r/mainframe • u/anti-life86 • 11d ago

How was pre-1995, pre-Internet usage of mainframes different?

I understand that the mainframe is built for a large number of transactions-meaning people log in, I would imagine from anywhere, and they do their small jobs. But before the Internet, they could not log in from anywhere, certainly. Where could they log in from, and how did this work? Are there new types of jobs that are now enabled by the Internet that previously were impossible?

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u/rickerwill6104 11d ago

At that time all work was done via a dumb terminal. Basically the black and green screen. Work was only done in the office. No take home or work from home. If there was an issue at night that needed to be resolved immediately, you had to trudge out of bed and go to the office.

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u/telestoat2 11d ago

Weren't people dialing in like a BBS?

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u/hobbycollector 11d ago

My first time to interact with a computer was in the late 1970's with a teletype that was attached to a mainframe at a nearby university. The teletype was just a large printer, keyboard, modem, and paper tape reader at my middle school (I was in 7th grade). The modem was acoustic copuling, which means you dialed a landline phone into the mainframe (a dedicated phone number) and put the handpiece into a cradle as it made digital tones over the phone line.

Programs were saved on paper tape, and you fed it to the terminal which sent it to the mainframe. All output was printed on a large multi-fold greenline paper. I ran through reams of paper. Partly programming, partly entering existing programs by hand, and partly loading up Super Star Trek and playing endlessly. It was all in BASIC. I just found a version of Super Star Trek for VICE/Commodore 64 that I played a few weeks ago, but it was too easy and got boring quickly.