Handling is much like with an 80 col card. the 'basic' holes are a group of 6 (1248AB) good to encode a basic 64 character set offering all (uppercase) letters, numbers and basic punctuation in an EBCDIC subset. To encode more the 4th 6 hole row is used as two holes per character, completing this to 8. So yes, it's byte-orientated. | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 23:48 | answer | added | cjs | timeline score: 8 | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 22:01 | comment | added | dave | I was wrong about 'byte-oriented' - I had mistakenly though each 'character' position was 8 bits, but it's only 6. | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 18:47 | comment | added | Raffzahn | @davidbak The point is (as always) more data per volume plus easy to handle size for the same volume, without changing software structure. AKA compatibility. A 96 column card can quite well be used by software expecting (and producing) 80 column cards. No changes in handling but 66% saved storage space. Tripling the data on a 80 column card to 240 wouldn't improve anything if the software expects on 80 col record per card read. And yes, creation and rapid advynce of floppies wasn't seen. | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 18:44 | answer | added | Raffzahn | timeline score: 6 | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 18:44 | history | edited | davidbak | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 19, 2021 at 18:42 | comment | added | davidbak | @another-dave - those are capabilities it has, yes, but it doesn't seem sufficient to me to introduce an entire other system, which is why I asked. 80-column hollerith cards had been around for 40years as standard equipment - the cards and machinery that used them was ubiquitous - widely available new and used - software was organized around it, etc. etc. Why a new card system instead of, say, engineering more compact 80-column equipment for the smaller business buying the System/3s? Life span turned out to be only a few years; IBM Research didn't predict floppys were coming soon? | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 18:00 | comment | added | dave | Why? It was smaller, more robust (in part due to round holes), byte-oriented, and higher capacity. That in itself seems sufficient. | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 16:51 | history | edited | davidbak | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 19, 2021 at 16:38 | history | asked | davidbak | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
