There was nothing like watching some grad student come in with all his data in six long card boxes (had to be 32" long)--and drop them!

By 1980 they should have bought a tape for $30 and loaded the data onto the tape--it took about 4 or 5 JCL cards to do that. After that, the cards in the program would be a handful at most. They were pretty good for propping up short legs on tables, though!

By then TSO was available for many, many and cards were anachronistic. In 1982, at UNC-CH, they introduced WYLBUR as a cheaper alternative to TSO. You could do some pretty cool interactive programming in WYLBUR, and later at CPI in DC they had SuperWylbur. Other dialects were WylburPlus--and all were programmable for interactive editing and job submission.