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Typically, at my school, the decks were standalone. They included the program, the data, and any control cards (like actual commands). For a COBOL class, your deck was the commands to compile and execute the program text that followed, and then that program operated on the data cards that followed the program cards. Then, your output would likely be the compilation listing, followed by whatever output your program created. Mind, this was school, and these were student programs. And while you could wrap up your deck and drop if off at the computer center to be run, it was likely better to take it to the lab to that had the RJE (Remote Job Entry) terminal which had a card reader and a line printer. Jon’s submitted there would print out on the line printer, but the printer could be used by others as well, so there was typically a queue of printouts that you had to wait for. But in general, the RJE lab had the fastest turnaround. I remember my friend playing Lunar Lander. He had the Fortran source code, and would add a new burn card, and run the deck through. He’d go over the output, add another card, and run it again. This was the process, but not necessarily an efficient use of paper. Now, there were also folks that were not programmers, but rather students and professors using tools like SPSS (a statistical package). A student assignment deck was typically 1-2 inches thick. Not much code, not much data. But these researchers, they had decks measured in feet. They’d carry them around using small carts and hand trucks. The cards were in cardboard trays. Most of that was data. Largest set I saw was probably 10 feet long of cards. They took their sweet time being run through the feeder. Just grab a chunk, and put it in. As it fed, pile on some more. No rush, it’s an input device, it’ll wait for more cards as you moved the read cards out and fed more in. But it was an endeavor. |