Difference between keypunch and mainframe and terminals?

[RPGfreak]

Ive been reading about Bill Joy on "Outliers" and things like "keypunch" and "mainframe" and "terminals" are mentioned there. Ive read that keypunch is a punched card - but how does it work? The transition between keypunch and mainframe? What are they at all? Googles not a very good friend to me

 

[strollin]

A keypunch is a device to punch the holes in the card, not the card itself. Punched cards were an early method of storing and inputting data into a computer. A "deck" of punched cards would be placed in a hopper which would then proceed to read the data from each card and is pretty much synonymous with reading a file from your hard drive today.

A mainframe is a central computer where all the processing and storage is done centrally and accessed via a terminal. A terminal is a dumb device which generally has no local processing or storage capability and consists pretty much of a keyboard for input and a monitor to display output.

 

[RPGfreak]

So my keyboard and monitor could be considered a terminal and my computer case a mainframe?

And how would computers "read" the cards? I cant imagine the existence of softwares without some monitor to show the actual thing.

 

[voyagerfan99]

So my keyboard and monitor could be considered a terminal and my computer case a mainframe?

No. Re-read what he said. The terminals had no tower, just a simple mechanism that connected the monitor and keyboard to the mainframe.

 

[strollin]

So my keyboard and monitor could be considered a terminal and my computer case a mainframe?

And how would computers "read" the cards? I cant imagine the existence of softwares without some monitor to show the actual thing.

What you have is a PC - Personal Computer and is used by an individual. You have exclusive use of the resources within the computer. A mainframe typically services many terminals and processes the data sent to it via the terminals. It's resources are shared by all the users.

A card reader had little "fingers" that scanned over the card and when it encountered a punched hole that let the finger make contact with another finger on the other side. The cards had 80 columns and 12 rows and the data was represented by which columns and rows were punched.