RE: In days of Olde ... (was MAPICS books)

Oh yes, the olden days of yore....  When service bureaus were a way of life
(or at least paid the bills!)

Our payroll system ran on an IBM 1130 (a "small scientific 360" with 8K
RAM), required payroll to be punched on the 029s, then verified on an 054.
The program checked the verified punch in the 1442 card read/punch unit.
Then you sorted the 5081 cards on an 082 card sorter, then ran payroll.  8
hours to pay about 60 people.

My worst experience was having sorted 40 trays of 5081 cards by SSN, then
district.  It took 40 billable hours to sort them.  I left the trays in the
computer room, locked up and went home.  Came in the next morning to find
the Liebert air conditioner had broken a water line and had sprayed water
all over the room, soaking the cards.  I baked them dry in cafeteria ovens
in winched vises, then replicated them through a 1401 (which had a VERY
generous card reader) and ran the jobs.  It was the annual county tax run,
so it was a priority.  Got it done in time, too!  Another 36 hours,
straight.  And, of course, non-billable - how could you bill for something
like that?

We replaced it all with a System/32 and 8" floppy disks.  Heaven!  The
(thankfully) short-lived 3781 key to disk system - IBM's replacement for
the 029s.  128 byte records - wow!

And all the data combined would fit on a CD-ROM, with tons of room to
spare.

Dale @ Fleetwood