Started on an IBM 1620 back in 1966 with PUFFT - Purdue "Fast" Fortran II.
We would IPL (initial progrom load ie boot) from a card deck each time we loaded the compiler and the program.
Later GE 400 series. Assembler and Fortran.
Then on to 360 - 75 - the only "real" 360 series (non-micro programmed) and Snobol, LISP, micro code emulators for other machines written for Burroughs B1700s running as nano programs on the 360-75.
Snobol was neat in its ability to build programs and execute them from within the program itself.
PLI, BASIC on the 75.
Data General 800s and Assembler.
Cobol and PLI on various 370s.
ADABAS, TOTAL, NATURAL, IDMS...
Most recently an Intel IBM server running MVS (OS 390 - ZOS) on a micro code emulator.
And Access and VBA.
----
I heard a story once.
Can anyone confirm it....
It goes something like this:
During the Apollo program weight budgets were extremely tight.
You may have heard that the moon lander used glorified aluminum foil and mylar walls - much like the material that the shiny birthday ballons are made of.
The weight analyst tries to get the programming manager to come clean and tell how much the software weighs.
It must weigh something, their spending millions of dollars developing it.
The programming manager continues to insist the software has no weight.
One day the weight analyst catches the programming manager pushing a cart filled with trays of punch cards.
Ahah!! - Caught in act! -
So how much does all this software really weigh?
Wrote my first program for the IBM 1410 in December 1961.
The 1410 had a big memory. 40,000 characters. 9 bits each. 7 data/1 parity bit and 1 word mark. Data and instructions were variable length with the word mark bit set in the high order position.
The program written in Autocoder:
[pre]
Label Opcode Operand Remarks
data dcw 1 define data with word mark
start sw data set word mark
cw data clear word mark
end
[/pre]
I still find computers facinating and love running Einstein@home in my electronic cottage (trailer) in the mountains of NY.
Autumn 1980, my first "Hello world" program, in BASIC on a Tandy TRS 80.
I got hooked at once.
1981, I was punching card for an IBM 370 ( not enough terminals for students ;-), also I had a love story with an Apple II.
My first personal computer in 1986. Boy was it expensive !!!
"Entia non sunt multiplicandam praeter necessitatem" (OKHAM)
I started in the Marine Corps with an IBM 360/65 (worked on 360/30 and 360/40 later) spent over a year running from base to base converting systems from DOS to OS. The most wonderful thing ever invented was a 029 card punch it had a backspace so you didn't get to column 80 and screw up the card. The older ones punched the holes when you struck the key!! The marines had a strange way of doing things in that they once sent 200 of us from all over the globe to a supply depot to convert a 360/30 and a 360/40 to OS and to set them up to run in tandem at the same time. To say the least there were many supplies late getting to where they needed to be that month. My first programming class was in Quantico VA it was for COBOL and taught by a lady named Grace Hopper. The only thing I got was the understanding of a nanosecond, she used a piece of wire a little less than a foot long to represent the nanosecond and explained that a piece representing a second could strech nearly to the moon. I don't think anyone in the class understood more than 3 things that lady had to say in 6 weeks. She was a LtCmdr in the Navy and a prof at MIT. Her mind just worked on a different level than us poor dunb Marines. We were all asked to stay and retake the class in the next cycle from a guy with IBM.
Terry
Those were good systems, I worked on a 360/30 for a while at Uniroyal, than went to the Travelers Insurance Company on a 360/60. Than the Travelers got 2 370/65's, were thay fast. Took about 30 people to keep the 2 running under OS/HASP.
Being in the Marines reminds me of just before I got out in 1970, had to go in frunt of a promotion board for E4. Had no questins about the job I had, only ones like below:
How far away are you allowed to go on weekends?
300 Miles Sir.
How far north of here is 300 Miles?
App. Washington DC sir.
How was Connecticut last weekend?
Good Sir.
What is the haircut regulations?
I tell them.
Is your haircut within regulations?
No sir.
Well I got the promotion, guess that they were only looking for me to be honest about the trips north. But with only 6 or 7 weeks left I did not really care if I got it or not.
EDIT
That was during the Vietnam Era, could not get away with things like that now. My youngers son was in during the 1990's and no one made weekend trips like that.
Autumn 1980, my first "Hello world" program, in BASIC on a Tandy TRS 80.
I got hooked at once.
1981, I was punching card for an IBM 370 ( not enough terminals for students ;-), also I had a love story with an Apple II.
My first personal computer in 1986. Boy was it expensive !!!
I took out a personal loan to buy a Kaypro 4 and a Daisy Wheel Printer.
One of the many pluses I got out of it was a structured basic compiler that came with the bundle.
Ahhhhh the big "swoop" from Lejeune!! A few fond memories (mostly those weekends are blank) My favorite was to Baltimore. They had a club there that had a ratio of about 60 girls to each guy. All girl colleges and the secrataries from D.C. The 360/65 I worked on was at 2d FASC on Lejuene. while I was there we went from having 512k to 768k of RAM. They brought the 1/4 meg of mem in on a low-boy flatbed semi. All wires then none of this chip foolishness, LOL. Years later I was at McDonnell Douglas and was told that they were bringing in 9 meg apeice for the three 370's we were running. Here I am waiting for a convoy when a guy with a briefcase shows up and installs all 27 meg in chip form.
Autumn 1980, my first "Hello world" program, in BASIC on a Tandy TRS 80.
I got hooked at once.
1981, I was punching card for an IBM 370 ( not enough terminals for students ;-), also I had a love story with an Apple II.
My first personal computer in 1986. Boy was it expensive !!!
I took out a personal loan to buy a Kaypro 4 and a Daisy Wheel Printer.
One of the many pluses I got out of it was a structured basic compiler that came with the bundle.
I wasn't able to take a loan... but I have eaten dog's food for weeks to save money... now it looks funny :-)
"Entia non sunt multiplicandam praeter necessitatem" (OKHAM)
In high school (approx 1970), I took a math course where we wrote some Fortran programs. The card decks were taken down to a local Junior collage and run on an IBM 1130. Had to punch them all on an antique 029, from coding sheets...fun-fun!!
One programming assignment I had was to write an amortization program. Being the slick newbie I was, I added an error routine to spit out a message if the interest due ever went negative. They aborted the program after about 8 pages of:
"Interest due is negative; skip the country fast"
was printed by the program.
Used an IBM 360-30 in collage that ran DOS. The Profs required everyone to execute a program called LINKTEST between the compile+link steps and the //EXEC. This was to verify that the program linked successfully--no errors. I was told the program was originally named FLUSHIT, until someone asked "What the bleep is FLU-Sh1T???"
Slartibartfast: I'd rather be
)
Slartibartfast: I'd rather be happy than right any day.
Arthur: Well, are you happy?
Slartibartfast: No ...... and that's where it falls down you see
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
Started on an IBM 1620 back
)
Started on an IBM 1620 back in 1966 with PUFFT - Purdue "Fast" Fortran II.
We would IPL (initial progrom load ie boot) from a card deck each time we loaded the compiler and the program.
Later GE 400 series. Assembler and Fortran.
Then on to 360 - 75 - the only "real" 360 series (non-micro programmed) and Snobol, LISP, micro code emulators for other machines written for Burroughs B1700s running as nano programs on the 360-75.
Snobol was neat in its ability to build programs and execute them from within the program itself.
PLI, BASIC on the 75.
Data General 800s and Assembler.
Cobol and PLI on various 370s.
ADABAS, TOTAL, NATURAL, IDMS...
Most recently an Intel IBM server running MVS (OS 390 - ZOS) on a micro code emulator.
And Access and VBA.
----
I heard a story once.
Can anyone confirm it....
It goes something like this:
During the Apollo program weight budgets were extremely tight.
You may have heard that the moon lander used glorified aluminum foil and mylar walls - much like the material that the shiny birthday ballons are made of.
The weight analyst tries to get the programming manager to come clean and tell how much the software weighs.
It must weigh something, their spending millions of dollars developing it.
The programming manager continues to insist the software has no weight.
One day the weight analyst catches the programming manager pushing a cart filled with trays of punch cards.
Ahah!! - Caught in act! -
So how much does all this software really weigh?
Programming manager - Nothing - still nothing.
But how can that be? I see all the cards.
Well, you see, the software is in the Holes....
Wrote my first program for
)
Wrote my first program for the IBM 1410 in December 1961.
The 1410 had a big memory. 40,000 characters. 9 bits each. 7 data/1 parity bit and 1 word mark. Data and instructions were variable length with the word mark bit set in the high order position.
The program written in Autocoder:
[pre]
Label Opcode Operand Remarks
data dcw 1 define data with word mark
start sw data set word mark
cw data clear word mark
end
[/pre]
I still find computers facinating and love running Einstein@home in my electronic cottage (trailer) in the mountains of NY.
Harvey
Autumn 1980, my first "Hello
)
Autumn 1980, my first "Hello world" program, in BASIC on a Tandy TRS 80.
I got hooked at once.
1981, I was punching card for an IBM 370 ( not enough terminals for students ;-), also I had a love story with an Apple II.
My first personal computer in 1986. Boy was it expensive !!!
"Entia non sunt multiplicandam praeter necessitatem"
(OKHAM)
I started in the Marine Corps
)
I started in the Marine Corps with an IBM 360/65 (worked on 360/30 and 360/40 later) spent over a year running from base to base converting systems from DOS to OS. The most wonderful thing ever invented was a 029 card punch it had a backspace so you didn't get to column 80 and screw up the card. The older ones punched the holes when you struck the key!! The marines had a strange way of doing things in that they once sent 200 of us from all over the globe to a supply depot to convert a 360/30 and a 360/40 to OS and to set them up to run in tandem at the same time. To say the least there were many supplies late getting to where they needed to be that month. My first programming class was in Quantico VA it was for COBOL and taught by a lady named Grace Hopper. The only thing I got was the understanding of a nanosecond, she used a piece of wire a little less than a foot long to represent the nanosecond and explained that a piece representing a second could strech nearly to the moon. I don't think anyone in the class understood more than 3 things that lady had to say in 6 weeks. She was a LtCmdr in the Navy and a prof at MIT. Her mind just worked on a different level than us poor dunb Marines. We were all asked to stay and retake the class in the next cycle from a guy with IBM.
http://www.boincstats.com/signature/user_814767_project-1.gif
Terry Those were good
)
Terry
Those were good systems, I worked on a 360/30 for a while at Uniroyal, than went to the Travelers Insurance Company on a 360/60. Than the Travelers got 2 370/65's, were thay fast. Took about 30 people to keep the 2 running under OS/HASP.
Being in the Marines reminds me of just before I got out in 1970, had to go in frunt of a promotion board for E4. Had no questins about the job I had, only ones like below:
How far away are you allowed to go on weekends?
300 Miles Sir.
How far north of here is 300 Miles?
App. Washington DC sir.
How was Connecticut last weekend?
Good Sir.
What is the haircut regulations?
I tell them.
Is your haircut within regulations?
No sir.
Well I got the promotion, guess that they were only looking for me to be honest about the trips north. But with only 6 or 7 weeks left I did not really care if I got it or not.
EDIT
That was during the Vietnam Era, could not get away with things like that now. My youngers son was in during the 1990's and no one made weekend trips like that.
Try the Pizza@Home project, good crunching.
RE: Autumn 1980, my first
)
I took out a personal loan to buy a Kaypro 4 and a Daisy Wheel Printer.
One of the many pluses I got out of it was a structured basic compiler that came with the bundle.
Ray, Ahhhhh the big
)
Ray,
Ahhhhh the big "swoop" from Lejeune!! A few fond memories (mostly those weekends are blank) My favorite was to Baltimore. They had a club there that had a ratio of about 60 girls to each guy. All girl colleges and the secrataries from D.C. The 360/65 I worked on was at 2d FASC on Lejuene. while I was there we went from having 512k to 768k of RAM. They brought the 1/4 meg of mem in on a low-boy flatbed semi. All wires then none of this chip foolishness, LOL. Years later I was at McDonnell Douglas and was told that they were bringing in 9 meg apeice for the three 370's we were running. Here I am waiting for a convoy when a guy with a briefcase shows up and installs all 27 meg in chip form.
http://www.boincstats.com/signature/user_814767_project-1.gif
RE: RE: Autumn 1980, my
)
I wasn't able to take a loan... but I have eaten dog's food for weeks to save money... now it looks funny :-)
"Entia non sunt multiplicandam praeter necessitatem"
(OKHAM)
In high school (approx 1970),
)
In high school (approx 1970), I took a math course where we wrote some Fortran programs. The card decks were taken down to a local Junior collage and run on an IBM 1130. Had to punch them all on an antique 029, from coding sheets...fun-fun!!
One programming assignment I had was to write an amortization program. Being the slick newbie I was, I added an error routine to spit out a message if the interest due ever went negative. They aborted the program after about 8 pages of:
"Interest due is negative; skip the country fast"
was printed by the program.
Used an IBM 360-30 in collage that ran DOS. The Profs required everyone to execute a program called LINKTEST between the compile+link steps and the //EXEC. This was to verify that the program linked successfully--no errors. I was told the program was originally named FLUSHIT, until someone asked "What the bleep is FLU-Sh1T???"
Seti Classic Final Total: 11446 WU.