Nah, probably about the same age. The TRS80 was my dad's. (He liked
gadgets. :) ) I didn't see anything like a PDP-11 until I was a
teaching assistant in grad school for a machine architecture course.
(I learned PDP-11 assembly language in about 3 days so I could start
correcting homework and work in the lab.) I did my thesis project, (a
Fortran simulation of a fast Raleigh fading communications channel)
using a Commodore 64 connected through a 300 baud modem to a CDC Cyber
mainframe at the University. I was a EE major and didn't really start
programming until I was out of school for a few years. I wanted to be
a Radar engineer but that didn't work out.

And nah, I'm sure I'm not the oldest. Just reminiscing a bit about the
old days. The only thing I feel like I missed out on was not getting
the chance to work on a Lisp Machine...

On May 6, 11:29 am, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Baldmountain,
> I don't know if you are older from a more affluent background, or
> actually younger. All through undergrad we used punch cards submitted
> to the data center wrapped in rubber bands. The punch card machines
> were hidden in stairwells around campus. Terminal time was too
> expensive for our department... The National Labs were more
> sophisticated – batch processing through modeling programs... but
> surprisingly a summer job at a start up was even better. We were doing
> a networked instrumentation system for nuclear power plants:
> Instrumentation carts polled by PDP-11s reporting to redundant VAX
> 11780s driving graphical displays that communicated state information
> to the control room... I think about the same time an economics
> teacher from high school was using a Tandy or TRS 80 to predict
> football opponents' play calling tendencies based on game context:
> down, distance, clock,...  Anyway, I don't think you are the oldest.
>
> Ed
>
> On May 6, 9:12 am, baldmountain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > The prizes are nice, but that is not what it's about. It's a new
> > platform to explore that is not Windows. With the BeOS it was about a
> > new OS designed using the latest software engineering techniques
> > rather than as a mutation of an OS designed in the 70s for a 8 bit
> > microprocessor. I love platforms. I love to learn about them and take
> > them apart to figure out how all the pieces fit together. The best way
> > to do this is to build something using the platform. I wasn't planning
> > on submitting anything to the ADC but one thing lead to another and
> > the app I started to explore Android turned into something usable so I
> > submitted it. The same thing happened with the BeOS.
>
> > On May 6, 9:34 am, Incognito <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > > Why don't you go mainstream rather then with an unknown operating
> > > system? Only reason I'm with this new operating system is because of
> > > the cash prices. Although, now that I look at it my chances are quite
> > > slim if not nil.- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -
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