[NBLUG/talk] System Message

[Steve Johnson]

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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> >
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-- 
      "Knowing others is wisdom, knowing your self is Enlightenment."
                                                   -- Lao-Tzu
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