Greybeards (Re: Netbooks & BSD)

[Arthur Chance]

On 10/20/10 23:07, Gary Kline wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 09:10:28PM +0100, Arthur Chance wrote:
>> On 10/20/10 20:46, Bob Hall wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> Enough Monty Python Yorkshiremen claims, already. :-)
>>
>> Getting back to reality, although I never did it (fortunately), a
>> friend of mine who was about a decade older than me (I'm mid/late
>> 50s) had the experience of programming microcode on a machine by
>> inserting brass slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin
>> board. Anyone got any idea what that was? He was (UK) military so
>> maybe it wasn't a generally known box.
>>
>
> 	This microcode programming sounds just vagely familiar; seems like
> 	mid/late-80's or early-90's. Am i right?  --Most uses for
> 	supercomputers are mil/spooks/<<>>; that's the only reason the
> 	idea might have floated past me.

No, this was circa 1970. I met him in 1975 and and it was past history 
for him then. He was Royal Air Force, if that gives a clue, and 
certainly wasn't a super - he talked about it as if it were a fairly 
dumb mini.

-- 
"Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, few know what a
wombat looks like, but everyone knows what a dragon looks like."

	-- Avram Davidson, _Adventures in Unhistory_