I remember...
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I saw for the very first time a PC booting from an hard disk at University. I thought it was a miracle.
Veni, vidi, vici.
My first job was using a hybrid computer. The main part was a EAI 680 analogue computer with 3 foot square detachable patch panels. An EAI 640 digital computer was used to control this. It ran via cassette operating system (COS) and the cassettes were very similar to 8 track audio tapes. This latter was replaced soon after I joined by an EAI Pacer which used 5Kb disks the size of vinyl LPs although it still had to be bootstrapped via the “octal” switches on the front. For simulation work analogue ruled in those days.
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My first job was using a hybrid computer. The main part was a EAI 680 analogue computer with 3 foot square detachable patch panels. An EAI 640 digital computer was used to control this. It ran via cassette operating system (COS) and the cassettes were very similar to 8 track audio tapes. This latter was replaced soon after I joined by an EAI Pacer which used 5Kb disks the size of vinyl LPs although it still had to be bootstrapped via the “octal” switches on the front. For simulation work analogue ruled in those days.
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...when 1 GB was a phenomenally huge amount of disk space (my first hard disk was 20MB!) Now Windows gives me a red "running low on disk space bar" and I still have 3GB left!!! :omg: Marc
top tip: use sequoia view [^] to find out where the bloat is. Takes a while, but it's worth it.
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...when 1 GB was a phenomenally huge amount of disk space (my first hard disk was 20MB!) Now Windows gives me a red "running low on disk space bar" and I still have 3GB left!!! :omg: Marc
The first hard drive I purchased on my own was a 340MB Western Digital drive, for which I paid over $600. It was happily installed in a 386SX, 16 MHz machine with a whopping 1MB of RAM. I've got data structures bigger than that now.
Software Zen:
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...when 1 GB was a phenomenally huge amount of disk space (my first hard disk was 20MB!) Now Windows gives me a red "running low on disk space bar" and I still have 3GB left!!! :omg: Marc
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...when 1 GB was a phenomenally huge amount of disk space (my first hard disk was 20MB!) Now Windows gives me a red "running low on disk space bar" and I still have 3GB left!!! :omg: Marc
Engineer 1 : I remember when all we had was a big time-sharing machine with only text-based terminals as an interface. Engineer 2 : Text-based terminals?!? You had text-based terminals? I remember when our only interface was punch cards. Engineer 1 : Punch cards?!? You had punch cards? I remember when all we had was paper tape. Engineer 2 : Paper tape?!? You had paper tape? I remember when we hand to hand assemble code with toggle switches on the front panel of the machine. Engineer 1 : Toggle switches?!? You had toggle switches? I remember when we had to wire-wrap all of the 0's and 1's? Engineer 2 : 1's?!? You had 1's?...
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Engineer 1 : I remember when all we had was a big time-sharing machine with only text-based terminals as an interface. Engineer 2 : Text-based terminals?!? You had text-based terminals? I remember when our only interface was punch cards. Engineer 1 : Punch cards?!? You had punch cards? I remember when all we had was paper tape. Engineer 2 : Paper tape?!? You had paper tape? I remember when we hand to hand assemble code with toggle switches on the front panel of the machine. Engineer 1 : Toggle switches?!? You had toggle switches? I remember when we had to wire-wrap all of the 0's and 1's? Engineer 2 : 1's?!? You had 1's?...
... one of the first computers I used was PDP-11 with twin 5Mb drives. To boot it you had to manually load the bootstrap program, about a dozen instructions, using the front panel toggle switches. Not sure how much memory that had (probably 64k bytes = 32k words) but the very first computer I programmed was a PDP-8 with 4096 12-bit words of memory (i.e. 6kb). It supported 5 simultaneous users on teletypes but had no disk storage at all!
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Engineer 1 : I remember when all we had was a big time-sharing machine with only text-based terminals as an interface. Engineer 2 : Text-based terminals?!? You had text-based terminals? I remember when our only interface was punch cards. Engineer 1 : Punch cards?!? You had punch cards? I remember when all we had was paper tape. Engineer 2 : Paper tape?!? You had paper tape? I remember when we hand to hand assemble code with toggle switches on the front panel of the machine. Engineer 1 : Toggle switches?!? You had toggle switches? I remember when we had to wire-wrap all of the 0's and 1's? Engineer 2 : 1's?!? You had 1's?...
:)
Gus Gustafson
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...when 1 GB was a phenomenally huge amount of disk space (my first hard disk was 20MB!) Now Windows gives me a red "running low on disk space bar" and I still have 3GB left!!! :omg: Marc
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I use Everything search, since it bypasses Windows entirely and just reads the drive header. :-D Only for NTFS drives though, but it can filter hundreds of thousands of filenames as you type without any pausing, from my experience. Freeware, too.
Windows Search is turned off immediately after installation :) Glad someone else is using Everything because I find it awesome. It's quick, reliable, has a small footprint, I can't say enough praise for it :) Fell in love on the first search, good times.
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And I bet there was some paperfriggingtape nearby as well... :sigh:
If your neighbours don't listen to The Ramones, turn it up real loud so they can. “We didn't have a positive song until we wrote 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue!'” ― Dee Dee Ramone "The Democrats want my guns and the Republicans want my porno mags and I ain't giving up either" - Joey Ramone
I remember 5 bit paper tape and even worked on printing perforators and tape readers - wonderful noisy mechanical/digital machines. My first computer was a VIC 20 with cassette tape. My first PC was an Amstrad 10MB hard disk and the world was my mollusc. Heady times!
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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...when 1 GB was a phenomenally huge amount of disk space (my first hard disk was 20MB!) Now Windows gives me a red "running low on disk space bar" and I still have 3GB left!!! :omg: Marc
I remember the "Start" button was a physical button on the card and paper tape reader! I remember, the "Program Manager" in Window 3.x will never take the place of the DOS prompt I remember, the "Start" button will never take the place of Program Manager
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...when 1 GB was a phenomenally huge amount of disk space (my first hard disk was 20MB!) Now Windows gives me a red "running low on disk space bar" and I still have 3GB left!!! :omg: Marc
I remember when my dad got his first computer - an Altair 8800b with 32K of RAM with a Lear-Siegler ADM-3a dumb terminal. "Those were the days, my friend . . ." "Olorin I was in the West that is forgotten . . ." - JRR Tolkien
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Brisingr Aerowing wrote:
That was caused by the search index
Bleah. One of the first things I do when installing Windows is turn off search indexing. I know where my files are. Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
I know where my files are.
Hah! You use files? I just do all my work in one massive Notepad page. Then I have a spiral-ring notebook at my desk with a list of everything and the paragraph number where I can find it. And to keep my hard-drive really streaming, I don't save anything. If I ever have to shut down my computer, I just print out the Notepad page, and then scan it back in on startup.
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Marc Clifton wrote:
I know where my files are.
Hah! You use files? I just do all my work in one massive Notepad page. Then I have a spiral-ring notebook at my desk with a list of everything and the paragraph number where I can find it. And to keep my hard-drive really streaming, I don't save anything. If I ever have to shut down my computer, I just print out the Notepad page, and then scan it back in on startup.
kdmote wrote:
And to keep my hard-drive really streaming,
I'm surprised you don't use your hard drive as a paper weight to keep the mountain of paper from falling over! ;) Marc
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...when 1 GB was a phenomenally huge amount of disk space (my first hard disk was 20MB!) Now Windows gives me a red "running low on disk space bar" and I still have 3GB left!!! :omg: Marc
Having 4K of RAM on my first computer (home built S100 bus Z80 system). All I had was a 2K monitor program (Zapple) that would allow me to dump memory, peak/poke memory, read/write at I/O ports, etc. I learned to program the Z80 by the numbers since Zapple had no programming languages. I eventually wirewrapped a FSK board to be able to save programs to cassette tape. Since I had a reel-to-reel recorder I was able to up the speed from 1200 baud an amazing 9600 baud!! Fun times in the 70s.
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...when 1 GB was a phenomenally huge amount of disk space (my first hard disk was 20MB!) Now Windows gives me a red "running low on disk space bar" and I still have 3GB left!!! :omg: Marc
I think we all get used to what we first know. I'm of a similar vintage to you in this regard in that I started out with tens of megabytes (I remember the 'big' second hard drive my dad bought for our main home PC at the time ... a massive 200MB!) and find it hard to believe just how big things are today. Never mind hard drives, I can carry 8GB in my pocket. Data transfer rates are amazing too. A gigabit network is a magical thing. I downloaded the (rather good) Planetside 2 over my home wireless network ... 8 gig or something like that in a matter of minutes. Anyone else remember in the mid 90s some time there was a film where the main plot device was that they loaded some guy's brain with a vast amount of super secret data so he could get that data to his paymasters? They loaded him up over the recommended capacity of the device and it leaked into his personality. (It wasn't a great film and I saw it on TV.) I think the vast amount of data was 3GB or something, clearly chosen to be way too big to imagine small chips being able to hold it at the time. Nowadays you could just smuggle a MicroSD card by swallowing it or something.
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Having 4K of RAM on my first computer (home built S100 bus Z80 system). All I had was a 2K monitor program (Zapple) that would allow me to dump memory, peak/poke memory, read/write at I/O ports, etc. I learned to program the Z80 by the numbers since Zapple had no programming languages. I eventually wirewrapped a FSK board to be able to save programs to cassette tape. Since I had a reel-to-reel recorder I was able to up the speed from 1200 baud an amazing 9600 baud!! Fun times in the 70s.
ssadler wrote:
I was able to up the speed from 1200 baud an amazing 9600 baud!! Fun times in the 70s.
That's really cool. Yeah, the 70's and 80's were definitely the "hobbyist era". Maybe things like the Raspberry Pi bring those days back to some extent. Marc
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ssadler wrote:
I was able to up the speed from 1200 baud an amazing 9600 baud!! Fun times in the 70s.
That's really cool. Yeah, the 70's and 80's were definitely the "hobbyist era". Maybe things like the Raspberry Pi bring those days back to some extent. Marc