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The more things change....

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    #16
    Re: The more things change....

    Originally posted by jkwrpc View Post
    Surely somebody on the forum must go back to punch cards and magnetic tape...:)
    or to jumper cables on a Burrough's machine to program it. Just like the old telephone switchboards..

    It was an upgrade to use punch cards and later punch paper tapes.
    Al Buchholz
    Bookwood Systems, LTD
    Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

    Occam's Razor - KISS
    Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
    Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
    When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
    "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
    Albert Einstein

    http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

    Comment


      #17
      Re: The more things change....

      As long as we are playing Nostalgics:

      First computer I ever used was connected to a teletype machine in the attic of the engineering school in 1964. It had a paper tape punch, and the usual routine was to type in a line of code (in Basic), make a tape, type another, make another tape and so on until the main computer (a GE) crashed, which was about every hour. Then, you would feed the paper tape back in so you could enter another line. (So, don't complain to me about crashes!)

      The Basic language was being developed by Dr. Kemeny as I went through school (we got "if then" as a sophomore and looping in my Junior year) which is why I originally chose Alpha.

      After I got out of biz school in '74, went to Southern California where a neighbor who was a ham radio operator and a buddy ham each had altair computers (programmed in machine language with switches!) and he and his buddy would play a version of Pong over the radio. Wireless almost 40 years ago!

      Soon after that, I got a TRS80 (4K ram...how would I ever fill that up?) that used a cassette player for storage, later upgraded to a "stringy floppy". Wrote a little word processing program that actually worked, but never expected to make my living using one....
      Pat Bremkamp
      MindKicks Consulting

      Comment


        #18
        Re: The more things change....

        Yep ... I actually go back to 80-column punch cards, paper tape and mag tapes!
        (The RAIR Black Box computer was later in my career).

        1972 ... University of London ... ICL 1904E computer ... 4 x 30MB removable disk drives, 6 x 800bpi tape drives. Air conditioning, 24/7 working, RESIDENT ICL engineers! People were cheap and computers were expensive, back then!

        We used to do all the processing for the University of London GCEs.
        My initial programs were on cards ... one statement per card!
        Last edited by Paullm; 02-19-2013, 11:54 PM.

        Comment


          #19
          Re: The more things change....

          Originally posted by jkwrpc View Post
          Surely somebody on the forum must go back to punch cards and magnetic tape...:)
          They were still in use in "the basement" of Purdue when I was there in 84. But I never "had the pleasure" of seeing anything other than a floor with used cards that "missed the basket." (They were "on their way out" the first year I was there.)
          Last edited by SNusa; 02-21-2013, 10:27 PM.
          Robert T. ~ "I enjoy manipulating data... just not my data."
          It's all about the "framework." (I suppose an "a5-induced" hard drive crash is now in order?)
          RELOADED: My current posting activity here merely represents a "Momentary Lapse Of Reason."

          Comment


            #20
            Re: The more things change....

            I had been a chemist for 13 years when the TRS80 came out. I got one for the lab thinking it would be useful. I had been programming on an HP Programmable calculator which used little magnetic strips that looked like the blades in an injectable razor. I had written a a mortgage interest calculator on it that saved me over $1700 when I paid out my mortgage 16 years early. The bank was still using an old method called the rule of 9's which was horribly inaccurate for that long a period. I remember getting an appointment with the bank manager to explain my program to him and prove that it worked.
            It turned out that the TRS80 was pretty useless for the lab since there were no programs for it and no one who new how to create programs. So I took it home to figure it out. It was a life changing experience. There had been no computer courses when I went to university and I fell in love with the concept.
            A year later I quit my job as Technical Director and started a computer business ( a little premature as it turned out since nobody knew that they needed one yet.)
            My first 'professional' job was an inventory program that ran on a Radio Shack Model II. It had two 8" 1MB floppy drives which if my memory serves each drew 75 watts. My program ran on one and the data was on the other. There were almost 10,000 items in inventory so I had to really cram the information. Each item had up to a 5 word description and I used a dictionary lookup so that each description only took 10 bytes. I used an O/S called Oasis which had Basic and a relational database built in. We had a Daisy Wheel printer which worked like an electric typewriter and it took me an entire day to figure out how to get it to communicate with the computer.
            But you're right - things don't change. Now it takes me 3 days to figure out how to pass variables to a report in Alpha5.

            Comment


              #21
              Re: The more things change....

              Gee whiz, I feel like the new kid on the block compared to some of these posts!

              Here's my first one :)
              Cheers!
              Lyle Chamney
              http://www.2ninerniner2.com/
              Websites rebuilt with WordPress
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                #22
                Re: The more things change....

                If ever you think today's internet speeds are just something normal to have, watch this I started out my career at this fantastic company in the wonderful Beaverton / Oregon area.
                Frank

                Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand

                Comment


                  #23
                  Re: The more things change....

                  My first was Sinclair, second was a Dragon 32, next was a Digico M16E
                  Remember punch cards well. Filled up the managers umberella with chad, (the bits that fit in the holes, for youngsters) so when he opened it it looked like a load of confetty. Nearly got fired for that one.
                  It still works by the way with hole punch bits.
                  See our Hybrid Option here;
                  https://hybridapps.example-software.com/


                  Apologies to anyone I haven't managed to upset yet.
                  You are held in a queue and I will get to you soon.

                  Comment


                    #24
                    Re: The more things change....

                    My first machine which I still have is the Sinclair ZX81. This almost had the same power as the computers on the first moon landing.
                    Our first office machine was a Superbrain seen here I actually did program it in some version of basic which then had to be compiled to create the exe file.

                    Don't these just date us?
                    Regards
                    Keith Hubert
                    Alpha Guild Member
                    London.
                    KHDB Management Systems
                    Skype = keith.hubert


                    For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

                    Comment


                      #25
                      Re: The more things change....

                      Originally posted by Keith Hubert View Post
                      ....My first machine which I still have is the Sinclair ZX81. This almost had the same power as the computers on the first moon landing....
                      And, how does Alpha Five run on your Sinclair Keith
                      I know the Sinclair by the way. But started off with the C64 myself. Used a cassette player with it because the disc-unit (type 1541 ?) was not yet invented. I actually made my first commercially marketed piece of software for the C64 back then.

                      Ted, I can remember the systems with the cards. I worked with them on the University where I studied in the old days. We used to create a " special program" for the prof which we used to call "program toiletpaper". It would start in the middle of the night and in the morning it would have produced a heap of useless printer paper in the computer room with a screaming professor as a result. It was always amusing how HE would try to avoid our program being able to run, and WE would try to bypass his "security measures" hahahaha. Great times. I remember that I often took out just a few cards out of someone's stack when he went to the toilet for a few minutes. The result was often hours of research why the program wouldn't work. Most of the time however, and depending on the level of jerk he was, he got the cards back at the end of the day :-)

                      Comment


                        #26
                        Re: The more things change....

                        Now I have a car with a 60 gig inbuilt hard drive and Digital HD TV to watch when I'm in traffic and not moving. It even parks itself.
                        Still have to turn the wheel though and I'm really excited by the self drive car they had on Top Gear. I can get an extra few zzz's when I do my 4 hour commute (each way) twice a week.
                        See our Hybrid Option here;
                        https://hybridapps.example-software.com/


                        Apologies to anyone I haven't managed to upset yet.
                        You are held in a queue and I will get to you soon.

                        Comment


                          #27
                          Re: The more things change....

                          Originally posted by Ted Giles View Post
                          Now I have a car with a 60 gig inbuilt hard drive and Digital HD TV to watch when I'm in traffic and not moving. It even parks itself.
                          Still have to turn the wheel though and I'm really excited by the self drive car they had on Top Gear. I can get an extra few zzz's when I do my 4 hour commute (each way) twice a week.
                          Watch out for potholes, or you'll "shatter your platter."

                          Originally posted by Clipper87 View Post
                          If ever you think today's internet speeds are just something normal to have, watch this I started out my career at this fantastic company in the wonderful Beaverton / Oregon area.
                          I'm going to go out on a limb here: Are you certain that video wasn't recently filmed in Burlington MA?
                          (I thought I heard a dog barking in the background.)
                          Last edited by SNusa; 02-24-2013, 10:27 AM.
                          Robert T. ~ "I enjoy manipulating data... just not my data."
                          It's all about the "framework." (I suppose an "a5-induced" hard drive crash is now in order?)
                          RELOADED: My current posting activity here merely represents a "Momentary Lapse Of Reason."

                          Comment


                            #28
                            Re: The more things change....

                            Dilbert cartoon:
                            One bragging engineer to another: These kids these days with their windows gui, and drag and drop. HMPH. Back in my day I programmed an entire database in ones and zeros.
                            Second engineer: That's nothing. In my day, I used lower case Ls and upper case Os
                            Jay Talbott
                            Lexington, KY

                            Comment


                              #29
                              Re: The more things change....

                              Back in those days, my employer found a disc lying around somewhere on the floor and he tried to do the good thing. So he took a thumb-tack, wrote on a post-it: "Who's floppy is this?", pricked the thumb-tack through the floppy disk and post-it note somewhere (of course right through the data carrier area) and stick it all together to the message board on the wall. Obviously, the owner was not very happy with this action.
                              We had to inform the boss that instead of helping out he had ruined the floppy at which moment he said: "So why are we using this cr@p in the first place?". A question still to be answered and very up-to-date.....

                              Comment


                                #30
                                Re: The more things change....

                                Marcel,

                                Don't forget, this smart boss of yours, was smart enough to employ you.
                                Regards
                                Keith Hubert
                                Alpha Guild Member
                                London.
                                KHDB Management Systems
                                Skype = keith.hubert


                                For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

                                Comment

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