I have boxes of those 5 1/4 diskettes plus a few 8 inchers. Everything I
wrote in the '70s and most of what I wrote in the '80s is now unavailable
to me. Just the musty printouts give me a trail of provenance. Some of
the algorithms I created back then would still be of value but I cannot
get to them. An acoustic analysis program I wrote to simulate the noise
pollution around a surface phosphate mine would be nice to have. It was
fun to write within the confines we had then but the transition to C and
Pascal made life much simpler. Variables with actual descriptive names
were a boon to getting the work done faster and the debugging went more
quickly in the new modular forms. To this day I am influenced by the
integer variables in Fortran: i, j, k. Forth forced me to think in
functional decomposition. I do not miss the confines of 65 kB but it was
nice to know the wiring of the entire computer and how each bit of the
rudimentary OSes of the day fit together. Getting to the I/O lines was
much easier then too. Now to dig out my CP/M box and see if it still
boots from those 8 inch floppies :)
73,
Kevin. KD5ONS
On Sun, 21 Aug 2011 14:19:26 -0700, Fred Jensen <k6...@foothill.net> wrote:
> Kind of mean-spirited, no? I have a number of files and documents
> stored on 5 1/4" 360 KB floppies [remember those], including my master's
> thesis. They were put there by me, mainly using an MS-DOS very early
> forerunner to MS Office called "Enable" running on a 10 MHz AT&T desktop
> built by Olivetti, with a green screen. I don't know where I could
> find a 5 1/4" drive now, I don't know where I can find a copy of that
> version of Enable [it stored stuff in some form of compressed binary
> because 4GB USB sticks hadn't been invented then [OK, USB hadn't been
> invented either] and it had to work within what today we would consider
> laughable storage limits, and I suspect at least some of the diskettes
> are no longer readable.
>
> Fortunately, I have printed copies of them, especially the thesis I
> worked so hard on, and they are as readable as the day I printed them.
> Does that make me a Luddite?
>
> 73,
>
> Fred K6DGW
> Auburn CA
>
> On 8/21/2011 7:42 AM, John Ragle wrote:
>
>> Why is it that a supposedly
>> technologically-adept hobby like ham radio contains such a larger than
>> average Luddite constituency?
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