see...........
http://www.anotherurl.com/library/rs232.htm
Just reread your original post.
You had modern stuff didn't you? 8 inch floppies, oh what fun.
I remember the depressing IBM mainframe we had - card punch & reader, 10MB (removable) hard drive the size of a cow pie.
Waiting for the reader to process 8000 lines of Cobol. Go for dinner, have a kip and still not finished on return. Then you find the typo and have to go through it again.
Thank God for Fujitsu Cobol and a pc.