Apparently there are many FReepers who are too young to remember loading programs with an ASR-33 Teletype.
"The ASR33 is a printing terminal and a program storage device (paper tape) used with PDP-8 systems. This model of Teletype terminal was made from about 1965 to 1976. They were quite common on earlier machines or minimally configured machines. The ASR 33 uses rolls of paper on which it prints 72 characters at 10 characters per inch. The ASR 33 teletype can print 64 characters which only allowed for UPPER CASE LETTERS, numbers, and symbols. The paper tape reader and punch can handle 8 bit binary data.
The ASR 33 transfers data at 10 characters per second, 110 baud. This isn't too bad for interactive use but is slow for printing large listings or loading large programs. It would take close to 7 minutes to load 2000 words of the PDP-8 memory from the paper tape."
The 110 baud gave you a lot of time to reflect on the vast strides that had been made in computing hardware. I recall sitting and watching the tape spool through the reader for a half hour or so when I realized the end of the program tape I was loading was caught under the leg of my chair. As I tried to get up the tape went taut and neatly ripped off at a "rubout" (all seven levels punched, just made for tear on the dotted line). Remember the drill? line number, statment, CR, LF, Rubout, Rubout? Needless to say the tape was toast and you had to pray that you had a backup copy else you typed the whole schmere in all over again.
Those were the days when you wrote your own bootstrap loader...
Regards,
GtG
PS My first machine had 48K of 8 bit memory and ran at about 0.8 MHz clock speed. I wrote a virtual memory handler for my floppies and ran home brewed 3D plotting software on it. Also did a cost accounting package for the engineering department where I was employed.