[OM] Re: OT Computer trivia, was Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 question

[Moose]

Early IBM engineering was very smart in at least one area. They fully 
and strictly defined the interfaces between pieces of hardware and 
software. Old software that expected to output to a card punch could 
later output to several different storage devices seamlessly without any 
modification. I once looked at a very sophisticated mapping system from 
IBM for my employer. They had recently started using their new mainframe 
relational database system rather than the old one originally used to 
support the mapping system. No change to the mapping system was 
required! The interface ws defined to the database system and off they went.

Moose

johan.malmstrom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>At my first employer we had a strange machine, called the puncher... I was
>build for punching card and as far as I remember they had replaced the paper
>card puncher with a disk drive for the 8-inch disk. So maybe the purpose is
>that simple, replace punching cards.
>
>/ Johan 
>
>  
>


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