The end of the power plug?
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Abu, Add another. Should we start an old fart's forum where we remenisce about CPM and PIP, PDP 11s and Primes? Bring back punch cards! :) Uh-oh it's almost mid-morning and time for my nap.:zzz:
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
PhilLenoir wrote:
Should we start an old fart's forum
OK Chris, how's 'bout an "old farts forum", or a "legacy programmers" forum. A lounge like place where us old-timers can dwell on the golden age of computers (OS/360, JCL, CICS, PDP, punch cards, paper tape...)
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PhilLenoir wrote:
Should we start an old fart's forum
OK Chris, how's 'bout an "old farts forum", or a "legacy programmers" forum. A lounge like place where us old-timers can dwell on the golden age of computers (OS/360, JCL, CICS, PDP, punch cards, paper tape...)
I really don't like being an old-timer. I suppose I am for this industry, but come on now boys... ladies are not as proud of our age. I built two of those crystal radios and never got it to work right... and I had nobody to ask for help back in Podunk, Kansas in the 70s. And isn't wireless power transmission a 19th century technology? CP/M got me though... good one :)
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
I really don't like being an old-timer. I suppose I am for this industry, but come on now boys... ladies are not as proud of our age. I built two of those crystal radios and never got it to work right... and I had nobody to ask for help back in Podunk, Kansas in the 70s. And isn't wireless power transmission a 19th century technology? CP/M got me though... good one :)
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles.My first crystal radio was a big disappointment. I lived about five miles from WJZ's 50KW xmtr. Tuning was a complete waste of time. You were going to get WJZ no matter what (WJZ has since become WABC). When I was interviewed at my first computer shop the IBM 1620 had paper tape, but by the time I reported for work they had swapped it for a 1622 card reader-punch. The hot programming language was FORTRAN with Format, and quite a few of the 1620 users' group folks were known as FORTRAN fiddlers because we got our jollies creating new compilers and runtime packages. I redid the IBM compiler to support the interrupt capability of the IBM 1710. We used a USAF priority to get to the front of the 360 line. Our machine had no tape drives because we expected to run on 8K BOS. The CE showed up with an armful of tapes, looked around the room, swore, left, and came back with about a ton of cards. That 360/40 was a great machine. Had two 2311 disk drives with about ten times the capacity of the 1620's 1311's. That is to say, about 30 MEGabytes. Those were the days, my friend ...
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From the article: Measurements showed that the setup could transfer energy with 40% efficiency across the gap.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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From the article: Measurements showed that the setup could transfer energy with 40% efficiency across the gap.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Isn't that almost as good as a wire? Doesn't it drop off by the square of the distance though? 60% loss over 3 inches wouldn't be good, but over 5 miles or something...
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
My first crystal radio was a big disappointment. I lived about five miles from WJZ's 50KW xmtr. Tuning was a complete waste of time. You were going to get WJZ no matter what (WJZ has since become WABC). When I was interviewed at my first computer shop the IBM 1620 had paper tape, but by the time I reported for work they had swapped it for a 1622 card reader-punch. The hot programming language was FORTRAN with Format, and quite a few of the 1620 users' group folks were known as FORTRAN fiddlers because we got our jollies creating new compilers and runtime packages. I redid the IBM compiler to support the interrupt capability of the IBM 1710. We used a USAF priority to get to the front of the 360 line. Our machine had no tape drives because we expected to run on 8K BOS. The CE showed up with an armful of tapes, looked around the room, swore, left, and came back with about a ton of cards. That 360/40 was a great machine. Had two 2311 disk drives with about ten times the capacity of the 1620's 1311's. That is to say, about 30 MEGabytes. Those were the days, my friend ...
Yes indeed. I'm almost embarrassed to admit I never learned Fortran, but I thank the Gods that I never had to deal with stacks of cards - I started with magnetic tape, slow but convenient. I think my radios never worked because we were out in the boondocks and there wasn't enough power... I remember sitting there and thinking 'well duh, it has no power' - there was nobody in town to teach me about that kind of stuff, so I spend a lot of time at the library reading books that were way above my grade level, absorbing a lot of information that I didn't understand, but would recall later when the other pieces fell into place. I was loner kid, and people thought I was really messed up... teachers would call in my parents and say "she doesn't seem to like the other kids?" and my mom would say something like "well those kids are idiots, what do you expect?" When I was in the 5th grade, they tried to put me up to the 6th grade for about a week and it became such a social issue they had to put me back. I loved it, but the other kids complained so much that the school wouldn't let me keep doing it. So I spent a lot of time in the library and ended up being completely despondent about school overall. I couldn't deal with school at all and actually dropped out in 11th grade, got my GED, had some kids, and years later I went to college. I'm still pissed off about my school experiences, but at least I did have resources for learning and I used them. An anti-social, brainiac, transgender kid just isn't going to do well in any part of the South, which Kansas very much is. It was the 70s and we were supposed to be enlightened, so people tried really hard, but they just didn't understand me. My parents were known as "that preacher and his wife from California" - I don't think it was any disrespect, but we were outsiders. Anyway, it sounds like a whole bunch of bad stuff, but I wonder where I would be if I hadn't had the motivation to go off by myself and take things apart, read books, or whatever... It seems like technology was just so much more exciting back then... everything was new and cool, and extremely rudimentary, so a little kid like me had a chance at understanding it. I don't think kids today have that opportunity, the entry-level is too high for most of the cool stuff. That's why I bought both my kids a Lego NXT - it's a tinkerer's dream and I'm trying to make them feel some of what I felt back then. If it wasn't for the dog chasing the parts around, I'd play with my own NXT a lot more - I love that kind of stuf
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Yes indeed. I'm almost embarrassed to admit I never learned Fortran, but I thank the Gods that I never had to deal with stacks of cards - I started with magnetic tape, slow but convenient. I think my radios never worked because we were out in the boondocks and there wasn't enough power... I remember sitting there and thinking 'well duh, it has no power' - there was nobody in town to teach me about that kind of stuff, so I spend a lot of time at the library reading books that were way above my grade level, absorbing a lot of information that I didn't understand, but would recall later when the other pieces fell into place. I was loner kid, and people thought I was really messed up... teachers would call in my parents and say "she doesn't seem to like the other kids?" and my mom would say something like "well those kids are idiots, what do you expect?" When I was in the 5th grade, they tried to put me up to the 6th grade for about a week and it became such a social issue they had to put me back. I loved it, but the other kids complained so much that the school wouldn't let me keep doing it. So I spent a lot of time in the library and ended up being completely despondent about school overall. I couldn't deal with school at all and actually dropped out in 11th grade, got my GED, had some kids, and years later I went to college. I'm still pissed off about my school experiences, but at least I did have resources for learning and I used them. An anti-social, brainiac, transgender kid just isn't going to do well in any part of the South, which Kansas very much is. It was the 70s and we were supposed to be enlightened, so people tried really hard, but they just didn't understand me. My parents were known as "that preacher and his wife from California" - I don't think it was any disrespect, but we were outsiders. Anyway, it sounds like a whole bunch of bad stuff, but I wonder where I would be if I hadn't had the motivation to go off by myself and take things apart, read books, or whatever... It seems like technology was just so much more exciting back then... everything was new and cool, and extremely rudimentary, so a little kid like me had a chance at understanding it. I don't think kids today have that opportunity, the entry-level is too high for most of the cool stuff. That's why I bought both my kids a Lego NXT - it's a tinkerer's dream and I'm trying to make them feel some of what I felt back then. If it wasn't for the dog chasing the parts around, I'd play with my own NXT a lot more - I love that kind of stuf
I lived in a less enlightened era, so my experience was better. In Illinois in the 40's we did school by the half year. I moved from low second to low third, then from low third to low fourth. The transitions weren't as unsurmountable, but the downside was I skipped a lot of instruction in penmanship, which was a third grade subject. My handwriting is better now, but if I want someone to be able to read what I write, I print. When we moved to NJ my sister had the option of going ahead a half or falling back a half. She chose to fall back a half and coasted the rest of the way through school. She used the slack to become the most popular girl in high school while staying in the top 10% academically. Our big sister did it the other way, entering the U of Mo at the ripe age of 16. I've been at this for 45 years. Taught real-time systems at the college level. Never had a CompSci course in my life. Love libraries, hate e-books.
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I really don't like being an old-timer. I suppose I am for this industry, but come on now boys... ladies are not as proud of our age. I built two of those crystal radios and never got it to work right... and I had nobody to ask for help back in Podunk, Kansas in the 70s. And isn't wireless power transmission a 19th century technology? CP/M got me though... good one :)
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles.Jasmine2501 wrote:
but come on now boys... ladies are not as proud of our age
Hmm, nobody said I was proud. But I'm 55 and there's nothin' I can do about it. It was great going to college in the early '70s :)
Jasmine2501 wrote:
Podunk, Kansas
I lived in Prairie Village Kansas in the 50s.
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I lived in a less enlightened era, so my experience was better. In Illinois in the 40's we did school by the half year. I moved from low second to low third, then from low third to low fourth. The transitions weren't as unsurmountable, but the downside was I skipped a lot of instruction in penmanship, which was a third grade subject. My handwriting is better now, but if I want someone to be able to read what I write, I print. When we moved to NJ my sister had the option of going ahead a half or falling back a half. She chose to fall back a half and coasted the rest of the way through school. She used the slack to become the most popular girl in high school while staying in the top 10% academically. Our big sister did it the other way, entering the U of Mo at the ripe age of 16. I've been at this for 45 years. Taught real-time systems at the college level. Never had a CompSci course in my life. Love libraries, hate e-books.
jim_taylor wrote:
My handwriting is better now, but if I want someone to be able to read what I write, I print.
My hand writing is so bad, that it would make doctors jealous. :laugh: As for programming, I started with BASIC and punch cards. That was fun until a mistake crept into the program. :confused: :~ Then we had from 5 to 10 hours trying to figure out what went wrong. Fun!!! :rolleyes:
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Jasmine2501 wrote:
but come on now boys... ladies are not as proud of our age
Hmm, nobody said I was proud. But I'm 55 and there's nothin' I can do about it. It was great going to college in the early '70s :)
Jasmine2501 wrote:
Podunk, Kansas
I lived in Prairie Village Kansas in the 50s.
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Jasmine2501 wrote:
but come on now boys... ladies are not as proud of our age
Hmm, nobody said I was proud. But I'm 55 and there's nothin' I can do about it. It was great going to college in the early '70s :)
Jasmine2501 wrote:
Podunk, Kansas
I lived in Prairie Village Kansas in the 50s.
Abu Mami wrote:
I lived in Prairie Village Kansas in the 50s.
heh, I've actually heard of that. I lived in Jetmore[^]... there really isn't anything to say about it except maybe the speedway.
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles.