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by systems_glitch 588 days ago
Furthermore, the Teletype was also your storage device, if you bought the Model 33 ASR. It had both a paper tape punch and a reader. For $1500 you got not only your hardcopy console terminal, but at the time the most compatible way to load and store programs and data!
1 comments
HarHarVeryFunny 588 days ago
There's a nice video here of a complete BASIC boot sequence - entering boot code, loading BASIC, then loading a BASIC program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv5b1Xowxdk

As far as any program was concerned the TTY was just a serial port, and it couldn't tell the whether data coming in was from keyboard or paper tape reader.

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systems_glitch 584 days ago
Yup, that's why they were such useful devices! Even if you were ending up with inefficient storage (punching ASCII vs. binary, or expanded BASIC source vs. tokens), it was built-in.
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