Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-22 Thread David Brodbeck
On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 6:32 AM, Arthur Chance free...@qeng-ho.org wrote:
 Dredging up physics unused for 30+ years, ferrite is ferromagnetic and
 intensifies magnetic fields so a coil of wire with ferrite inside is a
 massively bigger inductor then an empty coil. I vaguely remember that brass
 is slightly diamagnetic, but could be mistaken.

Bingo.

A ferrite slug increases the inductance of a coil, relative to an air
core; a brass slug decreases it.

I've got a homebrew amateur radio transceiver that uses a coil with a
brass machine screw in it for tuning.  Wind the screw out of the coil,
inductance goes up.  A cheap and simple form of permeability-tuned
oscillator.
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-22 Thread Gary Kline
On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 06:22:59AM -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
  From owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org  Wed Oct 20 15:04:17 2010
  From: Mike Jeays mike.je...@rogers.com
  To: Bob Hall rjh...@gmail.com,
  FreeBSD Mailing List freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
  Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:05:34 -0400
  Cc: 
  Subject: Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks  BSD)
 
  On October 20, 2010 03:46:06 pm Bob Hall wrote:
   On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:
 On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
 Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
 El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
  escribi?:
PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
780 days :-)
 
 I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
 
 Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
 The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
 
   I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
   Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
   job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
   the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody
   old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really
   *were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having
   php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)
   
   :)

Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
We had to settle for os and ls ...
   
   When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks.
   We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using
   magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to
   pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected.
 
  OK, I guess you win! End-of-thread time?
 
 Well, if one is going to get into that kind of bragging, the first *mainframe*
 I worked on didn't have any disks at all. purely mag-tape based.   An early-
 generation IBM system/360 with a whopping 64k words of _core_ memory.  The 
 operating system was TOS (the Tape Operating System), predecessor of
 DOS, which the machine was upgraded to when they got a couple of hard-disks
 for it.  Single user, bare-bones batch processing,  punch-card input.  late 
 1960s.


I learned FORTRAN back in summer quarter '78 on a CDC-6400 that
used punch cards.  Had to use my _nose_ to finish one card.  The 
6400 took up a chunk of the basement of Evans HAll and had a
HUGE 64k of core!  That's the limit of my bragging--er,
commenting:-)

TOS?  snicker, LOL, ROFL ...
 
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-- 
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The 7.90a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php
   http://journey.thought.org

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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread Chad Perrin
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 07:25:14PM -0400, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
 
 And I'm appalled that my phone has more horsepower than a dual-cpu VAX
 11/780 with a floating-point accelerator.  That just doesn't seem right.

What I find appalling is that most of the extra power on my smartphone is
wasted on useless crap that only gets in my way.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]


pgpW90OzWAa2s.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread Arthur Chance

On 10/20/10 23:07, Gary Kline wrote:

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 09:10:28PM +0100, Arthur Chance wrote:

On 10/20/10 20:46, Bob Hall wrote:

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:

On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:

Matthias Apitzg...@unixarea.de   wrote:

El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline escribi?:

PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
780 days :-)

I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.


Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.


I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody
old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really
*were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having
php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)

:)


Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
We had to settle for os and ls ...


When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks.
We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using
magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to
pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected.


Enough Monty Python Yorkshiremen claims, already. :-)

Getting back to reality, although I never did it (fortunately), a
friend of mine who was about a decade older than me (I'm mid/late
50s) had the experience of programming microcode on a machine by
inserting brass slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin
board. Anyone got any idea what that was? He was (UK) military so
maybe it wasn't a generally known box.



This microcode programming sounds just vagely familiar; seems like
mid/late-80's or early-90's. Am i right?  --Most uses for
supercomputers are mil/spooks/; that's the only reason the
idea might have floated past me.


No, this was circa 1970. I met him in 1975 and and it was past history 
for him then. He was Royal Air Force, if that gives a clue, and 
certainly wasn't a super - he talked about it as if it were a fairly 
dumb mini.


--
Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, few know what a
wombat looks like, but everyone knows what a dragon looks like.

-- Avram Davidson, _Adventures in Unhistory_
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread perryh
Svein Skogen (Listmail account) svein-listm...@tillbilde.net wrote:
 On 20.10.2010 09:47, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
  Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
  El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline
  escribi?:
  PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
  780 days :-) 
  I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
  Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
  The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
 I guess I'm just a kid, then, since I wasn't exposed to computers until
 6 years later (my excuse was being born in 1975). CP/M-80 and MP/M-80
 with intel asm, was where I started my hairpulling... Anybody else got
 nightmares about 8 inch floppies? ;)

If we're going to expand to non-Unix systems:  Fortran on an IBM 1401,
with punch card input and no OS at all, in 1966.
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread Julian H. Stacey
Hi,
Reference:
 From: David Brodbeck g...@gull.us 
 Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:58:40 -0700 
 Message-id:   aanlkti=zo1ojzcqs4xyezvmkonmt6uv_vmqki0hik...@mail.gmail.com 

David Brodbeck wrote:
 On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Arthur Chance free...@qeng-ho.org wrote:
  On 10/20/10 20:46, Bob Hall wrote:
  Getting back to reality, although I never did it (fortunately), a friend of
  mine who was about a decade older than me (I'm mid/late 50s) had the
  experience of programming microcode on a machine by inserting brass slugs
  for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin board. Anyone got any idea what
  that was? He was (UK) military so maybe it wasn't a generally known box.
 
 Don't know about that one, but some early desktop calculators (and I
 think some early computerized phone switching systems) used etched PC
 boards as ROM.  The HP 9100 had 32K of ROM on a 16-layer PC board
 using this method.

Some Hasler (a Swiss co.) leased telegraph message switching systemss M150
had that too. I designed some cards with DIL switches, After 1975 I think.

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey: BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com
Mail plain text;  Not HTML, quoted-printable  base 64 spam formats.
Avoid top posting, it cripples itemised cumulative responses.
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread krad
On 20 October 2010 21:10, Arthur Chance free...@qeng-ho.org wrote:

 On 10/20/10 20:46, Bob Hall wrote:

 On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:

 On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:

 On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:

 Matthias Apitzg...@unixarea.de  wrote:

 El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline
 escribi?:

PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the
 VAX
780 days :-)

 I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.


 Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
 The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.


I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody
old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really
*were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having
php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)

:)


 Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
 We had to settle for os and ls ...


 When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks.
 We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using
 magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to
 pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected.


 Enough Monty Python Yorkshiremen claims, already. :-)

 Getting back to reality, although I never did it (fortunately), a friend of
 mine who was about a decade older than me (I'm mid/late 50s) had the
 experience of programming microcode on a machine by inserting brass slugs
 for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin board. Anyone got any idea what
 that was? He was (UK) military so maybe it wasn't a generally known box.


 --
 Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, few know what a
 wombat looks like, but everyone knows what a dragon looks like.

-- Avram Davidson, _Adventures in Unhistory_
 ___
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 http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
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 freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org



My dad used to smooth the stones for his *abaci* 8))
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread Robert Bonomi
 From owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org  Wed Oct 20 15:04:17 2010
 From: Mike Jeays mike.je...@rogers.com
 To: Bob Hall rjh...@gmail.com,
 FreeBSD Mailing List freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
 Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:05:34 -0400
 Cc: 
 Subject: Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks  BSD)

 On October 20, 2010 03:46:06 pm Bob Hall wrote:
  On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
   On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
 escribi?:
 PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
 780 days :-)

I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.

Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.

I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody
old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really
*were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having
php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)

:)
   
   Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
   We had to settle for os and ls ...
  
  When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks.
  We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using
  magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to
  pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected.

 OK, I guess you win! End-of-thread time?

Well, if one is going to get into that kind of bragging, the first *mainframe*
I worked on didn't have any disks at all. purely mag-tape based.   An early-
generation IBM system/360 with a whopping 64k words of _core_ memory.  The 
operating system was TOS (the Tape Operating System), predecessor of
DOS, which the machine was upgraded to when they got a couple of hard-disks
for it.  Single user, bare-bones batch processing,  punch-card input.  late 
1960s.

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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread Robert Bonomi
 From owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org  Thu Oct 21 02:18:28 2010
 Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 08:20:07 +0100
 From: Arthur Chance free...@qeng-ho.org
 To: FreeBSD-Questions freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
 Subject: Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks  BSD)

 On 10/20/10 23:07, Gary Kline wrote:
  On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 09:10:28PM +0100, Arthur Chance wrote:
  On 10/20/10 20:46, Bob Hall wrote:
  On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
  On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:
  On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
  Matthias Apitzg...@unixarea.de   wrote:
  El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
  escribi?:
   PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
   780 days :-)
  I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
 
  Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
  The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
 
  I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
  Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
  job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
  the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody
  old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really
  *were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having
  php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)
 
  :)
 
  Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
  We had to settle for os and ls ...
 
  When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks.
  We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using
  magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to
  pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected.
 
  Enough Monty Python Yorkshiremen claims, already. :-)
 
  Getting back to reality, although I never did it (fortunately), a
  friend of mine who was about a decade older than me (I'm mid/late
  50s) had the experience of programming microcode on a machine by
  inserting brass slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin
  board. Anyone got any idea what that was? He was (UK) military so
  maybe it wasn't a generally known box.
 
 
  This microcode programming sounds just vagely familiar; seems like
  mid/late-80's or early-90's. Am i right?  --Most uses for
  supercomputers are mil/spooks/; that's the only reason the
  idea might have floated past me.

 No, this was circa 1970. I met him in 1975 and and it was past history 
 for him then. He was Royal Air Force, if that gives a clue, and 
 certainly wasn't a super - he talked about it as if it were a fairly 
 dumb mini.

That =had= to have been some kind of fairly specialized, and -very- limited
capability, hardware.  Probably a crypto translator.


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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread RW
On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:10:28 +0100
Arthur Chance free...@qeng-ho.org wrote:


 50s) had the experience of programming microcode on a machine by
 inserting brass slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin board.

I wonder why it was brass/ferrite rather than brass/empty or
ferrite/empty.
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread Arthur Chance

On 10/21/10 13:38, RW wrote:

On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:10:28 +0100
Arthur Chancefree...@qeng-ho.org  wrote:



50s) had the experience of programming microcode on a machine by
inserting brass slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin board.


I wonder why it was brass/ferrite rather than brass/empty or
ferrite/empty.


Dredging up physics unused for 30+ years, ferrite is ferromagnetic and 
intensifies magnetic fields so a coil of wire with ferrite inside is a 
massively bigger inductor then an empty coil. I vaguely remember that 
brass is slightly diamagnetic, but could be mistaken. If it is, then it 
would have the opposite effect and reduce the inductance, so you'd get a 
better difference in signal between brass/ferrite than air/ferrite. 
Air/brass would give very small differences in signal, and we're talking 
about the times when 7400 TTL logic with 4 gates per package was state 
of the art, so big signals were good.


--
Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, few know what a
wombat looks like, but everyone knows what a dragon looks like.

-- Avram Davidson, _Adventures in Unhistory_
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread Alex Stangl
On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 01:38:44PM +0100, RW wrote:
 On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:10:28 +0100
 Arthur Chance free...@qeng-ho.org wrote:
  50s) had the experience of programming microcode on a machine by
  inserting brass slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin board.
 
 I wonder why it was brass/ferrite rather than brass/empty or
 ferrite/empty.

I was wondering the same thing. I suspect one of them may be equivalent
to empty electrically, however this way is less errorprone,
explicitly populating each slot, rather than relying upon empty,
which could in fact be a mistaken omission.

Alex
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread RW
On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:32:23 +0100
Arthur Chance free...@qeng-ho.org wrote:

 On 10/21/10 13:38, RW wrote:
  On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:10:28 +0100
  Arthur Chancefree...@qeng-ho.org  wrote:
 
 
  50s) had the experience of programming microcode on a machine by
  inserting brass slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin
  board.
 
  I wonder why it was brass/ferrite rather than brass/empty or
  ferrite/empty.
 
 Dredging up physics unused for 30+ years, ferrite is ferromagnetic
 and intensifies magnetic fields so a coil of wire with ferrite inside
 is a massively bigger inductor then an empty coil. I vaguely remember
 that brass is slightly diamagnetic, but could be mistaken. If it is,
 then it would have the opposite effect and reduce the inductance, so
 you'd get a better difference in signal between brass/ferrite than
 air/ferrite. 

Possibly. I'm wondering if there might be three states, where the third
state is writable.

 Air/brass would give very small differences in signal,

I was thinking in that case it would be open/short circuit.
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-21 Thread Henry Olyer
My first machine was an IBM 1620, but hey, at least we had an actual disk.
 A couple of 2311's.

To quote a fellow I used to consult for, two days' I had solved a
particularly nasty programming problem for his company, But what have you
done for us lately?



On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 10:57 AM, RW rwmailli...@googlemail.com wrote:

 On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:32:23 +0100
 Arthur Chance free...@qeng-ho.org wrote:

  On 10/21/10 13:38, RW wrote:
   On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:10:28 +0100
   Arthur Chancefree...@qeng-ho.org  wrote:
  
  
   50s) had the experience of programming microcode on a machine by
   inserting brass slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin
   board.
  
   I wonder why it was brass/ferrite rather than brass/empty or
   ferrite/empty.
 
  Dredging up physics unused for 30+ years, ferrite is ferromagnetic
  and intensifies magnetic fields so a coil of wire with ferrite inside
  is a massively bigger inductor then an empty coil. I vaguely remember
  that brass is slightly diamagnetic, but could be mistaken. If it is,
  then it would have the opposite effect and reduce the inductance, so
  you'd get a better difference in signal between brass/ferrite than
  air/ferrite.

 Possibly. I'm wondering if there might be three states, where the third
 state is writable.

  Air/brass would give very small differences in signal,

 I was thinking in that case it would be open/short circuit.
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Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread perryh
Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
 El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline escribi?:
  PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
  780 days :-) 
 I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.

Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Svein Skogen (Listmail account)
On 20.10.2010 09:47, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
 Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
 El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline escribi?:
 PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
 780 days :-) 
 I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
 
 Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
 The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.

I guess I'm just a kid, then, since I wasn't exposed to computers until
6 years later (my excuse was being born in 1975). CP/M-80 and MP/M-80
with intel asm, was where I started my hairpulling... Anybody else got
nightmares about 8 inch floppies? ;)

//Svein

-- 
+---+---
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Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Arthur Chance

On 10/20/10 09:32, Svein Skogen (Listmail account) wrote:

On 20.10.2010 09:47, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:

Matthias Apitzg...@unixarea.de  wrote:

El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline escribi?:

PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
780 days :-)

I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.


Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.


I guess I'm just a kid, then, since I wasn't exposed to computers until
6 years later (my excuse was being born in 1975). CP/M-80 and MP/M-80
with intel asm, was where I started my hairpulling... Anybody else got
nightmares about 8 inch floppies? ;)

//Svein



Hard or soft sectored?

--
Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, few know what a
wombat looks like, but everyone knows what a dragon looks like.

-- Avram Davidson, _Adventures in Unhistory_
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Mike Jeays
On October 20, 2010 03:47:38 am per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
 Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
  El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
escribi?:
 PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
 780 days :-)
  
  I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
 
 Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
 The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
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Machine code on an English Electric DEUCE, here, in 1965. Everything since has 
seemed easy. See my web post if you want more details.
-- 
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Jerry Dunham
On 20 Oct 2010 at 10:32, Svein Skogen (Listmail account) wrote:

 On 20.10.2010 09:47, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
  Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
  El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
  escribi?:
PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
780 days :-) 
  I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
  
  Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
  The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
 
 I guess I'm just a kid, then, since I wasn't exposed to computers until
 6 years later (my excuse was being born in 1975). CP/M-80 and MP/M-80
 with intel asm, was where I started my hairpulling... Anybody else got
 nightmares about 8 inch floppies? ;)

Well, I used to design 8-inch floppy drives.  Fortunately, the nightmares have 
subsided and 
I'm just left with this twitch ... this twitch ... this twitch ...



--
Jerry Dunham
Moderater, Texas Great Dane Rescue
jdun...@texas.net
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Kevin Oberman
 Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:47:38 -0700
 From: per...@pluto.rain.com
 Sender: owner-freebsd-mob...@freebsd.org
 
 Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
  El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
  escribi?:
 PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
 780 days :-) 
  I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
 
 Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
 The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.

UNIX V6 on a PDP-11/40, 2xRK05 disk, 1975, but it was before the 11/34
came out, so I think I have you beat by a few weeks, at least. 

That said, my project moved away from Unix to DEC's RSX11-D and later
IAS, so I had little contact with Unix until about 1980 on a VAX11/750
at the UC-Davis Dept. of Applied Science running BSD 4.1(?).
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: ober...@es.net  Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Gary Kline
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
 Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
  El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
  escribi?:
 PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
 780 days :-) 
  I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
 
 Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
 The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.


I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody 
old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really 
*were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having 
php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)

:)



-- 
 Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
The 7.90a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php
   http://journey.thought.org

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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Gary Kline
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 10:32:58AM +0200, Svein Skogen (Listmail account) wrote:
 On 20.10.2010 09:47, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
  Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
  El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
  escribi?:
PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
780 days :-) 
  I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
  
  Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
  The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
 
 I guess I'm just a kid, then, since I wasn't exposed to computers until
 6 years later (my excuse was being born in 1975). CP/M-80 and MP/M-80
 with intel asm, was where I started my hairpulling... Anybody else got
 nightmares about 8 inch floppies? ;)
 
 //Svein


Ouch!!  My first computer was a CP/M and MP/M (8080-8088) with
two 8 floppies and a HUGE 256K of memory.  ...Bought in 1981. 
Finally junked in 1987.  (What, me cheap?)  Lots of hair pulling
and ---nah, you don't want to hear!

gary


 
 -- 
 +---+---
   /\   |Svein Skogen   | sv...@d80.iso100.no
   \ /   |Solberg Østli 9| PGP Key:  0xE5E76831
X|2020 Skedsmokorset | sv...@jernhuset.no
   / \   |Norway | PGP Key:  0xCE96CE13
 |   | sv...@stillbilde.net
  ascii  |   | PGP Key:  0x58CD33B6
  ribbon |System Admin   | svein-listm...@stillbilde.net
 Campaign|stillbilde.net | PGP Key:  0x22D494A4
 +---+---
 |msn messenger: | Mobile Phone: +47 907 03 575
 |sv...@jernhuset.no | RIPE handle:SS16503-RIPE
 +---+---
 A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
 Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
 A: Top-posting.
 Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
 
  Picture Gallery:
   https://gallery.stillbilde.net/v/svein/
 
 



-- 
 Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
The 7.90a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php
   http://journey.thought.org

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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Tim Daneliuk
On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:
 On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
 Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
 El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
 escribi?:
PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
780 days :-) 
 I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.

 Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
 The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
 
 
   I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
   Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
   job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
   the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody 
   old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really 
   *were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having 
   php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)
 
   :)
 
 
 

Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
We had to settle for os and ls ...


-- 

Tim Daneliuk
tun...@tundraware.com
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Bob Hall
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
 On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:
  On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
  Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
  El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
  escribi?:
   PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
   780 days :-) 
  I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
 
  Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
  The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
 
  I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
  Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
  job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
  the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody 
  old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really 
  *were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having 
  php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)
  
  :)
 
 Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
 We had to settle for os and ls ...

When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks.
We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using
magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to
pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected.
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Mike Jeays
On October 20, 2010 03:46:06 pm Bob Hall wrote:
 On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
  On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:
   On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
   Matthias Apitz g...@unixarea.de wrote:
   El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
escribi?:
  PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
  780 days :-)
   
   I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
   
   Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
   The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
   
 I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
 Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
 job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
 the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody
 old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really
 *were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having
 php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)
 
 :)
  
  Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
  We had to settle for os and ls ...
 
 When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks.
 We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using
 magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to
 pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected.
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OK, I guess you win! End-of-thread time?


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http://www.rotarycpmm.ca
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Arthur Chance

On 10/20/10 20:46, Bob Hall wrote:

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:

On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:

Matthias Apitzg...@unixarea.de  wrote:

El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline escribi?:

PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
780 days :-)

I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.


Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.


I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody
old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really
*were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having
php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)

:)


Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
We had to settle for os and ls ...


When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks.
We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using
magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to
pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected.


Enough Monty Python Yorkshiremen claims, already. :-)

Getting back to reality, although I never did it (fortunately), a friend 
of mine who was about a decade older than me (I'm mid/late 50s) had the 
experience of programming microcode on a machine by inserting brass 
slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin board. Anyone got any 
idea what that was? He was (UK) military so maybe it wasn't a generally 
known box.


--
Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, few know what a
wombat looks like, but everyone knows what a dragon looks like.

-- Avram Davidson, _Adventures in Unhistory_
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread David Brodbeck
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Arthur Chance free...@qeng-ho.org wrote:
 On 10/20/10 20:46, Bob Hall wrote:
 Getting back to reality, although I never did it (fortunately), a friend of
 mine who was about a decade older than me (I'm mid/late 50s) had the
 experience of programming microcode on a machine by inserting brass slugs
 for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin board. Anyone got any idea what
 that was? He was (UK) military so maybe it wasn't a generally known box.

Don't know about that one, but some early desktop calculators (and I
think some early computerized phone switching systems) used etched PC
boards as ROM.  The HP 9100 had 32K of ROM on a 16-layer PC board
using this method.
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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Gary Kline
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 09:10:28PM +0100, Arthur Chance wrote:
 On 10/20/10 20:46, Bob Hall wrote:
 On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
 On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote:
 On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
 Matthias Apitzg...@unixarea.de  wrote:
 El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline 
 escribi?:
 PS:  I really _was_ current on hardware stuff.  Back in the VAX
 780 days :-)
 I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think.
 
 Gotcha beat :)  UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975.
 The whole runtime fit on one RK05.  The sources took a second one.
 
I remember the 11/34 fondly.  The whole EE department at Cory
Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my
job of porting the Portable F77 Compiler was done with vi and
the source code that Stu Feldman wrote.  I love[d] those bloody
old computers, :-)  Dunno why.   Maybe because they really
*were* about computing.  Not streaming [[whatever]] or having
php running.  (Blah^9^9^9)
 
:)
 
 Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet.
 We had to settle for os and ls ...
 
 When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks.
 We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using
 magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to
 pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected.
 
 Enough Monty Python Yorkshiremen claims, already. :-)
 
 Getting back to reality, although I never did it (fortunately), a
 friend of mine who was about a decade older than me (I'm mid/late
 50s) had the experience of programming microcode on a machine by
 inserting brass slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin
 board. Anyone got any idea what that was? He was (UK) military so
 maybe it wasn't a generally known box.
 

This microcode programming sounds just vagely familiar; seems like
mid/late-80's or early-90's. Am i right?  --Most uses for
supercomputers are mil/spooks/; that's the only reason the
idea might have floated past me.

Anyway, enjoyed the laughs... .
-- 
 Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
The 7.90a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php
   http://journey.thought.org

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Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks BSD)

2010-10-20 Thread Rich Kulawiec

Unix, v6, on a PDP-11 (although I can't recall which model), circa 1977.
Got away from it for a bit, then landed in the middle of the v6-v7 shift
and the BSD takeover a couple of years later.  Still recall being amazed
by the Fujitsu Eagle (small form factor, large capacity).

And I'm appalled that my phone has more horsepower than a dual-cpu VAX
11/780 with a floating-point accelerator.  That just doesn't seem right.

---rsk
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