Extinction

[jstell]

Was it similar to punch cards (er, what was it called? Tape?) for programming old CNC machines? How long ago was that being used? and did it jump from punched paper to floppy disks, or was there something else in between?

I was grumbling about running out of memory in a Fanuc 10 and going thru the roughing passes editing out 4-place decimals, only to realize that in order to actually get space back I had to "defrag" it by sending it back to the PC and then back to the machine.  The "words" take up the space they are allocated even if you shorten the value, until it is put in fresh with the shortened words.  My boss came over and said, "At least you don't have to edit tape."  Told me about literal cut and paste (tape) editing programs manually on tape.  Put some masking tape over a line and get out the hole-puncher to change it.  Want to add a spring pass?  Cut a gap, duplicate the section, tape it back in.

The transition was to magnetic tape instead of punch tape.  I ran a machine that had a '70s to '80s converter, like those 80s to 90s converter cassette tape contraptions that you could plug your sony discman into for your car stereo.  This machine had a tape reader with an RS232 plug feeding into it's read/write head so you could send/receive programs from the PC.  It wasn't DNC, the machine had decent amount of memory (we weren't doing surfacing) so it just had to read in about 28 pages of hand-typed trailing zero (no decimal) code to machine the castings for a dental chair seat pan.  Fun times.

[TSmcam]

In my toolbox at home, I have a small, manual tape punch with a little guillotine built into it.

Back the eighties, I used it to correct tapes and manually punch short tapes. Manual programming at its finest..

I've kept that as a relic of my time with paper tape.

Ah, the young people of today with their Fusion and #boom just don' unnastanda!

[gcode]

Back the eighties, I used it to correct tapes and manually punch short tapes. Manual programming at its finest..

I've kept that as a relic of my time with paper tape.

With practice you could read those tapes.
Editing was a chore, and very easy to screw up.

[TSmcam]

With practice you could read those tapes.
Editing was a chore, and very easy to screw up.

I got to the point where I could read the tape. And pick up errors.

I agree, editing was a chore, and I made enough mistakes that actually honed my tape skills.

[Jeff]

My boss bought 2 nc tape lathes in the early 90's for a song.
One was for parts, the other ran quite well.
Guess who got to program it, set it up and run it.....me.
G50 XZ on every friggin line.
I suffered that for a little over a year.

[gcode]

I'm spending my time off cleaning and packing for our escape from the People's Republik of Kalifornia
The new house is bought and paid for and the  power, gas and water is on.
I have a theoretical choice between 2g fiber optics and old school 1g cable mode.
I cannot get a straight answer out of either provider as to which service the house is actually wired for.
Of course Mrs gcode didn't look at that sort of thing when she checked out the house, so that one is going to have to wait till I get there.
While cleaning out closets in my office I found this blast from the past I have no recollection of ever buying it. LOL.
I can't decide whether to save it or trash it.
I've already thrown out a ton of old Mastercam, Win98, WinME, XP, Office 2000, 2007 etc install discs.
Next will be  a bunch of old laptops, cell phones, routers and a couple of too old to mess with computers.
It is amazing how much crap you can accumulate over time.

[mowens]

Where in north central arkansas will you be living? My parents are from there and I spent many summers there also. Around the Batesville area. Humidity was a bitch, at least for me.

When I first started programming, we wrote our APT programs by hand on manuscript paper and then turned it into the data input ladies. You would launch it in the afternoon and get your big 3 inch pile of print out the next day. Then start debugging.

[CNCAppsJames]

If you can get it, take the fiber every day and 2x on Sundays. 

Cable internet is trash. I've had it 3x in my life (Adelphia, Roadrunner/Spectrum, and XFinity). Beyond 2000, it's not been worth the grief. 

Cable is asynchronous at the higher speeds vs. fiber being synchronous. 

Cable divies up the regional bandwidth allotment between you and ALL your neighbors and they are cheap AF about it.  I started here in Utah with that trash XFinity... That was a HORRIBLE experience. I got rid of it after like 3 months. I bought the router THEY recommended, after about a month XFinity did a "software upgrade" on their side which pretty much rendered my modem ($350) nearly useless. Paid for 2G down... at it's best I may have been getting 1G... and .25G up. After the "update", I was lucky to get .25G down and .05G up. Getting rid of it was was harder than getting rid of a gym membership. Ultimately I had to go into a store and do it... under their strenuous objections... they wanted me to keep talking to to India Tech support. Kash Singh (no lie that was these three dude's names allegedly) confirmed at least 3x and they said service was canceled. Got a bill for ~$450 and they threatened me with collections. When I canceled the 1st time, I unplugged everything coming in the house. I cut the cord at the street so there was ZERO cable signal going into my home.... because I just knew it was going to be a problem. I took a metadata and location enabled picture as proof of disconnection.  They forced me to talk to 3 people that first time to try to get me to stay. I told them repeatedly that even if internet was free for life I would not be keeping the service. I must have repeated myself 50x... "No, I do not want your service for any price." They kept asking well, what you be willing to pay. It must have taken an hour and a half to cancel. I told them if they didn't get my service canceled in the next few minutes, I was sending them a bill for what my company bills me out at retroactive to the time I made first contact with them. "No need for that, we're just trying to have a 'professional' conversation...". It was anything BUT. 

We're supposed to get fiber in the not too distant future. For the trime being, I found a small regional internet provider (Wasatch Broadband) that uses over the air technology. I have ~.85GB synchronous. Avative Fiber is who will be available. I'm thinking they won't have it until our part of the city gets closer to build out in the next few years. Anyway.. Wasatch has been acceptable. We've only had a couple outages that lasted less than an hour. 

STAY AWAY FROM CABLE!

 

[Newbeeee™]

Next will be  a bunch of old laptops,

You could always stick linux on them....they'll be faster and way more reliable than windowzy and last you a lifetime....

[CNCAppsJames]

You could always stick linux on them....they'll be faster and way more reliable than windowzy and last you a lifetime....

G ain't got time for that kinda negativity in his life man. C'mon....

 

 

[gcode]

STAY AWAY FROM CABLE!

Cable was my only option here in Cali, or I should say cable or a two bars Verizon cell signal.
I've had it for 20+ years. Originally, it was Charter Cable who was then bought out by Spectrum.
20 years ago, I started with 100mg then they bumped me to 500meg at no additional change.
Now I've got 1g down 40meg up. It's been more reliable than the power company.
Last year they called me and told me there was a problem with my service. I asked them what the problem was
and they said I was paying too much and dropped it from $120/m to $80.
All in all I've been happy with the cable service I've had here.
It's run at 1g most of the time but it does slow down over time. When that happens I reboot my cable modem and that fixes it.
I bought one that supports both cable and Verizon fiber optics, so hopefully it will support which ever service
I end up with at our  new home.
I suspect it will be the cable because it's in an older part of town and cable is more deeply entrenched.

I will be contracting for my current employeer, so I will go with the 2g fiber optics if I can get it.

[CNCAppsJames]

After Adelphia was bought out I think it was Roadrunner (Time Warner IIRC)... service went to hell. Outages, slow speeds (I've always get the max package). Verizon FiOS van drove down the street I flagged him down and I was 1st on the street. That was 1GB synchronous. In like 8 years we only had two outages and one was related to Edison. That was in Chino Hills. When we moved to Eastvale, fiber was not available yet so we had to suffer through Spectrum. That was awful. Speeds were maybe 25% of advertised and asynchronous. Uploading large CNC machine backups and CAD Assemblies was painful. AT&T dropped a flyer on my porch for 1GB synchronous fiber. Got on the list... I was the 2nd on the street. 1st was an AT&T Employee... that was trash. We had that for the last 5 years we were there before we moved to Utah in 2023, and the service was exceptional as well. I had backup batteries powering the Optical to Digital converter and the modem so even when the power was out, we still had WiFi and internet.

I have that same setup here... battery backup for the converter and modems. Power has been more stable here than The People's Republik of Kommieforniastan.

[megatronprime]

A post on X

I thought this a fitting post to announce my retirement Jan 30, 2026
I make no claim to be at this guy's level, but my bosses are in shock.

congrats bro

[jstell]

I thought this a fitting post to announce my retirement Jan 30, 2026

All the best.  Enjoy the frozen east.  Bbrrrr.

[Zoffen]

@gcode  So what did they give you as a retirement present today?

Monogramed towels?

Maybe one of those nice cards that sings a song when you open it signed by most of your co-workers?