Hi,
A Backus!
When I went to work for IBM in 1981, the idea was to be part of the 5150 design team. Aka the Personal Computer. Which was really about the fifth generation of computers to be used by an individual. What was different, was this one was chock full of parts not made by IBM in-house. Made it a lot less costly.
But, that meant testing components from other makers. That meant specialist test gear. One of which was made by Fairchild. It was known as a Sentry.
And this thing booted up using Hollerith cards. Yep. Punch cards. That gave it enough brains to work the 9 track open reel tape drive. Now it had enough smarts to work a hard disk pack where the component test program lived.
Looks like a Borg Cube. This one has dual component test stations.
And we used these to test the 8088 processor chips along with many other components.
But, boy! Was I ever surprised by the presence of those punch cards in 1981!
Stan