35
votes
Why is the term "card" used in "expansion card"?
TL;DR: It was cardboard and equal sized at first
'Boards' of various size and style are a later development.
I'm curious about the historical origin of the use of the word "card" in "...
- 236k
18
votes
Why is the term "card" used in "expansion card"?
Without answering the 'why' - this is standard electronics usage. I have known 'card' in this sense since the early 1970s, when I first learned which end of a soldering iron to pick up.
Here is an ...
- 38.2k
14
votes
Why is the term "card" used in "expansion card"?
...possibly simply the fact they're rectangular and most type of cards are too!?
That strikes me as the most plausible answer - as well as the fact that "cards" are commonly something ...
- 1,057
11
votes
Why is the term "card" used in "expansion card"?
With all due respect to the other answers here attempting to explain the terminology from an electronics point of view, my instincts tell me that's likely not the full picture of it.
Terms for new ...
- 499
10
votes
When was the famous "sudo warning" introduced? Under what background? By whom?
Bob Coggeshall here. I left Buffalo and moved to Boulder around '85 to take a job doing IT for the Engineering schools. I don't think sudo was adopted by anyone in Boulder before then. So, if you see ...
- 201
6
votes
Is the first version of Ken Thompson's DBM library still available?
The Unix Heritage Society archives of V7 (AT&T, 1979) and 32V (AT&T, 1979) both include source code for libdbm, so you can probably use that until you find something better.
If the dates are ...
- 3,060
6
votes
Why is the term "card" used in "expansion card"?
Wiktionary says that "card" can mean any flat rectangular piece of stiff paper, plastic etc. Which a PCB is.
It also mentions that paper card is thinner and more flexible than a paper board (...
- 37.2k
3
votes
Which (micro) computers were dominant in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s?
Since this question was posted the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing published a special issue on computing in Oceania. Four theme articles are paywalled, but there are shorter articles in this ...
- 1,063
2
votes
Did the Oric-1 improve on the Spectrum's keyboard?
I have written thousands of lines of code on both systems, and far prefer the Oric-1 over the ZX Spectrum (original) keyboard - that changed as I gained access to other machines for cross-compiling ...
- 179
2
votes
Which (micro) computers were dominant in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s?
I can only vouch for Australia here, having lived it then.
Micros widely available, ordered by my perceived quantity:
Commodore (Vic-20 onwards)
Apple
Amstrad (here and following, many shops didn't ...
- 129
1
vote
What was the original unix font?
As many have said, there is no "Unix font". It depends on the device that was talking to the computer. As an alternative, may I suggest using the fixed width font used in "The C ...
- 11.8k
1
vote
What was the original unix font?
So far no one mentioned the Graphic-II display device that was attached to the PDP-7 used for initial Unix development. The Graphic-II was a vector display developed by William H. Ninke at Bell Labs, ...
- 3,141
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