Re: [newbie] Linux resources online
Yes and a little later the floppies had an 8 inch radius and the main time spent before a computer was waiting for things to happen. Glad to know that there are some other fogies around yet. Regards Peter - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
Re: [newbie] Linux resources online
On Mon, 07 Aug 2000, Renaud OLGIATI wrote: I remember working on a machine with 4 k memory; but this was a main-frame (IBM 1620) using vacum tubes; input and output by punched cards, and running Fortran II; Must have been in '68 or '69. This was the "obsolete" machine us students were allowed to play with; for serious computing, there was another mainframe, with a hard disk of, IIRC, 4 Mb capacity; memory was 96 kb, raised to 128 kb around 1970. And we were told we were priviledged, because our university had one of the most powerful computers in the education system at the time ! Cheers, Ron the Frog, getting old on the banks of the Paraguay River. Umm... we just got to make stacks of Fortran punch cards which were collected and returned a day later with the results, if any. First machine I actually programmed was a Olivetti Programma 101, 11 memory registers, 110 program steps, output printed on paper cash-register tape and cost thousands. First program I wrote got into an endless loop and it sat there spewing tape and wouldn't stop. Only way I could stop it was to switch it off at the wall. I was paranoid that I'd wrecked it (but of course I hadn't). Chris - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
Re: [newbie] Linux resources online
If memory serves me, the 1620 was a decimal machine that didn't have an arithmetic unit, add and multiply was performed by trap routines using table look-up. My first binary machine was an IBM 7094 w/ 32K of 36-bit words, 4 256/512 bpi tape drives, a 300 card/minute card reader and a 300 lpm line printer (no disk). In '64 we upgraded to dual CDC 3600s with 32K of 48-bit words each and 32K words of shared memory, 8 tape drives each, 1200 lpm printers and 1200 cpm card readers; still no disks. These were the Eastern Missle Test Range's Range Safety Instantaneous Impact Point computers and there were 2 so that the range was "Man Rated," supposedly everything had a backup. All s/w was assembly language because it took 4 u-sec to do a floating point add. I remember modifying the arithmetic sub-pack used to calculate trig functions and logs to remove all error returns; these were realtime routines and if you stopped, you knew you were wrong, if you just got a wrong answer, you might still be right on the next computation cycle 100 ms later. I didn't learn a compiler language (Fortran-77) until 1980. Joe davidturetsky wrote: Gee, what memories you bring back! I learned FORTRAN II on an IBM 1620 Model 1 (no disk drive) at NYU in the mid-60s, subsequently upgraded to a Model II with a 5meg drive. I then went on to do a lot of programming on an 1130 In 1971 I went to work for a company which made a microprogrammable replacement for the IBM 1130 which was much faster. Somehow in IBM's master plan, the 1130 had too good a price/performance ratio to improve it further since that would put it in competition with models like the 360/44 David - Original Message - From: Jim Reimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: *List Linux-Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2000 6:05 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Linux resources online I was using a 1620 in 1970, and it was transistorized, not tubes. Had a 5-meg disk drive (14 inch variety, stacked platters) and punched cards. "High speed" output was to punched cards, and if you wanted something you could read, you had to run the cards through an accounting machine. The really hot computer at the time was the IBM 1130 (unless you had access to one of the 360 variants). The 1130 had assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL, and RPG. Also had the privelege (?) of using an RCA 301, which had 4k of core memory, six vacuum-column tape drives, and a 900-line/minute printer at about the same time. The only thing available on it was assembler. Sure punched a lot of cards on 026 keypunch machines back then. :-) -jdr- Renaud OLGIATI wrote: I remember working on a machine with 4 k memory; but this was a main-frame (IBM 1620) using vacum tubes; input and output by punched cards, and running Fortran II; Must have been in '68 or '69. This was the "obsolete" machine us students were allowed to play with; for serious computing, there was another mainframe, with a hard disk of, IIRC, 4 Mb capacity; memory was 96 kb, raised to 128 kb around 1970. And we were told we were priviledged, because our university had one of the most powerful computers in the education system at the time ! Cheers, Ron the Frog, getting old on the banks of the Paraguay River. Anybody else on this list old enough to remember when the "suits" didn't run things, and games/software were ported to every single platform, just because they could/it was neat? Circa '80's with names like Tandy, Atari, Amiga, etc, etc,... ;-) -- /\ DarkLord \/ -- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke --- http://personales.conexion.com.py/~rolgiati --- - - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
Re: [newbie] Linux resources online
Yes, the 1620 was a decimal machine. Word oriented. We started with machine language, then assembler, then the big move to Fortran II, then the huge 5mg hard drive which eliminated having to create object code on punched cards and resubmitting then to the linker/loader. I believe if you wanted printed output, you created that output on punched cards and brought them over to a standalone printer which printed card images It was the good old days! But not as good and not as old as what you describe! David - Original Message - From: Joe S. Warren [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: *List Linux-Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 5:26 AM Subject: Re: [newbie] Linux resources online If memory serves me, the 1620 was a decimal machine that didn't have an arithmetic unit, add and multiply was performed by trap routines using table look-up. My first binary machine was an IBM 7094 w/ 32K of 36-bit words, 4 256/512 bpi tape drives, a 300 card/minute card reader and a 300 lpm line printer (no disk). In '64 we upgraded to dual CDC 3600s with 32K of 48-bit words each and 32K words of shared memory, 8 tape drives each, 1200 lpm printers and 1200 cpm card readers; still no disks. These were the Eastern Missle Test Range's Range Safety Instantaneous Impact Point computers and there were 2 so that the range was "Man Rated," supposedly everything had a backup. All s/w was assembly language because it took 4 u-sec to do a floating point add. I remember modifying the arithmetic sub-pack used to calculate trig functions and logs to remove all error returns; these were realtime routines and if you stopped, you knew you were wrong, if you just got a wrong answer, you might still be right on the next computation cycle 100 ms later. I didn't learn a compiler language (Fortran-77) until 1980. Joe davidturetsky wrote: Gee, what memories you bring back! I learned FORTRAN II on an IBM 1620 Model 1 (no disk drive) at NYU in the mid-60s, subsequently upgraded to a Model II with a 5meg drive. I then went on to do a lot of programming on an 1130 In 1971 I went to work for a company which made a microprogrammable replacement for the IBM 1130 which was much faster. Somehow in IBM's master plan, the 1130 had too good a price/performance ratio to improve it further since that would put it in competition with models like the 360/44 David - Original Message - From: Jim Reimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: *List Linux-Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2000 6:05 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Linux resources online I was using a 1620 in 1970, and it was transistorized, not tubes. Had a 5-meg disk drive (14 inch variety, stacked platters) and punched cards. "High speed" output was to punched cards, and if you wanted something you could read, you had to run the cards through an accounting machine. The really hot computer at the time was the IBM 1130 (unless you had access to one of the 360 variants). The 1130 had assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL, and RPG. Also had the privelege (?) of using an RCA 301, which had 4k of core memory, six vacuum-column tape drives, and a 900-line/minute printer at about the same time. The only thing available on it was assembler. Sure punched a lot of cards on 026 keypunch machines back then. :-) -jdr- Renaud OLGIATI wrote: I remember working on a machine with 4 k memory; but this was a main-frame (IBM 1620) using vacum tubes; input and output by punched cards, and running Fortran II; Must have been in '68 or '69. This was the "obsolete" machine us students were allowed to play with; for serious computing, there was another mainframe, with a hard disk of, IIRC, 4 Mb capacity; memory was 96 kb, raised to 128 kb around 1970. And we were told we were priviledged, because our university had one of the most powerful computers in the education system at the time ! Cheers, Ron the Frog, getting old on the banks of the Paraguay River. Anybody else on this list old enough to remember when the "suits" didn't run things, and games/software were ported to every single platform, just because they could/it was neat? Circa '80's with names like Tandy, Atari, Amiga, etc, etc,... ;-) -- /\ DarkLord \/ -- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke --- http://personales.conexion.com.py/~rolgiati --- - - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in th
Re: [newbie] Linux resources online
I remember working on a machine with 4 k memory; but this was a main-frame (IBM 1620) using vacum tubes; input and output by punched cards, and running Fortran II; Must have been in '68 or '69. This was the "obsolete" machine us students were allowed to play with; for serious computing, there was another mainframe, with a hard disk of, IIRC, 4 Mb capacity; memory was 96 kb, raised to 128 kb around 1970. And we were told we were priviledged, because our university had one of the most powerful computers in the education system at the time ! Cheers, Ron the Frog, getting old on the banks of the Paraguay River. Anybody else on this list old enough to remember when the "suits" didn't run things, and games/software were ported to every single platform, just because they could/it was neat? Circa '80's with names like Tandy, Atari, Amiga, etc, etc,... ;-) -- /\ DarkLord \/ -- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke --- http://personales.conexion.com.py/~rolgiati --- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
Re: [newbie] Linux resources online
I was using a 1620 in 1970, and it was transistorized, not tubes. Had a 5-meg disk drive (14 inch variety, stacked platters) and punched cards. "High speed" output was to punched cards, and if you wanted something you could read, you had to run the cards through an accounting machine. The really hot computer at the time was the IBM 1130 (unless you had access to one of the 360 variants). The 1130 had assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL, and RPG. Also had the privelege (?) of using an RCA 301, which had 4k of core memory, six vacuum-column tape drives, and a 900-line/minute printer at about the same time. The only thing available on it was assembler. Sure punched a lot of cards on 026 keypunch machines back then. :-) -jdr- Renaud OLGIATI wrote: I remember working on a machine with 4 k memory; but this was a main-frame (IBM 1620) using vacum tubes; input and output by punched cards, and running Fortran II; Must have been in '68 or '69. This was the "obsolete" machine us students were allowed to play with; for serious computing, there was another mainframe, with a hard disk of, IIRC, 4 Mb capacity; memory was 96 kb, raised to 128 kb around 1970. And we were told we were priviledged, because our university had one of the most powerful computers in the education system at the time ! Cheers, Ron the Frog, getting old on the banks of the Paraguay River. Anybody else on this list old enough to remember when the "suits" didn't run things, and games/software were ported to every single platform, just because they could/it was neat? Circa '80's with names like Tandy, Atari, Amiga, etc, etc,... ;-) -- /\ DarkLord \/ -- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke --- http://personales.conexion.com.py/~rolgiati --- - - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
Re: [newbie] Linux resources online
Gee, what memories you bring back! I learned FORTRAN II on an IBM 1620 Model 1 (no disk drive) at NYU in the mid-60s, subsequently upgraded to a Model II with a 5meg drive. I then went on to do a lot of programming on an 1130 In 1971 I went to work for a company which made a microprogrammable replacement for the IBM 1130 which was much faster. Somehow in IBM's master plan, the 1130 had too good a price/performance ratio to improve it further since that would put it in competition with models like the 360/44 David - Original Message - From: Jim Reimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: *List Linux-Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2000 6:05 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Linux resources online I was using a 1620 in 1970, and it was transistorized, not tubes. Had a 5-meg disk drive (14 inch variety, stacked platters) and punched cards. "High speed" output was to punched cards, and if you wanted something you could read, you had to run the cards through an accounting machine. The really hot computer at the time was the IBM 1130 (unless you had access to one of the 360 variants). The 1130 had assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL, and RPG. Also had the privelege (?) of using an RCA 301, which had 4k of core memory, six vacuum-column tape drives, and a 900-line/minute printer at about the same time. The only thing available on it was assembler. Sure punched a lot of cards on 026 keypunch machines back then. :-) -jdr- Renaud OLGIATI wrote: I remember working on a machine with 4 k memory; but this was a main-frame (IBM 1620) using vacum tubes; input and output by punched cards, and running Fortran II; Must have been in '68 or '69. This was the "obsolete" machine us students were allowed to play with; for serious computing, there was another mainframe, with a hard disk of, IIRC, 4 Mb capacity; memory was 96 kb, raised to 128 kb around 1970. And we were told we were priviledged, because our university had one of the most powerful computers in the education system at the time ! Cheers, Ron the Frog, getting old on the banks of the Paraguay River. Anybody else on this list old enough to remember when the "suits" didn't run things, and games/software were ported to every single platform, just because they could/it was neat? Circa '80's with names like Tandy, Atari, Amiga, etc, etc,... ;-) -- /\ DarkLord \/ -- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke --- http://personales.conexion.com.py/~rolgiati --- - - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
