Hey,

Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
older than I am.

meff <email@example.com> writes:

> Hey,
>
> Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
> too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
> older than I am.

Any computer related stuff can be "folklore" it doesn't have to be as
olde as some of us.

--
Dan Espen

On 2022-01-12, Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Any computer related stuff can be "folklore" it doesn't have to be as
> olde as some of us.

Awesome thanks!

On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 04:18:14 -0000 (UTC)
meff <email@example.com> wrote:

> Hey,
>
> Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not

It's about the folklore rather than the computers, the people and
the times - at least it was originally ... and most of the best folklore
comes from the early times.

> too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
> older than I am.

We are mostly the auld farts of computing mostly from the days
before the PC - many of us worked with mainframes, some worked on them,
I'm a little younger than that and simply trained on them before starting my
career amid the rise of the microprocessor. I'm just old enough to have
used a card saw.

Originally this group was mostly mainframe nostalgia but I think
we've all swapped our best stories a long time ago (go on someone prove me
wrong with some fresh anecdotes) and sadly we've lost some of the folks with
really early days stories.

Oh yes - there's an occasional tendency to sidetrack into US
politics and a long tradition of wide ranging topic drift.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 10:00:02 PM UTC-8, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 04:18:14 -0000 (UTC)
> meff <em...@example.com> wrote:
>
> > Hey,
> >
> > Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
> It's about the folklore rather than the computers, the people and
> the times - at least it was originally ... and most of the best folklore
> comes from the early times.
> > too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
> > older than I am.
> We are mostly the auld farts of computing mostly from the days
> before the PC - many of us worked with mainframes, some worked on them,
> I'm a little younger than that and simply trained on them before starting my
> career amid the rise of the microprocessor. I'm just old enough to have
> used a card saw.
>
> Originally this group was mostly mainframe nostalgia but I think
> we've all swapped our best stories a long time ago (go on someone prove me
> wrong with some fresh anecdotes) and sadly we've lost some of the folks with
> really early days stories.
>
> Oh yes - there's an occasional tendency to sidetrack into US
> politics and a long tradition of wide ranging topic drift.
>
> --
> Steve O'Hara-Smith
> Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

The BRAINIAC version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geniac was my first computer, during the time of Maynard G. Krebs and the late Dobie Gillis.

Mentifex
--
http://ai.neocities.org/RoboMind.html

On Tue, 11 Jan 2022 22:43:42 -0800 (PST)
"A.T. Murray" <mentificium@gmail.com> wrote:

> The BRAINIAC version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geniac was my
> first computer, during the time of Maynard G. Krebs and the late Dobie
> Gillis.

My first programmable machine wasn't a computer - it was one of
these:

https://uk.fabtintoys.com/computacar/

It was bought to shut me up because I was bored stiff and irritating
at my one and only visit to Newmarket races.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 09:34:13 +0000
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 11 Jan 2022 22:43:42 -0800 (PST)
> "A.T. Murray" <mentificium@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The BRAINIAC version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geniac was my
> > first computer, during the time of Maynard G. Krebs and the late Dobie
> > Gillis.
>
> My first programmable machine wasn't a computer - it was one of
> these:
>
> https://uk.fabtintoys.com/computacar/
>
> It was bought to shut me up because I was bored stiff and irritating
> at my one and only visit to Newmarket races.
>
Wow! That beats my Sinclair programmable calculator! (max 24 instructions!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Scientific
--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

On 2022-01-12, meff wrote:
> Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
> too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
> older than I am.

I'm definitely not that old but here are some /newer/ anecdotes from my
youth:

1. Sometime probably around 1988 a classmate of mine told me that her
family's computer could talk to other computers using something called
Prodigy (what good that did was not really specified). My only
experience with computers at the time was playing DOS games on a
friend's PC so of course I told her she was clearly lying because how on
earth could a computer talk to another computer?

Imagine my surprise later when, not only did I learn that, yes,
computers could talk to each other, but that Prodigy was a thing!

2. My first computer, bought circa 1998, had a 2.5 Gb hard drive. The
next year in college my roomate came in talking about how someone said
they had a 100 Gb hard drive. My roomate's opinion was that such a thing
was ridiculous and impossible. And besides, what would anyone do with
100 Gb of space?

And now I look at my computer and see 4x drives ranging from 500 Gb to 1
Tb and I have probably 10+ thumb drives and SD cards that are 100+ Gb in
my desk. How times have changed.

--
() www.asciiribbon.org | Jeremy Brubaker
/\ - against html mail | јЬruЬаkе@оrіоnаrtѕ.іо / neonrex on IRC

Complete Transient Lockout

Jeremy Brubaker <jbrubake.362@orionarts.invalid> writes:

> On 2022-01-12, meff wrote:
>> Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
>> too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
>> older than I am.
>
> I'm definitely not that old but here are some /newer/ anecdotes from my
> youth:
>
> 1. Sometime probably around 1988 a classmate of mine told me that her
> family's computer could talk to other computers using something called
> Prodigy (what good that did was not really specified). My only
> experience with computers at the time was playing DOS games on a
> friend's PC so of course I told her she was clearly lying because how on
> earth could a computer talk to another computer?
>
> Imagine my surprise later when, not only did I learn that, yes,
> computers could talk to each other, but that Prodigy was a thing!

Back in 1963 I'm taking a course in computer programming.
At that time college degrees were not required but the teacher
let on that we had PHD in the class. One day the PHD was gone
so the teacher told us a story about him. Seems he approached the
teacher and said "I don't understand how the computer can read these
cards with all these holes in them".

> 2. My first computer, bought circa 1998, had a 2.5 Gb hard drive. The
> next year in college my roomate came in talking about how someone said
> they had a 100 Gb hard drive. My roomate's opinion was that such a thing
> was ridiculous and impossible. And besides, what would anyone do with
> 100 Gb of space?
>
> And now I look at my computer and see 4x drives ranging from 500 Gb to 1
> Tb and I have probably 10+ thumb drives and SD cards that are 100+ Gb in
> my desk. How times have changed.

First disk I encountered was the IBM 1311 attached to an IBM 1440.
1 million 6 bit characters per disk.

--
Dan Espen

On 2022-01-12, Jeremy Brubaker <jbrubake.362@orionarts.invalid> wrote:
> 2. My first computer, bought circa 1998, had a 2.5 Gb hard drive. The
> next year in college my roomate came in talking about how someone said
> they had a 100 Gb hard drive. My roomate's opinion was that such a thing
> was ridiculous and impossible. And besides, what would anyone do with
> 100 Gb of space?

Yeah our family computer for years was a Pentium 100 with 1 GB of
storage space and 8 MB of RAM (with a cute sticker that said
"Upgradable to 2!" (yes with the exclamation point).) My family didn't
have much money so we stuck to that machine for a long time. It became
"mine" when the family upgraded, and I used it for years more by
installing Linux on it (eventually a Debian over 52 floppies lol) and
attaching dumpster-acquired parts onto it.

I had a CD for a game called "The Journeyman Pro: TURBO" (a Myst-like
game) and it had a readme file on the CD which said "you could copy
the CD and play the game much faster on your drive, but who just has
700 MB lying around??"

On 1/11/2022 23:18, meff wrote:
> Hey,
>
> Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
> too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
> older than I am.

No, not necessarily. I'd bet that I'm the youngest here (in my mid
20's). I primarily lurk, and enjoy reading many of the posts, as time
allows. The oldest "computer system" that I have personal experience
with is an IBM System/23, from well before my time. I still have it in
the cellar; it came from my father's former radio station employer.

Otherwise, I've tinkered back to Apple 2/C and a Texas Instruments
TI-99/4a PC. I've had lots of early 90's+ MS-DOS and Windows 3.x/95/98
machines that family friends gave me as a child (when they upgraded) to
tinker with. I still have a couple dozen of these old PC's and laptops
in storage, and their prices are actually coming back around as a
collector item. Time to sell them off soon, I think.

On 2022-01-12, Michael Trew <michael.trew@att.net> wrote:
> No, not necessarily. I'd bet that I'm the youngest here (in my mid
> 20's). I primarily lurk, and enjoy reading many of the posts, as time
> allows.

Wow you are actually a few years younger than I am! 😅

On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 16:01:11 -0500, Michael Trew
<michael.trew@att.net> wrote:
>On 1/11/2022 23:18, meff wrote:
>> Hey,
>>
>> Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
>> too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
>> older than I am.
>
>No, not necessarily. I'd bet that I'm the youngest here (in my mid
>20's). I primarily lurk, and enjoy reading many of the posts, as time
>allows. The oldest "computer system" that I have personal experience
>with is an IBM System/23, from well before my time. I still have it in
>the cellar; it came from my father's former radio station employer.
>
>Otherwise, I've tinkered back to Apple 2/C and a Texas Instruments
>TI-99/4a PC. I've had lots of early 90's+ MS-DOS and Windows 3.x/95/98
>machines that family friends gave me as a child (when they upgraded) to
>tinker with. I still have a couple dozen of these old PC's and laptops
>in storage, and their prices are actually coming back around as a
>collector item. Time to sell them off soon, I think.

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 with later on the 16Kb ram
pack. Then an Amiga A1000 with a meg or so of ram. Then an A500 with a
meg or so of ram. Later an Amiga A3000 with two hard drives, my first
ones at home ever, one a 52 meg SCSI and the other a 105 mewg SCSI
drive. Probably not much more ram.

These days I have a Windoze 10 computer with 8 gigs of ram, a 1 gig
video card and a 1 terabyte internal hard drive.

My smallest, around here somewhere, thumb drive is 256 megs. Next one
is a 512 meg. The rest are 1 and multiple gigabyte thumb drives.

The first computers we had in the student lab at university were Tandy
1000s, XT compatibles. The secretary/admin assistants had Tandly Model
IVs running Scripsit, and the upper echolon of those folks had IBM
Selectric typewriters with extra fonts.

Student services had vacuum dumb termnals hooked up to the main frame
on main campus.
--
Jim

On 2022-01-12, Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:

> Jeremy Brubaker <jbrubake.362@orionarts.invalid> writes:
>
>> On 2022-01-12, meff wrote:
>>
>>> Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
>>> too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
>>> older than I am.
>>
>> I'm definitely not that old but here are some /newer/ anecdotes from my
>> youth:

<snip>

> Back in 1963 I'm taking a course in computer programming.
> At that time college degrees were not required but the teacher
> let on that we had PHD in the class. One day the PHD was gone
> so the teacher told us a story about him. Seems he approached the
> teacher and said "I don't understand how the computer can read these
> cards with all these holes in them".

You know, it's one thing about intellectuals,
they prove you can be absolutely brilliant
and have no idea what's going on.
-- Woody Allen

When I started my first job in 1970, the shop was pure cards. No
disks, no tapes, and a whopping 16K of memory. We added disks later -
and the boss never trusted them because you couldn't see the holes.

>> 2. My first computer, bought circa 1998, had a 2.5 Gb hard drive. The
>> next year in college my roomate came in talking about how someone said
>> they had a 100 Gb hard drive. My roomate's opinion was that such a thing
>> was ridiculous and impossible. And besides, what would anyone do with
>> 100 Gb of space?
>>
>> And now I look at my computer and see 4x drives ranging from 500 Gb to 1
>> Tb and I have probably 10+ thumb drives and SD cards that are 100+ Gb in
>> my desk. How times have changed.
>
> First disk I encountered was the IBM 1311 attached to an IBM 1440.
> 1 million 6 bit characters per disk.

The first disks we attached in the shop above were Univac clones
of the IBM 2311 - 7 megabytes per pack. We soon upgraded to
2314 clones (25MB/pack).

My first hard disk on a home computer was a 10MB ST506 drive
kludged onto my Amiga.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:

> Originally this group was mostly mainframe nostalgia but I think
> we've all swapped our best stories a long time ago (go on someone
> prove me wrong with some fresh anecdotes) and sadly we've lost some
> of the folks with really early days stories.

Maybe someone can answer definitively a question that's been lurking
in my head much as I've been lurking on this group for 30 years. I
wrote my first, very trivial, program using punch cards in '64 but
didn't really encounter another computer until I got my own Osborne I
in '87 when it was already obsolete. So I'm an old geezer but one
with a fragmentary recollection from 1953.

In 1953, Bob McCreech [RIP], my 7th grade social studies, took the
class for a whirlwind tour of Boston. One of the stops was to see The
Computer [note definite article] at Harvard. IIRC, it was in one of
the brick buildings facing on the Yard. Largish room with racks all
around the sides, filled (again, IIRC) with vacuum tubes, all behind a
gefingerpoken-resistant glass wall. In the "office" there was a paper
tape device and the operator (tour droid? :-) "entered" (??) all our
names somehow and then (allegedly) had the computer punch the names
out on tape. I kept the tape for years but no longer have it.

Does anyone know which particular Digital Wonder of the Modern World
this would have been?

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

D.J. <chucktheouch@gmail.com> writes:
>On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 16:01:11 -0500, Michael Trew
><michael.trew@att.net> wrote:
>>On 1/11/2022 23:18, meff wrote:
>>> Hey,
>>>
>>> Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
>>> too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
>>> older than I am.
>>
>>No, not necessarily. I'd bet that I'm the youngest here (in my mid
>>20's). I primarily lurk, and enjoy reading many of the posts, as time
>>allows. The oldest "computer system" that I have personal experience
>>with is an IBM System/23, from well before my time. I still have it in
>>the cellar; it came from my father's former radio station employer.
>>
>>Otherwise, I've tinkered back to Apple 2/C and a Texas Instruments
>>TI-99/4a PC. I've had lots of early 90's+ MS-DOS and Windows 3.x/95/98
>>machines that family friends gave me as a child (when they upgraded) to
>>tinker with. I still have a couple dozen of these old PC's and laptops
>>in storage, and their prices are actually coming back around as a
>>collector item. Time to sell them off soon, I think.
>
>My first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 with later on the 16Kb ram

The first computer I used was a Burroughs B5500 in the
early seventies, followed by a PDP-8, then an HP-3000,
PDP-11/34, Various VAXen, Burroughs B4955, 68k and 88k
unix systems, MPP systems from Unisys & SGI, etc.

Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> writes:
>
>Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
>
>> Originally this group was mostly mainframe nostalgia but I think
>> we've all swapped our best stories a long time ago (go on someone
>> prove me wrong with some fresh anecdotes) and sadly we've lost some
>> of the folks with really early days stories.
>
>Maybe someone can answer definitively a question that's been lurking
>in my head much as I've been lurking on this group for 30 years. I
>wrote my first, very trivial, program using punch cards in '64 but
>didn't really encounter another computer until I got my own Osborne I
>in '87 when it was already obsolete. So I'm an old geezer but one
>with a fragmentary recollection from 1953.
>
>In 1953, Bob McCreech [RIP], my 7th grade social studies, took the
>class for a whirlwind tour of Boston. One of the stops was to see The
>Computer [note definite article] at Harvard. IIRC, it was in one of
>the brick buildings facing on the Yard. Largish room with racks all
>around the sides, filled (again, IIRC) with vacuum tubes, all behind a
>gefingerpoken-resistant glass wall. In the "office" there was a paper
>tape device and the operator (tour droid? :-) "entered" (??) all our
>names somehow and then (allegedly) had the computer punch the names
>out on tape. I kept the tape for years but no longer have it.
>
>Does anyone know which particular Digital Wonder of the Modern World
>this would have been?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_IV

On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 23:18:22 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> D.J. <chucktheouch@gmail.com> writes:
>>On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 16:01:11 -0500, Michael Trew <michael.trew@att.net>
>>wrote:
>>>On 1/11/2022 23:18, meff wrote:
>>>> Hey,
>>>>
>>>> Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
>>>> too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
>>>> older than I am.
>>>
>>>No, not necessarily. I'd bet that I'm the youngest here (in my mid
>>>20's). I primarily lurk, and enjoy reading many of the posts, as time
>>>allows. The oldest "computer system" that I have personal experience
>>>with is an IBM System/23, from well before my time. I still have it in
>>>the cellar; it came from my father's former radio station employer.
>>>
>>>Otherwise, I've tinkered back to Apple 2/C and a Texas Instruments
>>>TI-99/4a PC. I've had lots of early 90's+ MS-DOS and Windows 3.x/95/98
>>>machines that family friends gave me as a child (when they upgraded) to
>>>tinker with. I still have a couple dozen of these old PC's and laptops
>>>in storage, and their prices are actually coming back around as a
>>>collector item. Time to sell them off soon, I think.
>>
>>My first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 with later on the 16Kb ram
>
> The first computer I used was a Burroughs B5500 in the early seventies,
> followed by a PDP-8, then an HP-3000,
> PDP-11/34, Various VAXen, Burroughs B4955, 68k and 88k unix systems, MPP
> systems from Unisys & SGI, etc.

MIne was an Elliott 4130 (unusual). Then Honeywell 516 (where I hacked
the CPU hardware), then PDP-10, PDP-11, ICL 2900, VAX, PDP-8, ...

--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> writes:
>>
>> In 1953, Bob McCreech [RIP], my 7th grade social studies, took the
>> class for a whirlwind tour of Boston. One of the stops was to see The
>> Computer [note definite article] at Harvard. IIRC, it was in one of
>> the brick buildings facing on the Yard. Largish room with racks all
>> around the sides, filled (again, IIRC) with vacuum tubes, all behind a
>> gefingerpoken-resistant glass wall. In the "office" there was a paper
>> tape device and the operator (tour droid? :-) "entered" (??) all our
>> names somehow and then (allegedly) had the computer punch the names
>> out on tape. I kept the tape for years but no longer have it.
>>
>> Does anyone know which particular Digital Wonder of the Modern World
>> this would have been?
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_IV

TYVM. Not much there in the way of detail. A little more here:

http://www.ii.uib.no/~wagner/OtherTopicsdir/EarlyDaysOld.htm

from Eric G. Wagner (who, for all I know, may be lurking on this group. :-)

There seems to have been a Harvard Mark IV aircraft of the same era
that gets more Gwgle space than the Aiken computer.

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

Jeremy Brubaker <jbrubake.362@orionarts.invalid> wrote:
> On 2022-01-12, meff wrote:
> > Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
> > too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
> > older than I am.

> I'm definitely not that old but here are some /newer/ anecdotes from my
> youth:

> 1. Sometime probably around 1988 a classmate of mine told me that her
> family's computer could talk to other computers using something called
> Prodigy (what good that did was not really specified). My only
> experience with computers at the time was playing DOS games on a
> friend's PC so of course I told her she was clearly lying because how on
> earth could a computer talk to another computer?

> Imagine my surprise later when, not only did I learn that, yes,
> computers could talk to each other, but that Prodigy was a thing!

> 2. My first computer, bought circa 1998, had a 2.5 Gb hard drive. The
> next year in college my roomate came in talking about how someone said
> they had a 100 Gb hard drive. My roomate's opinion was that such a thing
> was ridiculous and impossible. And besides, what would anyone do with
> 100 Gb of space?

> And now I look at my computer and see 4x drives ranging from 500 Gb to 1
> Tb and I have probably 10+ thumb drives and SD cards that are 100+ Gb in
> my desk. How times have changed.

Prodigy. Do you still remember your ID? Mine was TGSV85B since I was a
teen(ager) back then before I discovered BBSes and then Internet on PCs!
http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html for my detailed history! ;)
--
Slammy new week as expected. Lots of spams again! 2022 isn't any better and different so far. :(
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
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/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
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\ _ /
( )

meff <email@example.com> wrote:
> On 2022-01-12, Michael Trew <michael.trew@att.net> wrote:
> > No, not necessarily. I'd bet that I'm the youngest here (in my mid
> > 20's). I primarily lurk, and enjoy reading many of the posts, as time
> > allows.

> Wow you are actually a few years younger than I am! ????

I wonder who is the oldest and youngest in this newsgroup. ;)
--
Slammy new week as expected. Lots of spams again! 2022 isn't any better and different so far. :(
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
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/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )

Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 23:18:22 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> > D.J. <chucktheouch@gmail.com> writes:
> >>On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 16:01:11 -0500, Michael Trew <michael.trew@att.net>
> >>wrote:
> >>>On 1/11/2022 23:18, meff wrote:
> >>>> Hey,
> >>>>
> >>>> Is this group only about older computers? And how old is old? I'm not
> >>>> too young myself but a lot of the machines I see in recent posts are
> >>>> older than I am.
> >>>
> >>>No, not necessarily. I'd bet that I'm the youngest here (in my mid
> >>>20's). I primarily lurk, and enjoy reading many of the posts, as time
> >>>allows. The oldest "computer system" that I have personal experience
> >>>with is an IBM System/23, from well before my time. I still have it in
> >>>the cellar; it came from my father's former radio station employer.
> >>>
> >>>Otherwise, I've tinkered back to Apple 2/C and a Texas Instruments
> >>>TI-99/4a PC. I've had lots of early 90's+ MS-DOS and Windows 3.x/95/98
> >>>machines that family friends gave me as a child (when they upgraded) to
> >>>tinker with. I still have a couple dozen of these old PC's and laptops
> >>>in storage, and their prices are actually coming back around as a
> >>>collector item. Time to sell them off soon, I think.
> >>
> >>My first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 with later on the 16Kb ram
> >
> > The first computer I used was a Burroughs B5500 in the early seventies,
> > followed by a PDP-8, then an HP-3000,
> > PDP-11/34, Various VAXen, Burroughs B4955, 68k and 88k unix systems, MPP
> > systems from Unisys & SGI, etc.

> MIne was an Elliott 4130 (unusual). Then Honeywell 516 (where I hacked
> the CPU hardware), then PDP-10, PDP-11, ICL 2900, VAX, PDP-8, ...

Texas Instrument 99/4A was my first owned PC. Actually, my colony's.
http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/toys.html for my detailed history!
My colony and I are old. ;)
--
Slammy new week as expected. Lots of spams again! 2022 isn't any better and different so far. :(
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On Thu, 13 Jan 2022 00:24:23 -0600
ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

> meff <email@example.com> wrote:
> > On 2022-01-12, Michael Trew <michael.trew@att.net> wrote:
> > > No, not necessarily. I'd bet that I'm the youngest here (in my mid
> > > 20's). I primarily lurk, and enjoy reading many of the posts, as
> > > time allows.
>
> > Wow you are actually a few years younger than I am! ????
>
> I wonder who is the oldest and youngest in this newsgroup. ;)

At 63 I'm a long way from being either, I might not even be the
oldest still working as a developer (current version of analyst/programmer)
but I negotiated my mandatory retirement age to 70 so I probably will be in
a few years time.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On Wed, 12 Jan 2022 18:00:38 -0000 (UTC)
Jeremy Brubaker <jbrubake.362@orionarts.invalid> wrote:

> 2. My first computer, bought circa 1998, had a 2.5 Gb hard drive.

The first computer I owned was an 80286 based box with 4MB of RAM
and two 20MB MFM drives that I got an RLL controller for and ran at 38MB
each. It ran DR-DOS, XENIX-286 and Smalltalk V (which launched under DOS
and then took over in protected mode).

The first computer I used was an 1BM-1130 with 4K words of core
(yes real beads on wires core), three 1.5MB disks, a 1442 card reader and a
1403 printer (not the N1 so no coffee thrown round the room).

In between I used the first TRS-80s in the UK, worked on the
Newbrain and Torch then a bunch of CP/M and MP/M systems before settling in
the unix world which still pays me good money.

I just ordered a new (second hand) workstation with 32GB of RAM and
512GB of SSD that will almost certainly never be more than about 10% used.
I have terabyte drives and several gigabytes of RAM lying around unused
after being replaced by bigger components.

I am trying and failing to imagine how a statement like that last
sentence would have been received in say 1990 when I was busy designing a
300 gigabyte distributed system to run the biggest database Informix had
been used for to date. Thirty years on and you could run that database and
application on a cellphone with the data on a postage stamp sized micro-sd
card instead of three hundred full height 5 1/4" hard disks spread over
sixty SCSI busses.

The amazing thing to me is that despite that incredible pace of
change in scale much of the business of programming is still the same as it
ever was - we have better tools and bigger problems but at the end of the
day you still have to understand the problem, write the solution down in
clear and correct code and then spend a long time staring at debug output
because the clear and correct code isn't doing what you thought it should
do.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On Thu, 13 Jan 2022 00:36:50 -0600
ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

> Texas Instrument 99/4A was my first owned PC. Actually, my colony's.

Oh how I wanted a 9900 when they came out - I never did manage to
lay my hands on one though.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/