My Fourth Operating System (Page 10): :sm24: :sm24: We had the same situation... I hated that computer.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

JeffR wrote:

My job in college was to monitor the card reader, to make sure no one put their cards in upside down, and to help them pick their cards up when they dropped their stack, which happened several times a day. Easy money. The downside was that the reader was in the same room as the line printer, which was deafening. Had to wear earplugs.

We had the same situation... I hated that computer.

MrBob Loc: lookout Mtn. NE Alabama

cwp3420 wrote:

I started on a new Commodore 64.

I still have Atari 400 and Atari 800 in original boxes with cassette players as storage devices

MrBob Loc: lookout Mtn. NE Alabama

My first college computing class was hard wiring IBM 401 accounting machine boards… We then progressed to 1401 Assembly language programming. I wonder if todays programming has code as tight as we used to write.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

MrBob wrote:

My first college computing class was hard wiring IBM 401 accounting machine boards… We then progressed to 1401 Assembly language programming. I wonder if todays programming has code as tight as we used to write.

If by tight you mean compact, heck no... not any more.

I had to write a rudimentary word processor in assembly (6502 processor maybe) for one class. I was about 35-ish taking an evening class.
The instructor gave me an A and asked if I wrote alone, which I did, as it was only about 3 pages of code. Everyone else's was rather lengthy.
I never did (and still don't) do verbose coding (nor writing).....

MrBob Loc: lookout Mtn. NE Alabama

Longshadow wrote:

If by tight you mean compact, heck no... not any more.

I had to write a rudimentary word processor in assembly (6502 processor maybe) for one class. I was about 35-ish taking an evening class.
The instructor gave me an A and asked if I wrote alone, which I did, as it was only about 3 pages of code.
I never did (and still don't) do verbose.....

I hear you… I still recall how compact code like Fortran was… I really liked getting down to lower languages like assembly..

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

MrBob wrote:

I hear you… I still recall how compact code like Fortran was… I really liked getting down to lower languages like assembly..

Haha, with assembly you become one with the machine.....

Oh, it had to have word wrap also.

FORTRAN and QB45 were much faster to program though. The compiler and linker took care of creating the assembly code.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

The people who still write tight machine language code are embedded/real time system programmers where the OS and application have to reside in NV RAM. It’s been awhile since I was in that business (the Motorola 68030 and 68040 were the hot processors so you know how long that’s been), but the efficient way to write code was on a Unix platform and use a cross compiler/OS such as VX Works or OS9 to compile the code and burn it into SRAM. Don’t know about OS9, but VXWorks is still around and is the OS used on the controller for a well known enterprise storage system

gouldopfl

No it doesn't unless it is using Assembler. I used Assembler from 1980-1995. You had to be very cognizant of the limited memory that we had. The first mainframe I worked on was a IBM360-16 I believe with a tape OS and 16k of memory.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

gouldopfl wrote:

No it doesn't unless it is using Assembler. I used Assembler from 1980-1995. You had to be very cognizant of the limited memory that we had. The first mainframe I worked on was a IBM360-16 I believe with a tape OS and 16k of memory.

Back in '72, Penn State had an IBM OS/360 with 64K. Remote card reader/punches & drum printers at each campus.

gouldopfl

My first job out of college was with Martin Marietta Data Systems, now Lockhead Martin and we had that relic. I was moved to New Orleans to work on building a scheduling system for the manufacturing of the large brownish colored fuel tanks.

Wyantry Loc: SW Colorado

Ed Commons wrote:

I started with a computer that used MSDOS ( waaaay before Windows) You had at least two floppy drives, one with the DOS operating system and one with your program. I had a third floppy drive for the data.

In military, we were using a dual 1024-bit ferrite-core array to alternatively fill and then dump to dual tape drives. ‘Programming’ was to determine and input parameters for type of signal to demultiplex.
Signal analysis of waveform and mark-space pattern and baud-rate were “input” via a switch-bank and plug-board (with wire jumpers for routing). Signal-type handbook was about 200 pages of printout. Tapes were sent to “No Such Agency” (NSA) for analysis and decoding.

Pain-in-the-butt!

bobbydvideo

I started with the Commodore Amiga as it was the only one that did video at the time. Then I beta tested for Microsoft with Win95 and still with Windows.

Mr palmer Loc: Currently: Colorado, USA, Terra, Sol

And before DOS, CP/M and ALC; with punched card decks of 6000 cards. Yep, dropped a couple of times. Not me, I had to certify that they were back in proper order. And before that we wired boards.

I remember the introduction of the Megabyte, and the "unbelievable" space available on the early disk drives. We had a rep tell us (and we all believed him) "who will ever need more than 10 Megabytes?" Gives a lot more real context to Vizzini saying "inconceivable!!"

We always talked about the day when the Dick Tracy watch would be real. I never thought the world would look this way when it finally happened.

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

I remember the introduction of the Megabyte, and the "unbelievable" space available on the early disk drives. We had a rep tell us (and we all believed him) "who will ever need more than 10 Megabytes?" Gives a lot more real context to Vizzini saying "inconceivable!!"

The Burroughs B20 series computers started with SEAGATE 10mb drives.
When I installed an 84mb drive in one of them at the Suffolk County Executives office
they all thought it would never be filled.
Those were the days my friend!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Mr. SONY wrote:

I remember the introduction of the Megabyte, and t... (show quote)

I went to a 20MB HD at home in the mid 80s. thought I'd never fill that.
I probably replaced the computer before I filled it.