eric76 said:
Happy Hour was great.
I had a program that took about 2,200 cards (a very packed box of cards) that I used to run during happy hour.
I would try to be first in line for happy hour so that I could run it first. That usually took a little bit because with 2,200 cards, there was a fairly good chance that at least one card would jam and everyone in line would have to wait while I went over to a keypunch machine and made a replacement card.
Since it usually took a little while to read all the cards, the printer would usually finish with everything and be idle by the time it finished. The program would run in a couple of seconds. The printer would print every print job that was less than something like 1,500 lines before printing anything longer than that. Since the printer was usually idle when my print job would be queued for printing, it would go ahead and print it. The output was about 75 pages and would make everyone wait a little while more while it printed.
If I wasn't first in line, it would often take two or three hours before the printer had printed all the short listings and would print mine. By being first in line, I could check the results and run it again.
Ah, yes, happy hour. There were often one or two geeks, with their boxes of cards (not saying you were a geek, but the guys with the greasy hair, high water jeans, pocket protector types) and they would take a magic marker and have a lines down the top of the cards, I guess certain commands or special things were at the end or beginning of a color change, I never asked. One time I watched the guy balancing his box of cards in one hand, and he would pull a bunch of cards out, like two inches worth, stack them in the card reader, and as it ran them, he would reach back for another bunch of cards. I noticed he wasn't moving his hand that was under the box of cards. Sure enough, once he had taken enough off one end, the other end being so much heavier caused the box to flip out of his hand and cards went everywhere. I hope he didn't go on to design bridges!