What else turns us on?

I was responsible for the operation of all the communications links from all over the country which all terminated into a room full VAX780s. Wrote quite a bit of code to track and monitor all the users. Did all this from the 26th floor of 1 Beacon St, with an awesome view of Boston harbor. It was fun, but I don't miss it at all.
 
I program embedded controllers these days, after a 10 year stint in technical management. Wrote quite a bit of code in the last few months, lots of assembler. Don't miss management a bit! I sure do miss Heavy Metal though! My Code slowed down by a factor of 140 when they retired the TI-ASC and I converted over to VAX 780's in ~1984.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I can remember when Boyle Gas Law problems came up in high school chemistry and the teacher offered to show us how to run a slide rule, if we were willing to show up after class. About 8 of us did. First term Chemistry exam I pulled off a 56 out of 60 to lead the class. The high water mark of my scientific life.

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair with cassette drive.
 
How many people remember the S100 bus, 8" floppies, etc? I also worked on the PDP-11's for a while as well. What dinosaur compared to todays machines.

I remember my first home PC. The original IBM PC. Lighting fast processor, 64K of main memory, 5.25" discs, and gorgeous CGA graphics. I had the machine that was the envy of my neighborhood. Ohhhh ahhhh, and the images in beautiful 320x240 res with 16 colors!!!

What does this have to do with computers you ask??? I think I have that original PC plus some in my S2Pro digital SLR, with more speed, memory, better graphics, and lots more storage 🙂

I was on the superhighway when it was still a dirt road. Good old DARPA net. Oh wait, I must be wrong since Al Gore says he invented the internet. Sorry 🙂

Man does technology move fast!!
 
Funny there are several of us with ties to ancient computing. 🙂 At Boeing I wrote Fortran code for aerodynamics applications; I didn't have much to do with the hardware, which as I recall was a CDC6600. In the office we had some mechanical Marchant calculators, and it was a big deal when we got a Wang calculator, maybe the same kind Brian mentioned. This one was a largish box we hid under an empty desk, with four keyboard/terminals on long cables. Wow, four arithmetic functions, memory, and a few scientific functions. Right at the leading edge of technology! Then one of the younger aerodynamicists showed up with an HP400 hand-held scientific calculator. And another was soldering together a personal computer from a kit. I finally got a CompuCorp desktop calculator with a cassette tape drive accessory to store data and program sequences. Oddly, I didn't get into PCs at all until the Macintosh showed up and made a convincing case for a better interface. What really convinced me was that it didn't come with or need BASIC like the others.
 
I don't speak "techno-geek" either, but I did use a Mac 20 with a cassette drive at home. Remember typing in code forever, saving it to cassette and then finding the program wouldn't run because I fumbled one stinking letter/number! :bang:
 
Other than photography, hmmm, let's see... walking, reading, cooking, eating, beer, watching movies, playing XBox, taiji and xingyi (until I blew my knee out badly enough that my doctor said no more martial arts, very loudly I might add although he can't keep me from doing qigong), and like ThatGuy, trying to finish up a singlespeed conversion on my trusty old MTB, although I keep getting sidetracked by the idea of a fixed-gear road bike. Other than that, not too much as I have an odd work schedule which really cuts into my time for any one of my hobbies.
 
Doug: That would be the same Wang 360K Calculator that I am about to take apart and try to find why it has one stuck bit coming into the Nixie Tubes. The CDC 6600 was the first computer that I programmed in school.

nwcanonman: I bet that was a VIC 20.

Isn't it funny how so many of us "Digital Dinosaurs" have an appreciation for all-mechanical, do everything ourself cameras and traditional photography. I think it adds balance, or at least serves as a pressure release. At times I have felt like "Spock ind-melding with Nomad" trying to debug a piece of code. And Tron "Break out the Logic Probe". It's nice to get a roll of film back from the M3 or Canon 7 and know that "no computer was involved with the design of optics on this camera".
 
k, I'm obviously not as old as you guys. My first computer, at 15 or 16, was an original Sinclair ZX-81 in kit form. Took about 6 hours to assemble, 2 months to get fed up with the BASIC and resorted to Z-80 assembler.

But that, a Toshiba T1000 "laptop" I had in university and a Mac 512 are all on display at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology today!

I did used VM/CMS on an Ahmdal in university and VMS on VAX11/785 at a couple of my co-op job (FORTRAN and PROLOG)

And, the first version of Linux I ever installed was 0.95.
 
vladhed:
"I have seen the future, and it is just like the present, only longer" - Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

I just love that signature!
 
Well the Smithsonian is going to add my oldest programming manual to their collection. It is THE oldest computer manual; the 16th copy of 258 printed for the IBM MARK I. It is autographed by Grace Hopper, when I saw her give a talk in 1981. I always felt a bit bad that they had the computer and I had the manual for it. No wonder they weren't using it!

To put it in retrospective, at age 47 I have been programming for half as long as there have been computers! My Leica IIIf (converted from a IIIc) was also made in 1946. Amazing how technology chages and stays the same. Making a new RF camera is like someone building a Relay Calculator in today's electronic world. Gotta love Cosina and Leica!
 
When I entered university back in '95 (yes, that long ago 😛) our first programs were done in MODULA-2 under a VAX machine using OpenVMS in Digital VT200 terminals.

Man, firstly you saw those funky looking old boxes with their 'balloon' orange text only screens and laughed. After lots and lots of hours spent there and even all night with Modula and later with Pascal now I still have nice memories about those years.

While at class the other day the professor mentioned something about the old VAX, and almost everybody put a 'what?' face, but not the older of us who knew too well what he was talking about 😀, now the first thing they find when arriving there is a modern PC and Java.

Nice to remember how a friend and me were probably the first ones on that faculty to get IRC running on PCs under Win3.1 and Winsock. After IRC was forbidden on PC's, we also downloaded a Vax/Alpha version, got it running but were caught again 😛

Ah... memories...

Btw, speaking of MTB, any good source of information for a complete and absolute newbie in that ? Seems the bike has still more things to tune up than a rangefinder, so it would be nice to gather some useful resources 🙂

Oscar

PS: I still have the Sinclair Spectrum, an original IBM PS/2 8086 with MCGA! 😱, a Toshiba T1000XE as well, a Mac powerbook 180c and some more... I simply can't part with them !
 
FrankS said:
vladhed:
"I have seen the future, and it is just like the present, only longer" - Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

I just love that signature!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've always loved that because it sounds so profound yet it is complete non-sense.

http://rsidd.online.fr/profit/

Another one is "The Earth is like a grain of sand, only much much heavier", except that it is actually true.

😛
 
Vladhed,
I think the word that describes it might be "inane". Luckily, being a big Dr. Demento fan, I love the inane. 😀
"No matter where you go, there you are" - ?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Joao
Lightleak ? or something else ?
Replies
17
Views
587
Alpsman
A
S
Suggestions / advice for new camera
2 3
Replies
45
Views
2K
silvershadelynx
S
peterm1
Who is your favorite photographer in history - who has influenced you the most?
2 3
Replies
50
Views
2K
mconnealy
mconnealy
NIKON KIU
Super-Zoom-Nikkor 1200-1700mm sold for over half million dollars
Replies
4
Views
728
evo_ii
evo_ii
Roastchestnuts
M246 or M10M or....
Replies
3
Views
614
Roastchestnuts
Roastchestnuts
Back
Top Bottom