My Fourth Operating System (Page 9): Neither could your Osbourne. It did make it easier for you to write them, as well as doing the spreadsheet calculating so could easily have been...

petrochemist Loc: UK

Wyantry wrote:

Post:
JeffR wrote: Spent $2k on my Osborne, but it came with Wordstar and SuperCalc.

Right! But your car could not write letters <snip> . . . .

Neither could your Osbourne. It did make it easier for you to write them, as well as doing the spreadsheet calculating so could easily have been worth it.
The first computer in our lab was brought in 1979 for something like £32k (the pound was worth more against the dollar back then). I'm sure it had paid for itself many times over before I joined the company 8 years later. It continued to earn it's keep for a similar period afterwards.

Wyantry Loc: SW Colorado

petrochemist wrote:

Neither could your Osbourne. It did make it easier for you to write them, as well as doing the spreadsheet calculating so could easily have been worth it.
The first computer in our lab was brought in 1979 for something like £32k (the pound was worth more against the dollar back then). I'm sure it had paid for itself many times over before I joined the company 8 years later. It continued to earn it's keep for a similar period afterwards.

You are correct — the computer did not write. I used it with Wordstar™ to input abbreviated sample descriptions and output to a printer. Descriptions were then expanded (using the ‘search and replace’ function) for a final report.

I recollect the time savings essentially paid for the computer/printer combination after about three reports.

sawdust_sam Loc: Pittsburgh

I've got an apple iie in the basement!

Ed Commons

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.

BebuLamar

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.

Really a third floppy? How do you do that? DOS only supports 2 floppies.

Ed Commons

Some how the quy who built the computer managed to do it. I didn't know anything about computers when I bought my first.

gouldopfl

The first computer I worked with took an acre of floor space and a huge cooling tower.

jlg1000 Loc: Uruguay / South America

BBurns wrote:

There are a bunch of us out here that will know this one.
And there will be some younger up-starts who are clueless.

My first O/S was - in reality - none at all, but looked like this:

JeffR Loc: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

jlg1000 wrote:

My first O/S was - in reality - none at all, but looked like this:

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.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

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.

What was fun to watch was the people who loaded the card reader/punch with their decks, waiting for the printer to finish, and saw PUNCH...PUNCH...PUNCH... coming out on the printer.
Some were fast enough to remove their program deck,
some were not.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, 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.

Experienced operators drew a diagional line or “v” across the top of the deck to allow it to be put back in order if dropped

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

TriX wrote:

Experienced operators drew a diagional line or “v” across the top of the deck to allow it to be put back in order if dropped

ALWAYS!

gouldopfl

For me the OS was a Tape OS on a IBM 360-16. I used punch cards for about the first year before I took another job and had IBM with TSO terminals to our mainframe.

gouldopfl

It only took me dropping the cards in a small program until I set the card punch up to automatically number the cards.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

gouldopfl wrote:

It only took me dropping the cards in a small program until I set the card punch up to automatically number the cards.