How many punchcards do I need to store Linux ???

[Nathaniel Clerb]

I want to install Linux on my early-70s computer system, but it's not
available on punchcards.

Can you please tell me how many punchcards does it take to store Linux?

And can you please transfer the data on punchcards for me???

P L E A S E

[r***@usa.net]

ROFL!

Very cute!

It does tend to make one reflect though.

In the 1970s, even most mainframes had less than 1 megabyte of Memory.

Most Minicomputers had less than 8 Kbytes of RAM.

The Altair had only 1 kilobyte of RAM.

The first data cassette drives loaded 300 bytes/second.

The first floppy drives only held 30 kilobytes of data on an 8 inch
floppy.

The early hard disks held 5 megabytes and cost nearly $10,000, when a
gallon of gas cost nearly fifty cents and a loaf of bread cost a
quarter.

In 1993, SLS Linux required 2 megabytes of RAM, 4 megabytes if you
wanted X11. The "base" install took 6 floppies at roughly 1 meg each.
The "complete" installation took nearly 80 floppies for a total of
almost 80 megabytes. The first CD-ROMs containing Linux used less than
1/5th of a single CD.

To answer your question, if you wanted to run something like a really
small, basic version of Linux - you would need about 8 megabytes -
which would have to be encoded to radix64 - roughly 16 megabytes. Each
card would hold about 80 bytes.
So you could probably load it with about 200,000 punched cards. At 50
lines/page, this would be 4,000 pages of radix64 text.

The Linux kernel alone would be 400 times larger than Microsoft MITS
BASIC.

[GreyCloud]

Post by r***@usa.net
ROFL!
Very cute!
It does tend to make one reflect though.
In the 1970s, even most mainframes had less than 1 megabyte of Memory.
Most Minicomputers had less than 8 Kbytes of RAM.
The Altair had only 1 kilobyte of RAM.
The first data cassette drives loaded 300 bytes/second.
The first floppy drives only held 30 kilobytes of data on an 8 inch
floppy.
The early hard disks held 5 megabytes and cost nearly $10,000, when a
gallon of gas cost nearly fifty cents and a loaf of bread cost a
quarter.
In 1993, SLS Linux required 2 megabytes of RAM, 4 megabytes if you
wanted X11. The "base" install took 6 floppies at roughly 1 meg each.
The "complete" installation took nearly 80 floppies for a total of
almost 80 megabytes. The first CD-ROMs containing Linux used less than
1/5th of a single CD.
To answer your question, if you wanted to run something like a really
small, basic version of Linux - you would need about 8 megabytes -
which would have to be encoded to radix64 - roughly 16 megabytes. Each
card would hold about 80 bytes.
So you could probably load it with about 200,000 punched cards. At 50
lines/page, this would be 4,000 pages of radix64 text.
The Linux kernel alone would be 400 times larger than Microsoft MITS
BASIC.

The punched card had 72 columns or bytes max. The rest was used for
numbering the card.

[Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz]

begin In <***@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, on
12/13/2005

Post by r***@usa.net
Very cute!

It would help if you quoted some context.

Post by r***@usa.net
In the 1970s, even most mainframes had less than 1 megabyte of
Memory.

Early 1970's, yes. I doubt that that was true by 1979.

Post by r***@usa.net
Most Minicomputers had less than 8 Kbytes of RAM.

I'd question that even in the late 1960's, much less the 1970's.

Post by r***@usa.net
The Altair had only 1 kilobyte of RAM.

Sure, but what about the likes of Apple, Atari, Commodore and the
S-100 crowd?

Post by r***@usa.net
The early hard disks held 5 megabytes

What do you consider early? There were larger disks than that in the
1950's.

Post by r***@usa.net
To answer your question, if you wanted to run something like a
really small, basic version of Linux - you would need about 8
megabytes -
which would have to be encoded to radix64

Why?

Post by r***@usa.net
Each card would hold about 80 bytes.

Sure, 80 12-bit bytes. If you don't like column binary or row binary,
there's still no excuse for taking up a whole column for one 6-bit
byte.

Post by r***@usa.net
So you could probably load it with about 200,000 punched cards.

With normal use of cards it would be 100,000; 66,667 if you use row
binary or column binary.

[r***@usa.net]

Nathaniel specifically requested:

<quote>
I want to install Linux on my early-70s computer system, but it's not
available on punchcards.

Can you please tell me how many punchcards does it take to store Linux?

</quote>

In the early 1970s, the systems were DOS/VS, VSE, PDP-8, and MVS.
I got involved in 1976, and even then the processing environment was
mostly bit-slice computers with magnetic "core" memory. Static RAM was
available but it was expensive, about $200 per kilobyte by 1977. You
had to buy 8 2102 chips and wire-wrap them together to get a kilobyte.

Fortunately, the prices came down fast, and by 1979, Apple, Commodore,
and lots of others were offering 4k of RAM. By 1980, prices had fallen
further and you could get Atari and Apple machines with 16 K. Even 64
K was considered pretty "high end", and was mostly found on CP/M
machines. When Bill Gates was asked if the offset should be 4 bits or
16 bits, the 16 bits (like that used in the 80286) would have given 16
megabytes, but Bill said "I can't imagine how anyone could use more
than 1 megabyte of RAM".

Here we are, 24 years later, racing to 64 bit technologies because 4
gigabytes isn't enough.

Of course, back in the 1970s, it took 10 minutes to do a simple 3D
frame rendering for computer "animation" onto film. Battlestar
Galactica, StarWars, and the first Star Trek movies were pioneers in
this technology.

Today, we have video cards that can render 3D graphics with 4 megapixel
resolution at over 30 frames/second - in real time. An Xbox/360 with
such capabilities sells for around $400 (if you can find one).

[Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz]

begin In <***@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, on
12/14/2005

Post by r***@usa.net
In the early 1970s, the systems were DOS/VS, VSE, PDP-8, and MVS.

You're mixing hardware (PDP-8) and software, and there were far more
than the ones you list in both categories.

Post by r***@usa.net
I got involved in 1976, and even then the processing environment was
mostly bit-slice computers with magnetic "core" memory.

Bit-slice computers were not that common. As for core, it was on the
way out in 1970 and was truly obsolete by 1976. I'm not aware of a
single mainframe still manufactured in 1976 that used core, and I'm
aware of several minicomputers that didn't.

Post by r***@usa.net
Even 64 K was considered pretty "high end", and was mostly found on
CP/M machines.

Only for microcomputers was 64KiB considered high end in 1980.

[ray]

Post by Nathaniel Clerb
I want to install Linux on my early-70s computer system, but it's not
available on punchcards.
Can you please tell me how many punchcards does it take to store Linux?
And can you please transfer the data on punchcards for me???
P L E A S E

You actually have a working card reader?

[The Ghost In The Machine]

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Nathaniel Clerb
<***@yahoo.co.in>
wrote
on 13 Dec 2005 02:57:13 -0800

Post by Nathaniel Clerb
I want to install Linux on my early-70s computer system, but it's not
available on punchcards.
Can you please tell me how many punchcards does it take to store Linux?
And can you please transfer the data on punchcards for me???
P L E A S E

And I thought loading a snarled BASIC paper tape into an
8 kb (kw?) ferrule core HP 2114B was bad. :-)

First, some issues.

[1] Hollerith codes versus ASCII.

http://docs.hp.com/en/32212-90008/apcs02.html

[2] PCI versus things such as Multibus, and even that isn't quite
old enough (Multibus was fairly common in the mid-80's AIUI).

[3] MMUs.

[4] Loading docks. (No, not 'docs'. Docks. Apparently the punchcard
equivalent for a single CD-ROM -- 740 MB -- would be at least one,
possibly several, palettes-full of the paper things, pregnant chads
and all.)

I can tell you how many punchcards would be the equivalent
of one 740 MB CDROM, however; that's simply 740000000 /
(80 * 1.5) = 6166667 (each card has 12 rows; a character
could be split between 2 columns). However, if one wants a
sequencing value in the last 10 columns (you do *not* want
to drop that deck on the floor!), one will get 740000000 /
(70 * 1.5) = 7047620 (rounding up).

Wikipedia suggests 143 punch cards to the inch thickness
(or 7 mil); those 7047620 cards would therefore make a
card deck about 1.252 km long by 7 3/8" (18.73 cm) by 3 1/4" (8.26 cm),
using standard IBM punch cards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card

[mlw]

Post by Nathaniel Clerb
I want to install Linux on my early-70s computer system, but it's not
available on punchcards.
Can you please tell me how many punchcards does it take to store Linux?
And can you please transfer the data on punchcards for me???
P L E A S E

I'm not sure you could it on punch cards, I think just reading the volume of
punch cards required to enter Linux into a system would exceed the
maintenance schedule of a card reader.

If, however, you buy me a teletype with a paper time puncher, all the tape I
would need, and of course the electricity required (and a little bit for my
time, say a discounted rate of $50/hour), I'll send you several tapes, the
source to tar, the source to bzip2, and a paper tape of a tared ubuntu
distribution.