On Sat, 2010-10-09 at 00:07 -0700, Earl Miles wrote: > On 10/8/2010 10:25 PM, [email protected] wrote: > > Whoa! Retirement age??!! I used punch cards, card sorters, wrote device > > drivers to get the keyboard to talk to the cpu, developed functions to > > store and retrieve records from files before databases, and wrote my > > first few dozen apps in mnemonic assembler, used 8" hard-sectored > > floppies, a converted IBM selectric as line printer, CP/M, PC-DOS, > > Windows 1, and remember my jaw dropping when they rolled out the first > > CRT (you can backspace?!)... and I've got at almost 20 years yet until I > > retire, though I can take up a collection if I need to go sooner! > > 20 years from retirement makes you only a few years older than I am. I > remember the 8" floppies, IBM selectrics, CP/M (though I missed Windows > 1 since I got my start in the Apple and Commodore sides)...but rarely > did I ever see punch cards even hanging around serious geeks in the 80s. > Maybe it's background related. Or maybe the 80s were longer than I > remember them being. But my memory is that by the late 70s, punch cards > were pretty much on their way out, and by the time PCs came to market in > the early 80s, nobody was using them except for places with legacy > systems that couldn't be upgraded -- and that's 40 years ago now. > > I remember visiting a facility that used punch cards in the 80s, but > even they thought they were antiques at that point. > > Just to check my history, I did a quick google and found some terminals > with monochrome displays, I assume CRTs, from 1969. That's 40 years ago > by itself. If you were a working adult in the 60s, that'd make you late > 50s at best, and late 50s isn't 20 years from retirement age (whether or > not people retire at retirement age is another story). If you were a kid > in the 60s and happened to be near people who used the stuff, that's > pretty lucky. I know as a teenager in the 80s I had to work pretty hard > to get near computers until I managed to wheedle my parents into getting > me one.
Amiga's were the best boxes ever designed, still have one running @home, seriously tweaked to fit in a ATX tower with some wires manually welded on the motherboard to make recent the power block running it. Yay \o/ I will never loose those memories neither. Pierre. Pierre.
