New Sensor Button Dance

Sonnar Brian said:
The Watcom compilers still support OS/2, DOS (with PharLap), WIndows. I use them for work, they are great for embedded code.
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I wear garlic around my neck to prevent coding. I get tempted every once in a while and dabbled in C, C+, C++ at work. I hated it. Just a lazy way to write Assembler. And today's chips compile and run the easy languages into fast enough packages. Low level redundant routines are great in the C family but you might as well write it in Assembler. But all of that for long ago in a far away galaxy. And my work was on "the big iron" which is a different world. I started with a PC XT clone, $1,500 in '83 or '84. That was a lot of money for a box back then. 20GB drives were huge. But software was simpler taking less space.
 
I met (Then) Captain Grace Hopper. I had my copy of the IBM Mark I Manual with me and asked her to autograph it. She asked "Where the hell did you get this! I wrote that book." Then she looked at the list of Navy Officers listed and started telling stories about them. I got the book surplus from our Library at work. It is rare.

45 years of Programming. Mainly Fortran and Assembly, some C and C++, embedded code. 40+ years ago one of my Teachers told me that I'll always be a bit twiddler. He's right.
 
Sonnar Brian said:
I met (Then) Captain Grace Hopper. I had my copy of the IBM Mark I Manual with me and asked her to autograph it. She asked "Where the hell did you get this! I wrote that book." Then she looked at the list of Navy Officers listed and started telling stories about them. I got the book surplus from our Library at work. It is rare.

45 years of Programming. Mainly Fortran and Assembly, some C and C++, embedded code. 40+ years ago one of my Teachers told me that I'll always be a bit twiddler. He's right.
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Meeting Grace Murray Hopper puts you in the stratosphere. Wow! I am impressed. She was, and is, major. The closest I can come to all of that is that I have a "Greenie" a real one. I had many offers for it when I was working but brought it with me as my prize from my years as a scribe. I have the more recent booklet type "Greenies" but this is a real, green one and folding. ;o) Amazing the crap that is important to us, huh? LMAO Never had the plastic pocket protector or glasses patched with adhesive tape, though.
 
boojum said:
… you might as well write it in Assembler…
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There’s a photography angle to this, skip to the last paragraph if you want to avoid geekiness.

While attending UCLA in the early 1970’s (I graduated from there with a Bachelor degree in Mathematics and Computer Science), I learned and wrote IBM 360 Assembly Language. Loved it. At the time, UCLA had what were two supercomputers of the day: the IBM 360/91KK at the Campus Computing Network (CCN) in Boelter Hall and another in the UCLA Medical Center. The 360/91 was water-cooled and had a whopping 4 megabytes of main memory (magnetic core type memory)

I also programmed a PDP-12 (a dual PDP-8/Linc-8 mix) at the Medical Center - also in assembly language. Lots of fun.

Nearby was a computing service bureau in Westwood called Logi-Cal. They had a Univac 1108. Fantastic architecture and a beautiful assembly language.

Although for most of my 45-year career I programmed in C, the PDP-11 and VAX-11 machines were also in my life and I programmed a lot of them in assembly language. I have my own PDP-11, a UNIBUS machine with real switches and lights on the console, disk drives, console, etc. I’ve done all the hardware maintenance on this machine.

I also had the opportunity to write microcode for HP calculators (the 41C). Not user code - microcode for the processor.

With the exception of writing code for the ARM-7 - an embedded firmware job I had about 10 years ago - nothing recent excites me. Today’s computers are merely appliances.

So, in 1974, Donald Knuth gave a lecture at UCLA which I attended. Naturally I had my Pentax SP500 with me, as I took it everywhere. After not having the foresight to ask him to sign my Art of Computer Programming vol. 1, at least I had photos of him at the lecture. This was at a time I was doing my own B&W developing and printing. Usually my developing was event-free. However, I had just experienced and correctly diagnosed that I was agitating the spool too rapidly, sometimes causing the film to come loose and stick together - ruining the images due to developer and fixer not being able to reach the emulsion. I spent some time diagnosing that… So, when it became time to develop the film with Donald Knuth on it, I was careful. When I finished the fix, put in water, poured that out, and opened the tank I got …nothing. No images at all on the roll. What happened? Yes, the camera was fine and I always ensure film is moving through it. As best as I can tell, my developer was totally exhausted. I had been too cheap to replenish it.
 
That is a terribly sad story.

Cameras, I started with the K1000, a brick that could take photographs and moved on to an ME Super. I still have both. Great cameras. In HS I did my own darkroom work and bought film in bulk and loaded my own cartridges, Plus-X and, woohoo!!, Tri-X. All that makes me love digital. That was when ISO 200 was amazing. Folks whine about that now.

I remember when the 360 was a step up from a 1401. We had the 16K big one. 12K was the standard. It is amazing now. I worked as a programmer for only my last 20 years. COBOL was for LibArts majors like me to find gainful employment. But Assembler was succinct and elegant. I am forever grateful to Adm. Grace Murray Hopper and her wonderful knowledge and super sense of humor. To mimic SNL, COBOL has been berry, berry good to me.

Cheers
 
Once upon a time in the dark ages (around 1985), when I was working at NASA/JPL on digital imaging projects involving imaging radar, I went to a computer convention in Los Angeles and met John Warnock. We talked about some of the work I'd been doing, and ended up handing him some of my FORTRAN and C code ... basically personal project work on edge shading and blending, tonal distribution ... related to the image analytics I was trying to understand. I've always wondered if he used any of it...

I haven't written any code in at least 15 years and have little motivation to start again, but it was darn fun at the time. Twiddling a few buttons to get to the camera's service menu ... eh, haven't even been interested in that in longer than I can remember.. I do have the code sequence for the Olympus E-1 somewhere in my mess.

Hate digital? eh, no reason to. It's just a camera. 😀

G
 
I have 7 computers in arm's reach of me right now. Three of them were built to my specs, as in all custom boards designed for embedded work. One other- custom ordered for high-temperature work. I wrote the device drivers for these four.

40+ years ago I worked with the Texas Instruments Advanced Scientific Computer, the Vector version of the 360/91. The assembly language instruction set of that machine is the most advanced that I have ever used. I've done a lot of assembly language on a lot of processors, IBM 360, i960, MIPS, ARM, VAX, PDP, PIC, Intel, Atmel, Z80, and more. I miss heavy metal.
 
Sonnar Brian said:
I have 7 computers in arm's reach of me right now. Three of them were built to my specs, as in all custom boards designed for embedded work. One other- custom ordered for high-temperature work. I wrote the device drivers for these four.

40+ years ago I worked with the Texas Instruments Advanced Scientific Computer, the Vector version of the 360/91. The assembly language instruction set of that machine is the most advanced that I have ever used. I've done a lot of assembly language on a lot of processors, IBM 360, i960, MIPS, ARM, VAX, PDP, PIC, Intel, Atmel, Z80, and more. I miss heavy metal.
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This is degenerating fast. LOL When I worked in one huge shop a tech programmer got a bump in pay, promotion and huge amounts of praise for changing an MVC command to MVCL. It saved a lot of CPU time as it moved, IIRC, a million bytes at a time rather than one and this shop was about moving large amounts of data.

You could not find enough money to get me to code again. I was on call 24/7. by myself. A 3:00 AM call could be 20 minutes or 20 hours. I still have the manuals and all. I have never opened that box since leaving. I cannot even find my 0.5 mil pencil. I fart around with cameras now. Much, much more fun and on my schedule.

I have only three computers close, in this room. Four downstairs. You never know when you are going to need them.
 
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