[NBLUG/talk] System Message

Walter Hansen gandalf at sonic.net
Wed Feb 16 13:23:39 PST 2005


We had a pet in the back of algebra that I used to play with, but I never
did much with Commodores. My first computer was a TSR-80 CoCo mini with 4k
of ram. I got it for babysitting for three days while nice was being born.
I got the expansion pack to up it to 20k. Still have it somewhere. I was
going to program a wizardry style game. I started reading books on machine
code around 84 but didn't take assembly until high school. While all my
Friends were playing games on their apples I was using the one at the
libray to program stuff. A couple years ago I was going to get on irc with
an apple, but I never got the stuff together.

I'm pretty sure it was a Winchester 5 meg drive that me and a friend
crashed in high school when we invented simple email and then simple spam
all on our own. We gave each other our logins and passwords so we could
leave message files for each other. But then we made programs that wrote
files to fill up the other guys hard drive space. So then there were
counter programs to delete the files. Then we started putting control
characters in the filenames. We had about 12 computers each attacking and
defending during lunch break, the hard drive broke and we got kicked out
of the computer lab for the rest of the semester.

I've even got a Timex Sinclar 1000 around that I bought for $16. I should
make a trip to that bit barn museum. Hell I should send them alot of my
stuff.

> Geez, I started out on a TRS-80 Color Computer( the old grey one with
> 4k). learning basic, and then switched to a C64 where I took teh time
> to learn 6502 Assembly, which I did for a few years, even got
> published a couple times =)
>
> I never got to play with the old cool computers, my school didn't have
> a computer room, but we did have a Commodore Pet, thats what inspired
> me to get my C64.
>
> -Steve
>
>
>
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 12:07:25 -0800, Robert Hayes <rhayes at silcom.com>
> wrote:
>> Gawd. I don't even have to leave my desk now to feel old.
>>
>> I started programming on a teletype attached to a PDP-8/1 the size of a
>> refrigerator in 1972. It had 2K of memory.
>>
>> Our programs were saved to paper tape, and a well placed pencil point
>> jammed
>> into a hole in a folded stack of tape could ruin your roommates'
>> weekend.
>>
>> We had real Winchester drives (all 6K of it) and it had to spin 24/7 to
>> stay
>> viable. It was the size of one of the large original microwave ovens.
>> The
>> kind that they advertised could cook an 18 lb turkey.
>>
>> There are still some remnants of old teletype programming embedded in
>> fairly
>> modern code. I used to <ctrl>-G just a few years ago to make my friends'
>> DOS
>> console bell ring (in 1972 it was a real, round metal bell -- like on a
>> bicycle handlebar) when we'd be using talk.
>>
>> And I'm nowhere near AARP yet!
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday 16 February 2005 11:11 am, Walter Hansen wrote:
>> > I wonder, what did the PDP-11 and Cyber-40 run? I learned Pascal on
>> the
>> > Cyber-40 at SSU using writeln if I remember correctly. I was
>> corresponding
>> > with a nice girl named Sandy there until she found out I was 14. My
>> first
>> > programming experience was on a Apple ][ and we had to load integer
>> basic
>> > from cassette for 20 minutes before starting. That was arround 1978
>> and I
>> > was in fourth grade (an afterschool class). Heh, I remember I was
>> reading
>> > books about making calculators using voltage (non-binary) arround the
>> > time. Guess I'm a geek.
>> >
>> > Anyone ever program on a teletype? What an enormus waste of paper.
>> Hmmm. A
>> > guy named Dick used to run the computer center at SSU and he showed me
>> and
>> > my frinds the Andy Capp animated ANSI art on his terminal and the huge
>> > drum printer (9'x9'x5') and the disk drives that looked like washing
>> > machines. They had a little Apple ][e tucked in a room that was almost
>> > never used. I used to use it alot for writeing term papers and stuff.
>> > Hmmmmm. Applewriter was a lot better than wordstar. Chatting with
>> eliza,
>> > trying to land that lunar lander, ...... wanders off down the old geek
>> > road.
>> >
>> > > On Wed, February 16, 2005 12:01 am, Mitch Patenaude said:
>> > >> Another interesting footnote... back in the old days when large
>> > >> machines had multiple users
>> > >
>> > > <g>
>> > > The "old" days?
>> > >
>> > > FWIW, "large" machines *STILL* have multiple users.  Note that
>> > > these "large" machines are often no more than ordinary workstations
>> > > (but often sans-monitor, but also RAM-max'ed), accessed by telnet/
>> > > ssh/etc.
>> > >
>> > > Unless I'm sadly mistaken, our own sonic.net (who IIRC hosts nblug
>> > > servers) runs such a machine, known as "shell.sonic.net" and I've
>> > > been at more than one employer over the past 5 years who had similar
>> > > boxes.
>> > >
>> > > This isn't counting the folks who have thousands of (e.g.) e-mail
>> users
>> > > on one mbox-server.
>> > >
>> > >> setting the ticky-bit on your tty was a
>> > >> sign you wanted to go in on pizza delivery, which is why it is
>> > >> occasionally still called the "pizza bit".  Maybe this was only a
>> UC
>> > >> Berkeley thing, but I thought it was common practice.
>> > >
>> > > A brief go-round with Google would suggest not... "pizza bit" gets
>> > > hundreds of hits, but most ("most" = "all on the first 3 pages of
>> > > results") seem unrelated to UNIX's "sticky bit".  If I search
>> > >   UNIX+"pizza bit"
>> > > I get *TWO* hits, one in Norwegian & one on "pizza bit music".
>> > >
>> > > And, speaking as a statistically-invalid and strictly anecdotal
>> datum,
>> > > I've been using UNIX since '80 (including at Sun Micro), and haven't
>> > > met the "pizza bit" usage before (tho it's clever!).
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > - Steve S.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > _______________________________________________
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>
>
> --
>       "Knowing others is wisdom, knowing your self is Enlightenment."
>                                                    -- Lao-Tzu
> |C8H10N4O2|
>
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