Greybeards (Re: Netbooks & BSD)

[Bob Hall]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:
> >> Matthias Apitz <guru at unixarea.de> wrote:
> >>> El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline escribi?:
> >>>> 	PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
> >>>> 	780 days :-) 
> >>> I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
> >>
> >> Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
> >> The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
> >
> > 	I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
> > 	Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
> > 	job of porting the "Portable F77 Compiler" was done with vi and
> > 	the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody 
> > 	old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really 
> > 	*were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having 
> > 	php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)
> > 
> > 	:)
> 
> Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
> We had to settle for "o"s and "l"s ...

When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks.
We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using
magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to
pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected.