Old Geezers Club
![[B@H] Ray](https://einsteinathome.org/sites/default/files/85898_avatar_2.jpg?1470225750 "[B@H] Ray"){kind=avatar}
2 Jul 2006 20:53:18 UTC
Topic 191505
(moderation:
The title of this was stollen from the Rosetta boards.
There are quite a few older people here, this is whare you can share some of your ecperiences.
I started in DP using an IBM 360 Model 60 computer back in 1972, in school I learned Cobal, RPG, Fortran and Assemblyer. Don't really know if Basis was around for other platforms back them.
The younger people really don't know what they are missing with not having to use punch cards to enter a program these days, did they ever miss a lot of good things from back them.
Before going to school for programming I spent some time on a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean, Won a free trip there from my local draft board, all expenses paid by the governmant.
Try the Pizza@Home project, good crunching.
Old Geezers Club
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My first tastes of computer was dialing into a PDP-11/45 back in '75 over a 110 baud modem, played some basic games, and learned a little about math.
In 1977 I took my first programming/computer class. The machine was a PDP-11/70. We were up to 300 baud then. I programmed BASIC, then we did a little PL/1 on punch cards with a manual punch machine. The next year I changed schools, then was back on the same PDP-11/45 as before, programming COBOL (Watbol) on punch cards (automatic machines), Fortran. We also had a Systems/34 which I programmed RPG II on. I dabbled in Pascal, and some other languages (do not remember them all). Also had to learn ECL.
In 1980, I bought a Heathkit H-89 which we build in a basement and a Hayes Smartmodem 300. We then built several of these for people on weekends, to make some money. This had 64K of memory. This was upgraded to a H-90, and upgraded the memory to 96K. Ran both CP/M (the predecessor to DOS) and ZDos. Played many games, including Frogger. Learned more BASIC programming, and some script writing. Played with BBS programs, including Ward Christian's CBBS and XModem. Helped Ward with YModem and error correcting. Met Ward at a conference. Bought a US Robotics 1200 modem for $900, and had it replaced over a dozen times, driving to Skokie, IL a couple of times to help them create and improve error correcting in their modems. Got paid to be a debugger for a little time.
Did the BBS thing for many, many years. Upgrading my system to a IBM 4.77/8MHz Turbo. Went through all kinds of IBM compatibles through the years. Became a Co-Sysop of a large BBS in the area, running Galacticomm BBS software, which is still up, but owned by someone else. It started out with 8 lines in a friend's basement, we got it up to about 48 lines (modem and ISDN) at the peak of it's day. We offered Internet connectibility, and e-mail. It was pretty cutting edge in the late 1980s.
I have been everything from a General Office/Computer Operator, an Office Manager (where I took a company with all paper office to a network of 3 computers doing everything from payroll, accounts receivable, payable, invetory control and general ledger), computer instructor for a community college, Level 1, 2 and 3 support, and Systems & Network Administration.
I have self wired my current home, have 7 computers currently running networked here, still work in the IT business. I am the one my family looks to for answers.
The reason I have done all this is because I touched my first TTY terminal dialed into a PDP system in Junior HS, in 1975. I am so glad I got into computers.
I don't think I am an old
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I don't think I am an old geezer yet, but I've been around electronics for awhile. ;-)
When I was a toddler, I kept taking apart my toys just to see how they worked. I remember my Dad having a serious talk with me when I was about 7 years old about bringing home electronics on the side of the road. He was concerned because I had already brought home some speakers and capacitors I had removed from an old T.V. in a trash pile and dragged home a top for a washing machine. ;-)
My first computer "experience" was with an Atari 800 at K-Mart. Whenever we went shopping, I would stand there and learn basic through trial and error. Too bad they didn't have Google back then. :-)
Shortly thereafter, my friend actually got a Commodore 64 and I would spend afternoons and weekends on it with him. Later another friend got a IBM clone and I hacked the Star Trek game to make more Klingons and increased the phaser power to deal with them. ;-)
I actually "got into computers" when I finished high school. For some reason that still escapes me, I wasted about 5 years doing nothing at all before going to a tech school. My first IT job was as a filed tech. We supported PCs and Altos minis. I really liked those old Altos machines. I spent many a late night with parts spread out all over the floor trying to switch chips between boards to only send back what we had to. My boss was a real piece of work and would complain about everything. Switch a few chips, test the board, switch another or two, test the board, ...etc. It was real fun to hack the makefs script to use the "big 700 MB" drives. :-) I got certified in Novell in 1993 and have done everything from "LANtastic" to LINUX.
Anyway, my initial reasoning for getting a computer job was that most computers need Air Conditioning and I didn't like the heat outside. :-) But, turns out that its not such a bad job after all. :-)
Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station. - Grand Moff Tarkin
RE: My first tastes of
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My first computer was a PDP-8, in 1975!!
Director, Einstein@Home
RE: RE: My first tastes
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Nice to see Dr. Allen is a true geek! It shows he can appriciate those of us helping his project out.
In 1969 while in college I
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In 1969 while in college I saw the first calculator. It cost the person $250. and did what most give away calculators do now(add, subtract, multiply and divide). While working for the Department of Corrections I sent a clerk for training and to bring back the first computer that the District had. When she walked in the door she called everyone in the office to the meeting room, unvieled the computer and told everyone not to touch it or the red button underneath because it would erase everything. I think this was in 1976 and a 1080 and believe it or not, one of the clerks managed to erase all the programs on the computer.
Like Bruce Allen, my first
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Like Bruce Allen, my first experience was with a PDP-8
using punched paper tape as input of the instructions
in 1973 at Northwestern University.....wow I am old.
RE: My first tastes of
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Aaahhh, well..... I got kicked off a PDP-11 system in 1978 for grossly overusing an account that belonged to a fellow student ( who I expect doesn't have fond memories of me ). I played, late at night, a text based adventure game endlessly at an out of the way terminal until the Sword Of Damocles finally fell. The key trick in the game, by the way, was to 'throw rabbit at dragon'..... :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
My first computer was a HP
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My first computer was a HP 9000 workstation with a BASIC interpreter in 1979. Then I switched to an ONYX computer (designed by Scott McNealy) in 1981. It was running UNIX Version 7 on 256 KB RAM, a 20 MB hard disk (called Winchester for reasons unknown) and a 10 MB tape, with two useful commands "dump" and "restore".
I was responsible for the UNIX documentation which came in tapes with the following instruction: "good luck". I printed it on a prototype Olivetti dot matrix printer with 24 needles. Then some ill advised people put floppy disks (300 KB capacity) on my personal computer, an Olivetti AT@T Unix PC (a.k.a 3B1 or Safari).Gone were the "dump' and "restore" commands, and gone was backup. Another interesting machine I used was a MIPS R6000 sold with a BULL label, not to be confused with IBM's RS6000. I compiled TeX 3.14 and GRASS 4.1 on it, among other things. It was a fast box, with no microprocessor, but a RISC CPU board. Now I am using SuSE Linux on an old Pentium II. Old machines are often better than new ones.
Tullio.
Seems like this Einstein
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Seems like this Einstein stuff is a young man's game. I go back to 1965 - a
LEO III (the first, III/1), here in UK. Quite a machine, true multiprogramming, high-level language (similar to ALGOL, I was told) and a loudspeaker wired in to the instruction register so that during night shift the afficianados could play cards and listen out for when the m/c needed some attention.
Happy days!
Mike
Eee them were the days...I
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Eee them were the days...I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
I remember one Christmas mornin' excitedly unwrapping my first ababcus...
....we were poor, but 'appy.