21 Dec
2023
21 Dec
'23
9:56 a.m.
Those old GE card readers were wicked fast. The occasional card jams took a while to
recover from since they would jam so many cards into a tiny space meant to hold a single
card.
To tell the truth, I never noticed the sound level much because the line printers were so
much louder.
- Rod
On Dec 19, 2023, at 11:11 PM, Douglas McIlroy
<douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Paul -- you left out the other
"feature" -- the noise, which was still deafening even with a model N1 and its
cover.
It was indeed loud, but GE out-roared them with a blindingly fast card reader. The
machine had a supposedly gentle touch; it grabbed cards with vacuum rather than tongs. But
the make-and-break pneumatic explosions sounded like a machine gun. A noise meter I
borrowed from the Labs' tool crib read 90db 6 feet away.
Doug