From: jmb36@bton.ac.uk (Rage Matrix)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: What happened to the old school?
Date: 28 Oct 1998 23:22:15 GMT
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I can't really find a newsgroup that fits this post exactly, so I'll post
it here and hope that I don't insult too many people :)

I'm am 22 years old and as such was not really around during the "golden
age" of computing. This saddens me in a way. I have seen the computer grow
to the point of science fiction and I suspect that the "Blade Runner" or
Willian Gibson vision of society will come to life within my life time.
However, what I really want to say is that computers just don't seem to
attract the "passionate" people anymore...at least where I live. I watched
Bob X Cringleys "Triumph of The Nerds" on video last week, where the Home
Brew Computer Club shots were shown. I wish I had been around during
that time. Computers have become a tool instead of a passion of those who
use them. The greatest part of computer history is over IMHO. 
The computer will indeed expand and grow and encompass all of society, yet
they have become mundane...any fool can get on the Internet these days,
where as before, only thoese who knew about computers could even try.

Am I just being a romantic, or does this ring true for anyone else?

Sorry if this sounds like complete s**t, but I'm a little drunk <g>.

-- Jonathan Baker (Computer Science student)

=============================================================================
Jonathan M Baker                     Member of PLOT
J.M.Baker@bton.ac.uk                (Programmers Legion of Obvious Talent)
Tron Software                       "Hey...kinda feel like God"
   - - - - - - - - MEMBER OF THE FIRST CHURCH OF WINTERMUTE - - - - - - - 
=============================================================================

######
From: Jones <Jones@nomail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 22:34:40 -0800
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So what that I have a TRS-80 that I *will*
> get connected to the Internet someday (first computer I ever really remember
> using).  I like it, and I am going to keep it.  In fact, I still enjoy watching
> my ASCII rocketship blast off.

So hit the swapmeets and start collecting those old gems. Last week I 
got a 386/20 Compaq portable (not laptop) made in 1990 for $10. It looks
like a movie projector with the handle on the top. Has a separate box
that plugs on the back for expansion boards. Works great and lots of
challenge making things run in 640k. Earlier I found a couple of Zenith
Sportsters 8086 (no HD only floppies) for $5 each. I have a number of
these old computer gems. They are cheap because no one wants them, but
they make a great sideline hobby. I also collect the old books, mags and
software. So don't just dream of the old days, relive them.....

######

From: Greg Menke <nospam@erols.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 29 Oct 1998 00:07:56 -0500
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jmb36@bton.ac.uk (Rage Matrix) writes:

> I can't really find a newsgroup that fits this post exactly, so I'll post
> it here and hope that I don't insult too many people :)
> 
> I'm am 22 years old and as such was not really around during the "golden
> age" of computing. This saddens me in a way. I have seen the computer grow
> to the point of science fiction and I suspect that the "Blade Runner" or
> Willian Gibson vision of society will come to life within my life time.
> However, what I really want to say is that computers just don't seem to
> attract the "passionate" people anymore...at least where I live. I watched

Try Linux and join a local LUG, there'll be plenty of passion and drive there.  Frankly
I agreed with the lack of passion part of your assertion.  Most of my programming is done
on and for Windows at the moment, and its about as much fun as beating on a dead horse;
another year, another API to learn, each buggier than the last.  I was getting pretty
cynical about the whole thing, but gave Linux a shot and its wonderful!  I am so waiting
for Linux to become more mainstream so I can chuck Windows.  I've been doing DOS/Win stuff
for 10 years and I can't wait to leave it behind me.  There is a lot of activity and 
innovation going on with Linux (likely other unixen as well), and the thing I like is
that its very public-  you can download the source to most everything and do things
with it and to it.  I have never experienced anything remotely like that in the Windows
genre- the shareware market is pretty tame and you don't get source, also substantive freeware
with source is virtually nonexistant.  I started using computers in the early 80s with an
Atari 800, did bbs stuff thru school, graduated, got a job, did programming, got into the Internet
before www and I find the Linux phenomenon the most interesting of anything computer related
that I've seen before.

Gregm

######

From: rbaconl@aol.com (RBaconL)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
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Jonathan M Baker chose to share...
<snip>
>Am I just being a romantic, or does this ring true for anyone else?

I'm 23, and I'm sorta there with you.  My mother told me I teethed on a floppy
disk.  The fact that the computer is now so _dumbed down_ (check the domain),
is what leads to the fact that so many people are using something they don't
have a passion for.  Rooting around a hex editor, making your magic missle do
9d99 damage in Moria, isn't something that today's average computer users would
consider fun.  I too feel disgusted when a person who just bought a brand new
dual PII 333 with 256 MB of RAM installs Windoze 95 on it, so they can play
Doom.  It's a waste.
  
I'm not embittered by the fact that so many people are on computers, I'm only
embittered when a person asks if they are going to be arrested for performing
an illegal operation.  RTFM is a phrase that is hardly parsed by the average
user.  There are a few people left that enjoy a bedroom with boards and drives
and circuit diagrams strewn about.  So what that I have a TRS-80 that I *will*
get connected to the Internet someday (first computer I ever really remember
using).  I like it, and I am going to keep it.  In fact, I still enjoy watching
my ASCII rocketship blast off.

However, it is a great time to see some of the science fiction become science
fact.  The development of Neal Stephenson's ideas of the metaverse, gargoyles,
and accessing a computer through a retinal input[1] is already here, if not
close to being a reality.

So for those of us who do dream of electric sheep, I hope I live to see the day
a person has razor nails.

HTH

[1] - there was an article on the web that I happened to run across a couple of
months ago, that dealt with a company developing a system that delivered visual
data directly to the retina.  But...  a couple quick searches didn't bring up
any results(isn't that always how it works).  If anyone knows what I'm talking
about though, the info would be appreciated.

-Ricky

######

Message-ID: <36388166.3904@gazonk.del>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 09:53:26 -0500
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Rage Matrix wrote:
> 
> computers just don't seem to attract the "passionate" people anymore
> [...] Computers have become a tool instead of a passion of those who
> use them.

The passionate ones are still here.  Computers haven't changed *THAT*
much.  All that's really changed is that now, the hackers are better
camouflaged.  Twenty years ago and beyond, if you wanted to find the
hackers, all you had to do was find a computer.  Anyone with access to
it was a member of the club.  That trick doesn't work anymore because
anybody and everybody has access.

It's kind of a pain.  Way back when, I could tell somebody that I worked
with computers for a living, and they would either,
  a) Reveal themselves to be a fellow hacker, or
  b) Immediately realize that there was no point in trying to talk
     to me about work.
Now, I'm sometimes afraid to tell people what I do because chances are,
they'll *THINK* they know all about it when in fact, they haven't got a
clue.


> The greatest part of computer history is over IMHO. The computer
> will indeed expand and grow and encompass all of society, yet they
> have become mundane...

It's entirely possible that the greatest part of computer history hasn't
even been sighted yet.  The news from the computer world lately has been
dominated by the race to see who can build the fastest WinTel machine. 
I suggest you turn your eye away from that and look at what's going on
in areas like robotics or computer vision.

If you want to find a passionate hacker today, find a car that can drive
its self from coast to coast with nobody at the wheel.  Whoever has
access to that car will be a member of the club.



> any fool can get on the Internet these days, where as before, only
> thoese who knew about computers could even try.

The internet wasn't very interesting back in those days.  *BUILDING* it
was interesting for some people, but as for using it...  It was always
just a mundane tool.

######

Message-ID: <36389F86.FE97325A@danet.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 12:01:58 -0500
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RBaconL wrote:

> [1] - there was an article on the web that I happened to run across a couple of
> months ago, that dealt with a company developing a system that delivered visual
> data directly to the retina.  But...  a couple quick searches didn't bring up
> any results(isn't that always how it works).  If anyone knows what I'm talking
> about though, the info would be appreciated.
>
> -Ricky

There was a news article recently on the radio, about a quadriplegic (named J.R. -
what I want to know is, who shot him?...) who has had an electronic device
implanted in his brain cortex, in the part of the brain that *should* be
controlling his left hand.  The device allows him to move a mouse cursor around a
computer screen, and he uses a computer picture of a keyboard to type what he wants
to say.  Then a mechanical voice speaks what he types.  The article was on NPR, and
the surgery was done at Emory University.

I've also heard, sporadically, stories about a military project to implant devices
to allow accurate fire-control by simply looking at the target.  Being military
hush-hush, this may as easily be folklore as fact.

J.R, however, is as undeniably fact as any news article appearing in the national
media.  There was a website mentioned in the article, I think, but I didn't write
it down (now, if I had been wearing that hands-free headband that allows me to
drive while using my hands for writing...).  The website, as I recall, allows you
to talk to J.R. via e-mail, and he will respond via the device implanted in his
brain.

There is a RealAudio file called 'Mental Mouse Control' at the web address:
http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/archives/1998/981019.atc.html
I can't listen to this on my machine at work, since I don't have a sound card...so
I can't check my memory of the article... but it appears to be the tape from the
news broadcast.  I couldn't find a transcript...

Borg, here we come.  "You will be assimilated...."

######

From: jstott+usenet@poly.phys.cwru.edu (Jonathan Stott)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 29 Oct 1998 16:21:04 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University
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In article <19981028203905.03534.00001125@ng90.aol.com>,
RBaconL <rbaconl@aol.com> wrote:
>
>[1] - there was an article on the web that I happened to run across a couple of
>months ago, that dealt with a company developing a system that delivered visual
>data directly to the retina.

Sounds like MicroVison company.  Try <http://www.mvis.com/>.

-JS

-- 
Jonathan Stott                                         xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://poly.phys.cwru.edu/~jstott/                        jjs17@po.cwru.edu
icbm://41.30.14N/81.36.36W/                       jstott@poly.phys.cwru.edu
   An optimist is someone who believes Schroedinger's cat is half alive.

######

From: Graham Minchin <grahamm@almos.com.au>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 17:46:26 -0800
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RBaconL wrote:
 
> any results(isn't that always how it works).  If anyone knows what I'm talking
> about though, the info would be appreciated.

Your last sentence makes an awesome quote :)

Graham

ps. I have a TRS80 too, but it doesn't even have a serial port, so I
don't see much hope of getting it on the net!  The power switch is dodgy
too, every time I want to turn it on (which I haven't done in years), I
turn it on at the wall and hope the rocker switch hasn't rusted into an
open state!

######

From: Michael Benveniste <mhb@mcfi.org>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 23:20:21 -0500
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Rage Matrix wrote:

> I can't really find a newsgroup that fits this post exactly, so I'll post
> it here and hope that I don't insult too many people :)
> 
> I'm am 22 years old and as such was not really around during the "golden
> age" of computing. 

I'm 41, been using computers for over 25 years, and used to feel the same
way.  I don't any more, for reasons I'll explain below.  And yes, I still
feel the passion.

> This saddens me in a way. I have seen the computer grow
> to the point of science fiction and I suspect that the "Blade Runner" or
> Willian Gibson vision of society will come to life within my life time.

In some ways, computers past the expectations of early science fiction
long ago.  In other ways, especially in terms of voice and natural
language, they haven't gotten close.  But that's a whole 'nuther rock.

> However, what I really want to say is that computers just don't seem to
> attract the "passionate" people anymore...at least where I live. I 
> watched Bob X Cringleys "Triumph of The Nerds" on video last week, 
> where the Home Brew Computer Club shots were shown. I wish I had been 
> around during that time. 

For me, the passion is always in making the damn thing work.  The 
challenges and tools have changed tremendously, but either you have the 
passion and the drive to get that piece of dung someone else designed to 
do what you want it to do, or you don't.

Of course, it was hard to keep up the passion when you had to submit your
job to an operator, go away for a couple of hours, and then come back,
pick up your printout, look at your own stupid syntax errors, go back 
and fight with a keypunch and repeat the process.  For example, once I 
left a period off the end of a statement on a 20-30 line program.  The 
compiler duly informed me of this, and then generated 100+ additional 
error messages.

This doesn't count the time spent looking at octal or hex dumps, or in 
reference manuals trying to translate an error/abend code.  Nor does
it count the "dead" time caused by unreliable equipment, media
failures, or having to walk to (and break in to) a building 4 blocks
away because the keypunch room closed at midnight.

> Computers have become a tool instead of a passion of those who
> use them.

Most of the people who use computers have always regarded them as such.
Companies bought computers and software to accomplish real world tasks; 
only a very few individuals could "play" with them.  I remember my first 
view of a late '60's data center.  While watching the lights blink and the
tape drives start and stop was cool at first, it gets old real fast.  The
people in the data center were there to balance the books and compute
the payroll.  In short, they had a job to do.

While I can still remember the excitement of seeing my first Apple I or 
the Popular Electronics article on the Altair 8080, I can also remember 
what a bear it was to program color graphics on an Apple, hitting the 
backslash instead of the left shift on the original PC keyboard a million 
times, or trying to write Mac software on a Lisa 2 using draft API
documentation.

> The greatest part of computer history is over IMHO.
> The computer will indeed expand and grow and encompass all of society,
> yet they have become mundane...any fool can get on the Internet these 
> days, where as before, only thoese who knew about computers could even 
> try.

I don't see us running out of frontiers in computing any time soon.  As
computers have gotten bigger, so have the problems.  While getting on the
internet is not a challenge anymore, dealing with the flash crowds that
result when all these "mundane" users try to hit your web site is.

What probably is over is the day of the lone wolf programmer.  This is
the case in most research fields, however.
 
> Am I just being a romantic, or does this ring true for anyone else?

Romance is a wonderful thing, but it's also frequently blind.  People
seem to forget how unreliable and limited early computers really
were, just like they seem to forget just how much bloody work
(literally) it took to "tame" the American West.  I like the idea
of having my own multi-gigabyte hard disk, megabytes of RAM, and laser
printer thanks.  I'm perfectly glad to consign the paper tape, core
memory and teletypes to old war stories.

------------
Michael Benveniste
mhb@mcfi.org

Any comments or statements made are not necessarily those of any
employer or client, their subsidiaries, or affiliates.

######

Message-ID: <3639D229.1AAD@gazonk.del>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 09:50:17 -0500
From: "Foobar T. Clown" <foobar@gazonk.del>
Organization: Blurp
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Michael Benveniste wrote:
> 
> People seem to forget how unreliable and limited early computers
> really were, [...]  I like the idea of having my own multi-gigabyte
> hard disk, megabytes of RAM, and laser printer thanks.

I recently completed a project on a computer that runs slightly less
than 1 MIPS, has 8K bytes of ROM, and has 256 BYTES of RAM.  I got paid
for it, too.

Tell me how limited those early computers were.

######

From: Greg Menke <nospam@erols.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 30 Oct 1998 12:09:57 -0500
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"Foobar T. Clown" <foobar@gazonk.del> writes:

> Michael Benveniste wrote:
> > 
> > People seem to forget how unreliable and limited early computers
> > really were, [...]  I like the idea of having my own multi-gigabyte
> > hard disk, megabytes of RAM, and laser printer thanks.
> 
> I recently completed a project on a computer that runs slightly less
> than 1 MIPS, has 8K bytes of ROM, and has 256 BYTES of RAM.  I got paid
> for it, too.
> 
> Tell me how limited those early computers were.


Likewise, I regularly do systems on CPUs with 2k ROM and 120 or so bytes RAM;

"Yesterday's technology solving tomorrow's problems today"

(quoted from some audiophile bottlehead's webpage, I forget which)


Gregm

######

From: Donald Fisk <donald.fisk@bt-sys.spamblock.bt.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 12:18:53 +0000
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Michael Benveniste wrote:

> What probably is over is the day of the lone wolf programmer.  This is
> the case in most research fields, however.

This is largely a result of research being increasingly corporately or
research council directed, rather being serendipitous.   William White
noticed the trend towards multiply authored research papers back in
the 1950s and was critical of it back then in his book The Organization
Man.   His words still apply today.

As for the lone wolf programmer's days being over, this perception
is presumably because it's impossible for a single individual to write
something as large as Netscape, MS Word, a JDK or even
Emacs in a reasonable amount of time.   This is because today's
software is becoming increasingly bloated with useless, or at best
rarely useful, functionality.   MS Word '97's animated paper clip is
positively evil, and it's hard to find a practical purpose for Emacs's
M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead command.   In contrast, IIRC, Turbo
Pascal fitted onto a single 350k floppy.

> Romance is a wonderful thing, but it's also frequently blind.  People
> seem to forget how unreliable and limited early computers really were, just
> like they seem to forget just how much bloody work
> (literally) it took to "tame" the American West.  I like the idea
> of having my own multi-gigabyte hard disk, megabytes of RAM, and laser
> printer thanks.  I'm perfectly glad to consign the paper tape, core
> memory and teletypes to old war stories.

Sure, but again how much is *really* necessary, and how much is thereto support
software bloat?   And as there's a limit to the amount of code/
documents you can produce, you won't fill up much space on your own.
Most will be filled by the OS and by huge pieces of software.

I'm *not* saying we should all go back and program smaller, less
powerful machines.   What I *am* saying is that the full power of today's
PCs could be put to better effect.   You can now buy hardware more powerful
than the most powerful 1970s mainframe for less than GBP1000, but because
of the way software is written today, you probably won't get anywhere near the
performance.

> Michael Benveniste

--
Le Hibou (mo bheachd fhéin: my own opinion)
"it's just that in C++ and the like, you don't trust _anybody_,
and in CLOS you basically trust everybody.  the practical result
is that thieves and bums use C++ and nice people use CLOS."
 -- Erik Naggum

######

From: Greg Menke <nospam@erols.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 30 Oct 1998 15:00:07 -0500
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colincampbell@my-dejanews.com writes:

> 
> Do tell us what you were doing in that environment: all sorts of possibilities
> come to mind (8K ROm vs 256 bytes RAM suggests a limited instruction set and a
> minimal scratch area for run-time values, which in turn implies some sort of
> process control, but that is as far as I got. I'm more of a bean-counter by
> trade, but I admire craftmanship.)
> --
> Ecc. 12:13-14
> 
> -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
> http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum

In my case, yes for process control; single chip microcontrollers to operate remote
controlled observatories.  Several are involved to incorporate redundancy and a 
measure of fault tolerance- everything is in assembly because of space constraints.
You can get C and Basic for these, but the program size in these "wasteful" languages
gets pretty limited.

Although the software was a bit of a task to finish, the hardware cost of all 5 
contollers together is about $500.  Lots cheaper than a PC, and much easier to validate.

Its kind of refreshing to be constantly fussing over wasting single bits here
and there; or spending one or 2 extra CPU cycles in a routine unnecessarily.

Many of these little CPUs are quite fast; ranging up to 200 nanoseconds per instruction 
(~5 mips), and lots more if you mess with DSPs.  Many of these little CPUs are plain old 40 pin
chips and you can roll them with one or two extra components, which means you can
design and build things relatively cheaply hardware-wise.

Gregm

######

From: colincampbell@my-dejanews.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 18:27:12 GMT
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In article <3639D229.1AAD@gazonk.del>,
  "Foobar T. Clown" <foobar@gazonk.del> wrote:
> Michael Benveniste wrote:
> >
> > People seem to forget how unreliable and limited early computers
> > really were, [...]  I like the idea of having my own multi-gigabyte
> > hard disk, megabytes of RAM, and laser printer thanks.
>
> I recently completed a project on a computer that runs slightly less
> than 1 MIPS, has 8K bytes of ROM, and has 256 BYTES of RAM.  I got paid
> for it, too.
>
> Tell me how limited those early computers were.
>

Do tell us what you were doing in that environment: all sorts of possibilities
come to mind (8K ROm vs 256 bytes RAM suggests a limited instruction set and a
minimal scratch area for run-time values, which in turn implies some sort of
process control, but that is as far as I got. I'm more of a bean-counter by
trade, but I admire craftmanship.)
--
Ecc. 12:13-14

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum

######

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
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In article <3639AEAD.BBC56154@bt-sys.spamblock.bt.co.uk>,
Donald Fisk  <donald.fisk@bt-sys.spamblock.bt.co.uk> wrote:
>As for the lone wolf programmer's days being over, this perception
>is presumably because it's impossible for a single individual to write
>something as large as Netscape, MS Word, a JDK or even
>Emacs in a reasonable amount of time. 

Yes.  However, it appears that a single programmer may be able to create
something *comparable* - there are a couple of Amiga web browsers written
by individuals.

-s
-- 
Copyright 1998, All rights reserved.  Peter Seebach / seebs@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter.  Boycott Spamazon!
Seeking interesting programming projects.  Not interested in commuting.
Visit my new ISP <URL:http://www.plethora.net/> --- More Net, Less Spam!

######

From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 30 Oct 1998 20:57:33 GMT
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On 1998-10-28 jmb36@bton.ac.uk(RageMatrix) said:
   :I'm am 22 years old and as such was not really around during the
   :"golden age" of computing. This saddens me in a way. I have seen
[8<]
   :Am I just being a romantic, or does this ring true for anyone else?

It rings true for me, and I've said so in this group before (look me up
on DejaNews). My personal feeling is that stuff has grown so fast that
there's no need to get to know how computers really work or how you can
best utilise 64k or assembly language, etc. etc. So people don't, and
you get crude crud like Windows dominating the marketplace - fine for a
commodity product, but it does mean that those with a real affinity with
computers (me, for one) feel somewhat estranged from the current trends.
My position is that software should be regarded as art, not necessarily
science, and certainly not given the assembly line treatment. But to be
honest, I recall hearing of IBM's "human wave" approach to development
in the 60s, so... it was ever thus, I guess. You can create beauty or
you can sell shit. It just feels like the two have never been more
mutually exclusive than they are today.
--
Communa (together) we remember...             we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing             to sing within her...

######

From: lars@cableinet.co.uk (Lars Duening)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 00:41:20 +0100
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Foobar T. Clown <foobar@gazonk.del> wrote:

> Michael Benveniste wrote:
> > 
> > People seem to forget how unreliable and limited early computers
> > really were, [...]  I like the idea of having my own multi-gigabyte
> > hard disk, megabytes of RAM, and laser printer thanks.
> 
> I recently completed a project on a computer that runs slightly less
> than 1 MIPS, has 8K bytes of ROM, and has 256 BYTES of RAM.

Hmm. My first mental image of your hardware was '6802 + 2764', but that
are probably only memories of my youth trying to resurface.
-- 
Lars Duening; lars@cableinet.co.uk

######

From: newcomer@flounder.com (Joseph M. Newcomer)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 08:31:23 GMT
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Every once in a while, I find a post by some young programmers
lamenting the existence of Windows and talking about the Good Old Days
when Programmers were Programmers, and could poke the memory of their
(TRS-80, Apple I, SOL, Atari). Guys, you don't know what you're
talking about! (One correspondent lamented that he had been told that
he teethed on a floppy disk, but didn't know much about those Good Old
Days!  If you were teething on a floppy disk, be aware that I had my
PhD and several years of post-doctoral experience before floppies were
invented.)

What is amusing is that when the microprocessor was introduced, there
was a lot of lamenting by all the folks who missed the "golden age" of
mainframe computing.

Just to put this in perspective: I installed a large mainframe
computer, around 1982, complete with 40 tons of air conditioning. The
first month we had it turned on the electric bill increased by $1950.
For a machine with 4MW of main memory, an 18-bit address space, and 1
MIPS of execution speed. Oh yes, and I got to share this computing
marvel with 60 other people via timesharing! At 9600 baud (1200 if I
was dialed in!)

Comments abound about the glories of being able to poke about in the
memory dealing with raw hex values, as if this is an activity that has
any meaning. Been there, done that. Don't ever need to do it again.
And there is NO value in groveling over hex dumps. By hex dumps, I
don't mean some interactive thingy that lets you look in memory and
see what is there, or examine a post-mortem crash dump like a 'core'
file. I mean the sort of listing that is about 2" thick, line after
line of hex numbers, and which represents your only output for that
day. Try debugging a FORTRAN program that has taken a numeric
underflow and the only evidence is a program counter, a link map, and
200 pages of hex characters. Do you know how to decode a hexadecimal
floating point number? Can you do it without a hex calculator? That's
what the Good Old Days were, and I'm VERY glad to be rid of them!

Well, I started programming in 1963, and as I write this I've been
active in the field for 35 years. Here's a test to take to see if
you're really from the Good Old Days or not.  Note that some of the
answers are penalties and deduct points. My score is 268 on this
scale, as I missed vacuum tubes and rotating drum memories.

But computers are still a passion with me. I just don't see how
passion for understanding computers is equated with misery in using
them.

I loaded a program by first clearing memory, then booting the program
 from the card reader
[   ] 5 
I loaded a program by first clearing memory, then booting the program
from paper tape
   (does not apply if you used a PDP-8, PDP-10, or PDP-11, instead
    take 0
[   ] 3 
I could read the address of the crash from the console lights
[   ] 2
Console lights? What are those?
[   ] -20 
I programmed the card reader and card punch directly (no operating
 system)
[   ] 2 
I programmed the printer directly (no operating system)
[   ] 2 
I programmed the disk directly (no operating system)
[   ] 4
I recognize the following opcodes (machine language) and the machine
they are on
    (some address values are selected randomly)
	1
[   ] 1 
	26 00003 00002
[   ] 1 
	M %G1 001 R
[   ] 1 
	11 05602 00007
[   ] 1 
	  bonus if you know what is wrong with the above instruction
	  (hint: it is typographically impossible to represent the
	   correct instruction)
[   ] 2
	49 00712
[   ] 1 
	42
[   ] 1 
	H A3F
[   ] 2 
	I know how to decode the address of the above instruction
[   ] 2 
     what do these two lines do, and on what machine?
[   ] 5 
	/ 320
	/ 

or the following symbolic opcodes
	BTM
[   ] 1 
	I know its machine value
[   ] 2 
	BB
[   ] 1 
	I know its machine value
[   ] 2 
	TNS
[   ] 1 
	TNF
[   ] 1 
	RCTY
[   ] 2 
	BC loc, 36
[   ] 1 
	MRCM
[   ] 1 
	I know its machine value
[   ] 2 
	MLCWA
[   ] 1 
	I know its machine value
[   ] 2 
	MZ
[   ] 1 
	MCE
[   ] 1 
	I know how to use it
[   ] 3 
	ZAP
[   ] 1 
	LPSW
[   ] 1 
	I wrote one of these
[   ] 3 
of course, modern programmers can tell you what these were
	JUMP
[   ] 1
	JUMPA
[   ] 1 
	JFCL
[   ] 1 
	JRST
[   ] 1 
	TRNE
[   ] 1 

I worked on a machine whose character set was not ASCII
[   ] 5 
I still remember the values of
		"A"  (if it was 65, you had an ASCII machine, 0 pts)
[   ] 2 
		"0"   (if it was 48, you had an ASCII machine, 0 pts)
[   ] 2 
The native address radix of my machine was
		8 or 16
[   ] 0
		10
[   ] 3
		12
[   ] 4
		something totally weird
[   ] 5
I remember the collating sequence of the following special characters
relative to letters and numbers
		"/"
[   ] 1 
		"!"
[   ] 1 
		Numbers sorted lower than letters (non-ASCII,
			 non-EBCDIC only)
[   ] 2
		Letters sorted lower than numbers
[   ] 4
		Letters had other symbols in the range A..Z
[   ] 2
		    (unless your machine was EBCDIC, in which case
[   ] 0
My first machine did not have an ALU as we would recognize one today 
		It did not support AND, OR, XOR, NOT
[   ] 1
		It used table lookup
[   ] 3 
		It had a serial ALU
[   ] 3 
			(unless it was a PDP-8/S
[   ] 0
		I regularly did BCD arithmetic
[   ] 4
		I could walk around inside the ALU
[   ] 20
		I could point to a glass envelope with a glowing wire
			 inside and identify it as bit 2 of the
			accumulator
[   ] 50

My first machine had a byte size other than 8
[   ] 2 
My first machine had more than one native byte size
[   ] 3 
My first machine had addressable storage whose size was other than 8,
 16, or 32 bits
[   ] 3
	My machine was other than a PDP-10 and had 36 bit values
[   ] 3
	My machine had 18-bit values
[   ] 3
	My machine had 4 bit values (4004 does not count!)
[   ] 4
	My machine had 5-bit values
[   ] 5
	My machine had 6-bit values
[   ] 6
	My machine had 7-bit values (PDP-10 packed ASCII doesn't
		 count!)
[   ] 7
	My machine had 8 bit values but they weren't binary bytes
[   ] 8
My first machine was the second or later of a compatible series
[   ] -5
My first machine supported timesharing
[   ] -10
	(unless it was CTSS, in which case take
[   ] 10
My first machine had some form of memory protection or privileged
    instruction trap
[   ] -5
	(it did, but only because we added it on to the machine after
	 delivery	, instead take
[   ] 10

My machine had index registers as an extra-cost option
[   ] 3
	Index registers? What are those?
[   ] 5
The only way to write a program was self-modifying code
[   ] 10
My machine had a hardware stack
[   ] -10
	(unless it was a B5500 in which case instead take
[   ] 5
Floating point in hardware was an extra-cost option
[   ] 5
	(unless it was a "math coprocessor chip", in which case
[   ] -5

My first machine had a ROM
[   ] -5 
My first machine had a ROM monitor
[   ] -10
My first machine had an operating system
[   ] -15
	(Unless it was CTSS for which you already took bonus points
[   ] 0
My first machine had an interactive debugger of any sort
[   ] -10
My first machine ran Unix
[   ] -50
My first machine used BASIC
[   ] -20

My first machine had a disk drive
[   ] -10
    (unless it had a 1301/1305 RAMAC or contemporary competitor,
     instead take
[   ] 10 
    (unless is was a 1311 or equivalent, instead take
[   ] 2
    (if your disk drive could be programmed to walk around the room,
     bonus points
[   ] 10
	If you knew how to do this
[   ] 15 
    The disk platters were larger than 24" in diameter
[   ] 5
    My machine had disk packs that each cost more than a TRS-80
[   ] 3
    My machine had disk packs that each weighed more than a TRS-80
[   ] 2
    You're kidding! The disk unit weighed more than a half-ton and had
         fixed platters!
[   ] 5 
    I could lift the disk drive using one hand
[   ] -20
    I could lift the disk drive using two hands
[   ] -10
    Two of us could move the disk drive but not lift it
[   ] -3
The disk drive had named files
[   ] -10

My first machine had a keyboard
	Electronic keyboard
[   ] -5
	Mechanical keyboard (Flexowriter, IBM typewriter, instead
	 take
[   ] 5 
	Unless it was a Selectric keyboard
[   ] -5 

My first machine had weird magnetic storage (e.g., magnetic cards)
[   ] 5 

Do the following have any meaning to you?
	CBA8421M
[   ] 3 
	CBA8421RM
[   ] 3 
	CF8421
[   ] 3 

My machine stored multiple characters per addressable storage unit
[   ] 2
My machine required multiple addressable storage units per character
[   ] 5

Take a sample assembly code source program. Example, 2000 cards
	Don't be silly, a program that large wouldn't fit in the
		 machine!
[   ] 10 
	It assembled in under an hour, but more than ½ hour
[   ] 5
	    (this includes reading it in from its standard storage
                  device and writing the listing)
	It assembled in under ½ hour
[   ] 2
	It assembled in under 10 minutes
[   ] 0
	It assembled in under 5 minutes
[   ] -5
	You're kidding! We got one day turnaround if we were lucky
[   ] 5
	Assembler? What's that? We programmed in (binary, octal, ...)
[   ] 10	

I could punch a patch to the object deck to avoid a reassembly
[   ] 5
I could compose the patch while sitting at the keypunch
[   ] 5
     When I did, it worked the first time 
             (you lose points for lying!)
[   ] -10
		
My source editor was a keypunch
[   ] 10
I could punch a source card with one hand
[   ] 5
I could punch it while holding the source cards in the other hand with
             my finger inserted at the modification point
[   ] 5
I could re-sort the card deck after I dropped it while doing this
[   ] 5
	I can tell you what columns and in what order I sorted the
   		 deck
[   ] 5
I knew what the 11-punch and 12-punch meant on the drum control card
[   ] 5
My source editor was a paper tape punch, a razor blade and tape
[   ] 5
	The tape was other than 8-level ASCII
[   ] 5
My first editor was EDLIN, vi, EMACS, or any screen-based editor
[   ] -20
My first editor was TECO
[   ] -5
     (except on the PDP-1 or PDP-6, instead take
[   ] 3
My first editor was a batch card-image editor
[   ] -10


I remember the card reader speed and card punch speed of one of my
        first computers
[   ] 5
	I remember the card read instruction
[   ] 3
	I remember the card punch instruction
[   ] 3
	Card reading and punching could not overlap with computations
[   ] 5
I remember the line printer speed of one of my first computers
[   ] 5
	Line printer! Get serious! We printed offline on a 407!
[   ] 10
	I knew how to program the 407 plugboard for my application
		 output
[   ] 5
	I knew how to do leading-0 suppression on the 407 to make it
		 look nice
[   ] 10
	My application was so important we had a special plugboard
		 just for it
[   ] 10

The speed of my first memory was
	It was a rotating drum!
[   ] 50
	> 50 uS
[   ] 20
	> 20, < 50 uS
[   ] 10
	> 10, <= 20 uS
[   ] 8
	> 5, <= 10 uS
[   ] 5
	> 1, <= 5 uS
[   ] 1
	750ns..1uS
[   ] 0
	< 750ns
[   ] -5
	< 150ns
[   ] -10
For all the memory size answers, a microprocessor system is 0 points
	The maximum memory size was < 64 addressable units
[   ] 20
	The maximum memory size was > 64, <=1024
[   ] 15
	The maximum memory size was > 1024, <= 4096
[   ] 10
	The maximum memory size was > 4096, <= 8192
[   ] 5
	The maximum memory size was > 8192, <= 16384
[   ] 3
	The maximum memory size was > 16384, <= 32768
[   ] 1
	The maximum memory size was not a power of 2 but a decimal
		number, take a bonus of
[   ] 3
	
I could lift the memory of my first machine without a forklift
[   ] -20
The memory of my first machine was solid-state
[   ] -20
      (unless the solid-state memory unit required a forklift to move
	 instead take
[   ] -5

My first machine used vacuum tubes
[   ] 50 
	(you only get the ALU points from the earlier question if you
	 knew which tube was bit 2)
My first machine used discrete transistors
	(little metal cans with three leads coming out)
[   ] 10
My first machine used RTL integrated circuit logic
[   ] 3
My first machine used TTL integrated circuit logic
[   ] 2
My first machine used a microprocessor chip of any description
[   ] -50	

My first machine required > 5 tons of air conditioning
[   ] 5
      For each 5 tons above 20 tons, add 5 points
[   ] 

I could lift my first computer without a forklift
[   ] -20
      A forklift wasn't necessary, but it took two of us to move it
[   ] -10
Each cabinet required a fork lift, and they had to all be bolted
	 together for it to work
[   ] 10

My first computer plugged into an ordinary wall socket
[   ] -20
	My first computer required larger than 6-gauge wire
[   ] 5
	My first computer required 00000 wire
[   ] 20

My first computer had a CRT display
[   ] -20
	(except: my first computer was a PDP-1 or CDC machine, instead
		 take
[   ] 10

The serial interface on my first computer required a forklift to move
[   ] 5
	(note that I don't mean the modem, I mean the equivalent of a
	 UART)
	It didn't need a forklift to move; two strong people could
		 slide it across the floor
[   ] 2

I know what an 085 Card Collator does
[   ] 5
     I knew how to program it to prepare input to my application
[   ] 10
     I was the company's expert in programming it
[   ] 20




On 28 Oct 1998 23:22:15 GMT, jmb36@bton.ac.uk (Rage Matrix) wrote:

>
>I can't really find a newsgroup that fits this post exactly, so I'll post
>it here and hope that I don't insult too many people :)
>
>I'm am 22 years old and as such was not really around during the "golden
>age" of computing. This saddens me in a way. I have seen the computer grow
>to the point of science fiction and I suspect that the "Blade Runner" or
>Willian Gibson vision of society will come to life within my life time.
>However, what I really want to say is that computers just don't seem to
>attract the "passionate" people anymore...at least where I live. I watched
>Bob X Cringleys "Triumph of The Nerds" on video last week, where the Home
>Brew Computer Club shots were shown. I wish I had been around during
>that time. Computers have become a tool instead of a passion of those who
>use them. The greatest part of computer history is over IMHO. 
>The computer will indeed expand and grow and encompass all of society, yet
>they have become mundane...any fool can get on the Internet these days,
>where as before, only thoese who knew about computers could even try.
>
>Am I just being a romantic, or does this ring true for anyone else?
>
>Sorry if this sounds like complete s**t, but I'm a little drunk <g>.
>
>-- Jonathan Baker (Computer Science student)
>
>=============================================================================
>Jonathan M Baker                     Member of PLOT
>J.M.Baker@bton.ac.uk                (Programmers Legion of Obvious Talent)
>Tron Software                       "Hey...kinda feel like God"
>   - - - - - - - - MEMBER OF THE FIRST CHURCH OF WINTERMUTE - - - - - - - 
>=============================================================================
>
>  
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Joseph M. Newcomer
newcomer@flounder.com
http://www3.pgh.net/~newcomer

######

From: "Carl R. Friend" <carl.friend@stoneweb.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 09:01:38 -0500
Organization: as little as possible!
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Andrew Maizels wrote:
> 
> Joseph M. Newcomer wrote:
> >
> > Well, I started programming in 1963, and as I write this I've been
> > active in the field for 35 years. Here's a test to take to see if
> > you're really from the Good Old Days or not.  Note that some of the
> > answers are penalties and deduct points. My score is 268 on this
> > scale, as I missed vacuum tubes and rotating drum memories.
> 
> I've been working with computers for 18 years, and frequently complain
> about clueless newbies, and I score -160.  Yes, negative one-sixty.

   Don't feel bad. I've been at it for twenty years and I rang in at
negative one-fourteen.

   I would have scored higher by listing my "first" computer as the
-10s I used to work with, but that'd be cheating so I took the Nova
instead. The test is skewed a bit, though, by its design; for instance,
the first few questions don't say whether you _had_ to do something
that way, or whether you _wanted_ to.

   Fun, though. Thanks, Joseph.

-- 
 ______________________________________________________________________
|                                                |                     |
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:carl.friend@stoneweb.com                |                     |
| http://www.ultranet.com/~engelbrt/carl/museum  | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 |
|________________________________________________|_____________________|

######

From: spalding@iol.ie (Nick Spalding)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 14:07:29 GMT
Organization: Ireland On-Line
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Joseph M. Newcomer wrote:

> Well, I started programming in 1963, and as I write this I've been
> active in the field for 35 years. Here's a test to take to see if
> you're really from the Good Old Days or not.  Note that some of the
> answers are penalties and deduct points. My score is 268 on this
> scale, as I missed vacuum tubes and rotating drum memories.

Snap, also 1963.  It was a hobby at the time as I was really an IBM
CE.  My score is 254.
 
> But computers are still a passion with me. I just don't see how
> passion for understanding computers is equated with misery in using
> them.

Agreed.  It has always been a mystery to me how programs get written
by people who don't have a bull's notion about the innards of the
machine.
-- 
Nick Spalding

######

From: Louis RAPHAEL <raphael@cs.mcgill.ca>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 31 Oct 1998 15:43:05 GMT
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Donald Fisk <donald.fisk@bt-sys.spamblock.bt.co.uk> wrote:

[snippage]
: rarely useful, functionality.   MS Word '97's animated paper clip is
: positively evil, and it's hard to find a practical purpose for Emacs's
: M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead command.   In contrast, IIRC, Turbo
: Pascal fitted onto a single 350k floppy.

Aren't these also the folks that included some sort of game in the
Excel program, but don't have the Solver function available by default
(or easy to install, for that matter)? That's what I've noticed at
school with the "latest and greatest" - meanwhile, I'm happily using
5+ year-old software that is fully functional, doesn't have talking
paper-clips, and happily runs on a 386...

Louis

######

From: Michael Benveniste <mhb@mcfi.org>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 15:52:00 -0500
Organization: Sporadic
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <363B7870.943B2DF1@mcfi.org>
References: <7188v7$iij$1@saturn.bton.ac.uk> <36393E85.F8570D69@mcfi.org> <3639D229.1AAD@gazonk.del>
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Foobar T. Clown wrote:

> I recently completed a project on a computer that runs slightly less
> than 1 MIPS, has 8K bytes of ROM, and has 256 BYTES of RAM.  I got 
> paid for it, too.
> 
> Tell me how limited those early computers were.

Swap out the memory you mention and instead use 4096 12-bit words
of RAM (no ROM at all).  Add toggle switches and blinking lights.
Reduce CPU speed by somewhere between 30 and 100.  Reduce I/O
by somewhere around 200.  Now you have an equivilent machine to
the first one I worked on.  In fact, you can find a Java emulation
of a more advanced model at:

http://www.in.net/~bstern/PDP8/pdp8.html

Of course, you're referring to your target configuration.  For
development, may I assume you use a more or less more modern
personal computer, a cross compiler/assembler, and some sort
of soft ICE?  Now, figure out how long it would take you to
get your job done using the computer I've described, 10 cps
paper tape as your mass storage system, and a teletype.

Remember, a VAX 750 was a 1 MIPS machine, and was frequently
pressed into multi-user service, albeit with perhaps 10-20 times
the memory you describe.

------------
Michael Benveniste
mhb@mcfi.org

Any comments or statements made are not necessarily those of any
employer or client, their subsidiaries, or affiliates.

######

From: Michael Benveniste <mhb@mcfi.org>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 15:55:33 -0500
Organization: Sporadic
Lines: 72
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References: <7188v7$iij$1@saturn.bton.ac.uk> <36393E85.F8570D69@mcfi.org> <3639AEAD.BBC56154@bt-sys.spamblock.bt.co.uk>
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Donald Fisk wrote:

> As for the lone wolf programmer's days being over, this perception
> is presumably because it's impossible for a single individual to write
> something as large as Netscape, MS Word, a JDK or even
> Emacs in a reasonable amount of time.   This is because today's
> software is becoming increasingly bloated with useless, or at best
> rarely useful, functionality.   MS Word '97's animated paper clip is
> positively evil, and it's hard to find a practical purpose for Emacs's
> M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead command. 

I'm not going to defend software bloat, whether in the form of animated
paper clips or a misguided attempt to turn a text editor into an
operating system.  Software bloat has a number of sources and only
some of them are traceable to feature inflation.

> In contrast, IIRC, Turbo Pascal fitted onto a single 350k floppy.

Yes, it did, and frequently it _was_ a 350k floppy due to bad
sectors.  As it turns out, Turbo Pascal is a fine example of what
was good and bad about that particular era.

I was lucky enough to order Turbo Pascal late enough to get shipped
the 2.0 version, which included a bunch of calls to interface to
the IBM PC BIOS.  It included an editor which was configured as a
subset of Wordstar, but which you could customize.  It compiled
quickly, even on an 8088, and produced reasonable code.  It even
had an option to write directly to video memory and avoid the
overhead of BIOS.

On the other hand, it would only produce .COM files, which limited
your program to 64K for the code, stack and data.  If you needed
more, you had better be prepared to use in-line assembly.  Debugging
pretty much meant WriteLn statements, but the really intrepid could
use DEBUG.  If you wanted to use a printer, modem, or non-character
graphics, you were pretty well on your own.  On-line help was a
lick and a promise, as it pretty well had to be.  Remember, hard
disk space and RAM was about 4000 times as expensive as it is today.

In short, if your application was small enough and you didn't need
more I/O than a text screen, keyboard, and an ASCII printer, Turbo 
Pascal was a godsend, especially compared to the awful compilers
offered by Microsoft and Digital Research.  But for commercial
development of business software, it was essentially a dead end.

A more apt comparison would be Lattice C, which was a 5 diskette
product.  Of course, by the time you bought the third-party
UI, communication and printer libraries; debugger; program editor;
and overlay linker you had spent about as much money as you would 
for an MSDN Universal Subscription today, and proportionately
more of your then hard disk to install it all.

> I'm *not* saying we should all go back and program smaller, less
> powerful machines.   What I *am* saying is that the full power of 
> today's PCs could be put to better effect.   You can now buy hardware
> more powerful than the most powerful 1970s mainframe for less than 
> GBP1000, but because of the way software is written today, you 
> probably won't get anywhere near the performance.

This particular issue probably belongs in a software engineering group, 
rather than a folklore group.  It really depends on what you mean by 
"better effect" and "performance."  But in a feeble attempt to bring
this on topic, I will point out that bloated operating systems were a
problem back then as well.  Anyone want to talk about IBM's initial
efforts at timesharing?

------------
Michael Benveniste
mhb@mcfi.org

Any comments or statements made are not necessarily those of any
employer or client, their subsidiaries, or affiliates.

######

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
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From: bauer@shell3.ba.best.com (Jerry Bauer)
Date: 31 Oct 1998 18:29:31 GMT
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There is little doubt that modern aluminum-and-nylon hang gliders
could have been realized in the wood-and-fabric technology available
to Da Vinci, but they weren't.  People died trying to fly, for lack of
the little pieces of information that would have kept them aloft.

In the Hiller Aviation Museum, in San Carlos, CA (www.hiller.org),
there is the frame (the fabric covering is gone) of an aircraft built
in the early 1900s by fifteen-year-old twins.  It worked -- they flew.

I'm sorry, I don't remember the specifics: who they were, where they
lived, the exact year, etc.  My point is, they built it, and it worked.  

After the Wrights did it, it seems the world burst into flight.
Technology and inventiveness coincided, and within a decade, people
were doing amazing things with airplanes.  

Sure, you can build an airplane now, from a kit or even from scratch.
But it is different, somehow.  Now, we know that it can be done.  Now,
we know how to do it.  

With computers, the story is much the same, although the timeline is
shifted by forty years and the pioneers did not necessarily fall to
their deaths.

So, what happened to the old school?  Well, they're done.  They did
it.  We have computers in our homes.  We viewed Sojourner on Mars in
(near) real-time over the internet.  We know how to do it.

Yes, it was fun.  I built several (little) computers from scratch, one
with a TTL CPU, and wrote their low-level operating systems
(monitors).  I programmed them to do stuff, mostly to make sounds that
approximated music, because that's what I like to do.  I did it for
fun, and for the education and because I didn't know how.  Now, I know
how, and I don't build them any more.

The old school is the old school.  If you want to do something
exciting, if you want to learn something, find a new school.  Or, you
can just collect those free-flyer miles.


Jerry Randal Bauer

P.S. Incidentally, The Hiller Aviation Museum is very well-done.  If
you are in the S.F. Bay Area and have half a day (or more) to spare,
it is well worth a visit.  I am not affiliated in any way with the
museum; I'm just an impressed visitor.

######

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
References: <7188v7$iij$1@saturn.bton.ac.uk> <3646cad2.560941425@206.210.64.12> <363b570b$0$29752@nntp1.ba.best.com>
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From: bauer@shell3.ba.best.com (Jerry Bauer)
Date: 31 Oct 1998 18:48:31 GMT
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In article <363b570b$0$29752@nntp1.ba.best.com>,
Jerry Bauer <bauer@shell3.ba.best.com> wrote:
>

>In the Hiller Aviation Museum, in San Carlos, CA (www.hiller.org),
>there is the frame (the fabric covering is gone) of an aircraft built
>in the early 1900s by fifteen-year-old twins.  It worked -- they flew.
>
>I'm sorry, I don't remember the specifics: who they were, where they
>lived, the exact year, etc.  My point is, they built it, and it worked.  
>

I found a picture of this on the web: 

	http://www.myphotos.org/hillermuseum/DSC0031.htm

Jerry Randal Bauer

######

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
References: <7188v7$iij$1@saturn.bton.ac.uk> <3646cad2.560941425@206.210.64.12> <363b570b$0$29752@nntp1.ba.best.com> <363b5b7f$0$29741@nntp1.ba.best.com>
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From: bauer@shell3.ba.best.com (Jerry Bauer)
Date: 31 Oct 1998 18:55:31 GMT
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In article <363b5b7f$0$29741@nntp1.ba.best.com>,
Jerry Bauer <bauer@shell3.ba.best.com> wrote:
>In article <363b570b$0$29752@nntp1.ba.best.com>,
>Jerry Bauer <bauer@shell3.ba.best.com> wrote:
>>
>
>>In the Hiller Aviation Museum, in San Carlos, CA (www.hiller.org),
>>there is the frame (the fabric covering is gone) of an aircraft built
>>in the early 1900s by fifteen-year-old twins.  It worked -- they flew.
>>
>>I'm sorry, I don't remember the specifics: who they were, where they
>>lived, the exact year, etc.  My point is, they built it, and it worked.  
>>
>
>I found a picture of this on the web: 
>
>	http://www.myphotos.org/hillermuseum/DSC0031.htm
>

And, at the same site, the information I failed to remember:

	http://www.myphotos.org/hillermuseum/DSC0030.htm

######

Message-ID: <363B03BF.B9D41398@one.net.au>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 23:34:07 +1100
From: Andrew Maizels <andrew@one.net.au>
Reply-To: andrew@one.net.au
Organization: PixyMisa Mining and Manufacturing Corporation
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Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
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Joseph M. Newcomer wrote:
> 
> Well, I started programming in 1963, and as I write this I've been
> active in the field for 35 years. Here's a test to take to see if
> you're really from the Good Old Days or not.  Note that some of the
> answers are penalties and deduct points. My score is 268 on this
> scale, as I missed vacuum tubes and rotating drum memories.

If you're a Newcomer, what does that make me?

I've been working with computers for 18 years, and frequently complain
about clueless newbies, and I score -160.  Yes, negative one-sixty.

Ouch.  Cool test, though.

The PDP-11 I used at University had core memory, but they'd retired
the last card punch the year before I started.  It sat in the hall
with a pot plant on it...  The maths department still used APL on hard
copy terminals (and I did stats, so I got to use them).  Can't
remember what kind they were, though.

I wonder if anyone today would have the guts to come up with a language
you needed a new keyboard to program in?
-- 
Andrew Maizels
Senior Technical Officer (STO/3)
One.Net Software Development Services 4th Pacific Battalion 
        - "We Live to Code"

######

From: jtnospam@epix.net
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 17:42:20 -0500
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In <3646cad2.560941425@206.210.64.12>, on 10/31/98 
   at 08:31 AM, newcomer@flounder.com (Joseph M. Newcomer) said:

>I programmed the disk directly (no operating system)
>[   ] 4

What disk??
 
--
 Julian Thomas:  jt at epix dot net  http://home.epix.net/~jt
 Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc 
http://www.possi.org
 In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
 --------------------------------------------------
 All computers wait at the same speed.

######

From: newcomer@flounder.com (Joseph M. Newcomer)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 1998 02:48:23 GMT
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Every once in a while, I find a post by some young programmers
lamenting the existence of Windows and talking about the Good Old Days
when Programmers were Programmers, and could poke the memory of their
(TRS-80, Apple I, SOL, Atari). Guys, you don't know what you're
talking about! (One correspondent lamented that he had been told that
he teethed on a floppy disk, but didn't know much about those Good Old
Days!  If you were teething on a floppy disk, be aware that I had my
PhD and several years of post-doctoral experience before floppies were
invented.)

What is amusing is that when the microprocessor was introduced, there
was a lot of lamenting by all the folks who missed the "golden age" of
mainframe computing.

Just to put this in perspective: I installed a large mainframe
computer, around 1982, complete with 40 tons of air conditioning. The
first month we had it turned on the electric bill increased by $1950.
For a machine with 4MW of main memory, an 18-bit address space, and 1
MIPS of execution speed. Oh yes, and I got to share this computing
marvel with 60 other people via timesharing! At 9600 baud (1200 if I
was dialed in!)

Comments abound about the glories of being able to poke about in the
memory dealing with raw hex values, as if this is an activity that has
any meaning. Been there, done that. Don't ever need to do it again.
And there is NO value in groveling over hex dumps. By hex dumps, I
don't mean some interactive thingy that lets you look in memory and
see what is there, or examine a post-mortem crash dump like a 'core'
file. I mean the sort of listing that is about 2" thick, line after
line of hex numbers, and which represents your only output for that
day. Try debugging a FORTRAN program that has taken a numeric
underflow and the only evidence is a program counter, a link map, and
200 pages of hex characters. Do you know how to decode a hexadecimal
floating point number? Can you do it without a hex calculator? That's
what the Good Old Days were, and I'm VERY glad to be rid of them!

Well, I started programming in 1963, and as I write this I've been
active in the field for 35 years. Here's a test to take to see if
you're really from the Good Old Days or not.  Note that some of the
answers are penalties and deduct points. My score is 268 on this
scale, as I missed vacuum tubes and rotating drum memories.

But computers are still a passion with me. I just don't see how
passion for understanding computers is equated with misery in using
them.

I loaded a program by first clearing memory, then booting the program
 from the card reader
[   ] 5 
I loaded a program by first clearing memory, then booting the program
from paper tape
   (does not apply if you used a PDP-8, PDP-10, or PDP-11, instead
    take 0
[   ] 3 
I could read the address of the crash from the console lights
[   ] 2
Console lights? What are those?
[   ] -20 
I programmed the card reader and card punch directly (no operating
 system)
[   ] 2 
I programmed the printer directly (no operating system)
[   ] 2 
I programmed the disk directly (no operating system)
[   ] 4
I recognize the following opcodes (machine language) and the machine
they are on
    (some address values are selected randomly)
	1
[   ] 1 
	26 00003 00002
[   ] 1 
	M %G1 001 R
[   ] 1 
	11 05602 00007
[   ] 1 
	  bonus if you know what is wrong with the above instruction
	  (hint: it is typographically impossible to represent the
	   correct instruction)
[   ] 2
	49 00712
[   ] 1 
	42
[   ] 1 
	H A3F
[   ] 2 
	I know how to decode the address of the above instruction
[   ] 2 
     what do these two lines do, and on what machine?
[   ] 5 
	/ 320
	/ 

or the following symbolic opcodes
	BTM
[   ] 1 
	I know its machine value
[   ] 2 
	BB
[   ] 1 
	I know its machine value
[   ] 2 
	TNS
[   ] 1 
	TNF
[   ] 1 
	RCTY
[   ] 2 
	BC loc, 36
[   ] 1 
	MRCM
[   ] 1 
	I know its machine value
[   ] 2 
	MLCWA
[   ] 1 
	I know its machine value
[   ] 2 
	MZ
[   ] 1 
	MCE
[   ] 1 
	I know how to use it
[   ] 3 
	ZAP
[   ] 1 
	LPSW
[   ] 1 
	I wrote one of these
[   ] 3 
of course, modern programmers can tell you what these were
	JUMP
[   ] 1
	JUMPA
[   ] 1 
	JFCL
[   ] 1 
	JRST
[   ] 1 
	TRNE
[   ] 1 

I worked on a machine whose character set was not ASCII	or EBCDIC
[   ] 5 
I still remember the values of
		"A"  (if it was 65, you had an ASCII machine, 0 pts)
[   ] 2 
		"0"   (if it was 48, you had an ASCII machine, 0 pts)
[   ] 2 
The native address radix of my machine was
		8 or 16
[   ] 0
		10
[   ] 3
		12
[   ] 4
		something totally weird
[   ] 5
I remember the collating sequence of the following special characters
relative to letters and numbers
		"/"
[   ] 1 
		"!"
[   ] 1 
		Numbers sorted lower than letters (non-ASCII,
			 non-EBCDIC only)
[   ] 2
		Letters sorted lower than numbers
[   ] 4
		Letters had other symbols in the range A..Z
[   ] 2
		    (unless your machine was EBCDIC, in which case
[   ] 0
My first machine did not have an ALU as we would recognize one today 
		It did not support AND, OR, XOR, NOT
[   ] 1
		It used table lookup
[   ] 3 
		It had a serial ALU
[   ] 3 
			(unless it was a PDP-8/S
[   ] 0
		I regularly did BCD arithmetic
[   ] 4
		I could walk around inside the ALU
[   ] 20
		I could point to a glass envelope with a glowing wire
			 inside and identify it as bit 2 of the
			accumulator
[   ] 50

My first machine had a byte size other than 8
[   ] 2 
My first machine had more than one native byte size
[   ] 3 
My first machine had addressable storage whose size was other than 8,
 16, or 32 bits
[   ] 3
	My machine was other than a PDP-10 and had 36 bit values
[   ] 3
	My machine had 18-bit values
[   ] 3
	My machine had 4 bit values (4004 does not count!)
[   ] 4
	My machine had 5-bit values
[   ] 5
	My machine had 6-bit values
[   ] 6
	My machine had 7-bit values (PDP-10 packed ASCII doesn't
		 count!)
[   ] 7
	My machine had 8 bit values but they weren't binary bytes
[   ] 8
My first machine was the second or later of a compatible series
[   ] -5
My first machine supported timesharing
[   ] -10
	(unless it was CTSS, in which case take
[   ] 10
My first machine had some form of memory protection or privileged
    instruction trap
[   ] -5
	(it did, but only because we added it on to the machine after
	 delivery	, instead take
[   ] 10

My machine had index registers as an extra-cost option
[   ] 3
	Index registers? What are those?
[   ] 5
The only way to write a program was self-modifying code
[   ] 10
My machine had a hardware stack
[   ] -10
	(unless it was a B5500 in which case instead take
[   ] 5
Floating point in hardware was an extra-cost option
[   ] 5
	(unless it was a "math coprocessor chip", in which case
[   ] -5

My first machine had a ROM
[   ] -5 
My first machine had a ROM monitor
[   ] -10
My first machine had an operating system
[   ] -15
	(Unless it was CTSS for which you already took bonus points
[   ] 0
My first machine had an interactive debugger of any sort
[   ] -10
My first machine ran Unix
[   ] -50
My first machine used BASIC
[   ] -20

My first machine had a disk drive
[   ] -10
    (unless it had a 1301/1305 RAMAC or contemporary competitor,
     instead take
[   ] 10 
    (unless is was a 1311 or equivalent, instead take
[   ] 2
    (if your disk drive could be programmed to walk around the room,
     bonus points
[   ] 10
	If you knew how to do this
[   ] 15 
    The disk platters were larger than 24" in diameter
[   ] 5
    My machine had disk packs that each cost more than a TRS-80
[   ] 3
    My machine had disk packs that each weighed more than a TRS-80
[   ] 2
    You're kidding! The disk unit weighed more than a half-ton and had
         fixed platters!
[   ] 5 
    I could lift the disk drive using one hand
[   ] -20
    I could lift the disk drive using two hands
[   ] -10
    Two of us could move the disk drive but not lift it
[   ] -3
The disk drive had named files
[   ] -10

My first machine had a keyboard
	Electronic keyboard
[   ] -5
	Mechanical keyboard (Flexowriter, IBM typewriter, instead
	 take
[   ] 5 
	Unless it was a Selectric keyboard
[   ] -5 

My first machine had weird magnetic storage (e.g., magnetic cards)
[   ] 5 

Do the following have any meaning to you?
	CBA8421M
[   ] 3 
	CBA8421RM
[   ] 3 
	CF8421
[   ] 3 

My machine stored multiple characters per addressable storage unit
[   ] 2
My machine required multiple addressable storage units per character
[   ] 5

Take a sample assembly code source program. Example, 2000 cards
	Don't be silly, a program that large wouldn't fit in the
		 machine!
[   ] 10 
	It assembled in under an hour, but more than ½ hour
[   ] 5
	    (this includes reading it in from its standard storage
                  device and writing the listing and object code)
	It assembled in under ½ hour
[   ] 2
	It assembled in under 10 minutes
[   ] 0
	It assembled in under 5 minutes
[   ] -5
	You're kidding! We got one day turnaround if we were lucky
[   ] 5
	Assembler? What's that? We programmed in (binary, octal, ...)
[   ] 10	

I could punch a patch to the object deck to avoid a reassembly
[   ] 5
I could compose the patch while sitting at the keypunch
[   ] 5
     When I did, it worked the first time 
             (you lose points for lying!)
[   ] -10
		
My source editor was a keypunch
[   ] 10
I could punch a source card with one hand
[   ] 5
I could punch it while holding the source cards in the other hand with
             my finger inserted at the modification point
[   ] 5
I could re-sort the card deck after I dropped it while doing this,
    using the card sorter
[   ] 5
	I can tell you what columns and in what order I sorted the
   		 deck
[   ] 5
I knew what the 11-punch and 12-punch meant on the drum control card
[   ] 5
My source editor was a paper tape punch, a razor blade and tape
[   ] 5
	The tape was other than 8-level ASCII
[   ] 5
My first editor was EDLIN, vi, EMACS, or any screen-based editor
[   ] -20
My first editor was TECO
[   ] -5
     (except on the PDP-1 or PDP-6, instead take
[   ] 3
My first editor was a batch card-image editor
[   ] -10


I remember the card reader speed and card punch speed of one of my
        first computers
[   ] 5
	I remember the card read instruction
[   ] 3
	I remember the card punch instruction
[   ] 3
	Card reading and punching could not overlap with computations
[   ] 5
I remember the line printer speed of one of my first computers
[   ] 5
	Line printer! Get serious! We printed offline on a 407!
[   ] 10
	I knew how to program the 407 plugboard for my application
		 output
[   ] 5
	I knew how to do leading-0 suppression on the 407 to make it
		 look nice
[   ] 10
	My application was so important we had a special plugboard
		 just for it
[   ] 10

The speed of my first memory was
	It was a rotating drum!
[   ] 50
	> 50 uS
[   ] 20
	> 20, < 50 uS
[   ] 10
	> 10, <= 20 uS
[   ] 8
	> 5, <= 10 uS
[   ] 5
	> 1, <= 5 uS
[   ] 1
	750ns..1uS
[   ] 0
	< 750ns
[   ] -5
	< 150ns
[   ] -10
For all the memory size answers, a microprocessor system is 0 points
	The maximum memory size was < 64 addressable units
[   ] 20
	The maximum memory size was > 64, <=1024
[   ] 15
	The maximum memory size was > 1024, <= 4096
[   ] 10
	The maximum memory size was > 4096, <= 8192
[   ] 5
	The maximum memory size was > 8192, <= 16384
[   ] 3
	The maximum memory size was > 16384, <= 32768
[   ] 1
	The maximum memory size was not a power of 2 but a decimal
		number, take a bonus of
[   ] 3
	
I could lift the memory of my first machine without a forklift
[   ] -20
The memory of my first machine was solid-state
[   ] -20
      (unless the solid-state memory unit required a forklift to move
	 instead take
[   ] -5

My first machine used vacuum tubes
[   ] 50 
	(you only get the ALU points from the earlier question if you
	 knew which tube was bit 2)
My first machine used discrete transistors
	(little metal cans with three leads coming out)
[   ] 10
My first machine used RTL integrated circuit logic
[   ] 3
My first machine used TTL integrated circuit logic
[   ] 2
My first machine used a microprocessor chip of any description
[   ] -50	

My first machine required > 5 tons of air conditioning
[   ] 5
      For each 5 tons above 20 tons, add 5 points
[   ] 

I could lift my first computer without a forklift
[   ] -20
      A forklift wasn't necessary, but it took two of us to move it
[   ] -10
Each cabinet required a fork lift, and they had to all be bolted
	 together for it to work
[   ] 10

My first computer plugged into an ordinary wall socket
[   ] -20
	My first computer required larger than 6-gauge wire
[   ] 5
	My first computer required 00000 wire
[   ] 20

My first computer had a CRT display
[   ] -20
	(except: my first computer was a PDP-1 or CDC machine, instead
		 take
[   ] 10

The serial interface on my first computer required a forklift to move
[   ] 5
	(note that I don't mean the modem, I mean the equivalent of a
	 UART)
	It didn't need a forklift to move; two strong people could
		 slide it across the floor
[   ] 2

I know what an 085 Card Collator does
[   ] 5
     I knew how to program it to prepare input to my application
[   ] 10
     I was the company's expert in programming it
[   ] 20




On 28 Oct 1998 23:22:15 GMT, jmb36@bton.ac.uk (Rage Matrix) wrote:

>
>I can't really find a newsgroup that fits this post exactly, so I'll post
>it here and hope that I don't insult too many people :)
>
>I'm am 22 years old and as such was not really around during the "golden
>age" of computing. This saddens me in a way. I have seen the computer grow
>to the point of science fiction and I suspect that the "Blade Runner" or
>Willian Gibson vision of society will come to life within my life time.
>However, what I really want to say is that computers just don't seem to
>attract the "passionate" people anymore...at least where I live. I watched
>Bob X Cringleys "Triumph of The Nerds" on video last week, where the Home
>Brew Computer Club shots were shown. I wish I had been around during
>that time. Computers have become a tool instead of a passion of those who
>use them. The greatest part of computer history is over IMHO. 
>The computer will indeed expand and grow and encompass all of society, yet
>they have become mundane...any fool can get on the Internet these days,
>where as before, only thoese who knew about computers could even try.
>
>Am I just being a romantic, or does this ring true for anyone else?
>
>Sorry if this sounds like complete s**t, but I'm a little drunk <g>.
>
>-- Jonathan Baker (Computer Science student)
>
>=============================================================================
>Jonathan M Baker                     Member of PLOT
>J.M.Baker@bton.ac.uk                (Programmers Legion of Obvious Talent)
>Tron Software                       "Hey...kinda feel like God"
>   - - - - - - - - MEMBER OF THE FIRST CHURCH OF WINTERMUTE - - - - - - - 
>=============================================================================
>
>  
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Joseph M. Newcomer
newcomer@flounder.com
http://www3.pgh.net/~newcomer

######

From: Dennis Ritchie <dmr@bell-labs.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 1998 07:57:23 +0000
Organization: Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies
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Joseph M. Newcomer wrote:
>  Here's a test to take to see if
> you're really from the Good Old Days or not.  Note that some of the
> answers are penalties and deduct points. My score is 268 on this
> scale, as I missed vacuum tubes and rotating drum memories.
> 

You also missed those who learned on a machine with acoustic delay
memory in mercury tanks consisting of 1000 words of 12 6-bit characters.

Newcomer indeed!

	Dennis

######

From: Dan Strychalski <dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 1 Nov 1998 11:11:36 GMT
Organization: Cameo Communications, Inc.
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In <news:3649c945.626090597@206.210.64.12>, Joseph M. Newcomer
(newcomer@flounder.com) wrote --

> Comments abound about the glories of being able to poke about in the
> memory dealing with raw hex values, as if this is an activity that has
> any meaning. Been there, done that. Don't ever need to do it again.
> And there is NO value in groveling over hex dumps.

Hex should be a required part of the K-12 curriculum. Everyone should be
able to understand a hex ASCII table and have the experience of changing
a value and seeing program behavior change. No one is computer-literate
who is not comfortable with hex.

It's kind of like learning basic math even though we now have
calculators.

Dan Strychalski               dski at cameonet, cameo, com, tw (no _x_)
-- Apologies for the anti-spam devices and non-threading newsreader. --

######

From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 98 12:16:04 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <363b926c$1$wg$mr2ice@news.epix.net>, jtnospam@epix.net wrote:
>In <3646cad2.560941425@206.210.64.12>, on 10/31/98 
>   at 08:31 AM, newcomer@flounder.com (Joseph M. Newcomer) said:
>
>>I programmed the disk directly (no operating system)
>>[   ] 4
>
>What disk??
> 

ROTFLMAO!  Now that was a very, very good one.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

######

From: "Andrew Cadley" <a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 12:21:06 -0000
Organization: University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, NR47TJ, UK
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Joseph M. Newcomer wrote in message <3649c945.626090597@206.210.64.12>...
:Every once in a while, I find a post by some young programmers
:lamenting the existence of Windows and talking about the Good Old Days
:when Programmers were Programmers, and could poke the memory of their
:(TRS-80, Apple I, SOL, Atari). Guys, you don't know what you're
:talking about! (One correspondent lamented that he had been told that
:he teethed on a floppy disk, but didn't know much about those Good Old
:Days!  If you were teething on a floppy disk, be aware that I had my
:PhD and several years of post-doctoral experience before floppies were
:invented.)


Oooh, I suddenly feel all young again. :) I learnt about computers and
programming from a mildly popular machine with a rubber keyboard and an
ordinary cassette recorder. Blessed with such luxuries as 16K memory and "hi
resolution" graphics. I guess I was just spoilt...

:Comments abound about the glories of being able to poke about in the
:memory dealing with raw hex values, as if this is an activity that has
:any meaning. Been there, done that.

No, whats really missing from the modern programming experience is writing
self modifying code to get round speed/memory restrictions. Now thats an
experience *everyone* should be made to suffer.

Well I managed a stunning -84 points on the test, although I did get stuck
on a few...

:I recognize the following opcodes (machine language) and the machine
:they are on
:    (some address values are selected randomly)
: 42
:[   ] 1


LD B,D? Z80 assuming the number is in hex anyway :)

and there was me hoping for a CB DD 00 07 or LD A,RLC (IX+0), or another
wierd undocumented opcode.

:The only way to write a program was self-modifying code
:[   ] 10


Well not the *only* way, but often the *best* way. Does that count?

:My first machine had weird magnetic storage (e.g., magnetic cards)
:[   ] 5


Do C15 cassettes count? Not wierd in those days, but pretty wierd now. :-)

:The speed of my first memory was
: 750ns..1uS
:[ X ] 0

I'm guessing here, since I honestly don't know. A little Maths suggest
something like this. It was certainly the upper speed on memory access
anyway.

AndyC

######

From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 98 12:31:07 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <36393E85.F8570D69@mcfi.org>,
   Michael Benveniste <mhb@mcfi.org> wrote:
>Rage Matrix wrote:
>
>> I can't really find a newsgroup that fits this post 
>>exactly, so I'll post
>> it here and hope that I don't insult too many people :)
>> 
>> I'm am 22 years old and as such was not really around during the "golden
>> age" of computing. 
>
>I'm 41, been using computers for over 25 years, and used to feel the same
>way.  I don't any more, for reasons I'll explain below.  And yes, I still
>feel the passion.

<snip>

>> The greatest part of computer history is over IMHO.
>> The computer will indeed expand and grow and encompass all of society,
>> yet they have become mundane...any fool can get on the Internet these 
>> days, where as before, only thoese who knew about computers could even 
>> try.
>
>I don't see us running out of frontiers in computing any time soon.  As
>computers have gotten bigger, so have the problems.  While getting on the
>internet is not a challenge anymore, dealing with the flash crowds that
>result when all these "mundane" users try to hit your web site is.
>
>What probably is over is the day of the lone wolf programmer.  This is
>the case in most research fields, however.

I disagree.  The lone wolf has access to all the computing s/he wants
today.  In the olden days, one had to work for a computer manufacturer 
or a computer center in order to get unlimited access since those 
were the entities that could _afford_ gear.  This availability
is a very big plus, IMO.  There is lots of good stuff out there;
one just doesn't seem to hear about it because one only listens
to sound byte media these days.
 
> 
>> Am I just being a romantic, or does this ring true for anyone else?
>
>Romance is a wonderful thing, but it's also frequently blind.  People
>seem to forget how unreliable and limited early computers really
>were, just like they seem to forget just how much bloody work
>(literally) it took to "tame" the American West.  I like the idea
>of having my own multi-gigabyte hard disk, megabytes of RAM, and laser
>printer thanks.  I'm perfectly glad to consign the paper tape, core
>memory and teletypes to old war stories.

This is probably the most important point you made in an excellent
description about the olden days.  Those people who belonged to that
golden era didn't consider it golden at the time they were developing.
We did not work 8:00-17:00, 5 days/week.  Limiting a work week to 
40 daylight hours was taking time off or satisfying some pain-in-the-ass
manager's sense of empire building.  In other words, children, we
worked our butts off.  Maybe that's makes a golden age...tons of
work with little compensation.

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

######

From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 1 Nov 1998 15:26:02 GMT
Message-ID: <71huia$meo$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk>
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On 1998-10-30 foobar@gazonk.del said:
   :I recently completed a project on a computer that runs slightly less
   :than 1 MIPS, has 8K bytes of ROM, and has 256 BYTES of RAM.  I got
   :paid for it, too.
   :Tell me how limited those early computers were.

How early do you want to go? I could point you to the late 40s, when
everything was just winding up; the huge mainframes were a tenth of the
speed of your example, and you wouldn't have got the ROM... ;>
--
Communa (together) we remember...             we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing             to sing within her...

######

Message-ID: <363CD008.40AB@gazonk.del>
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 1998 16:18:00 -0500
From: "Foobar T. Clown" <foobar@gazonk.del>
Organization: Blurp
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Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
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colincampbell@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> 
> In article <3639D229.1AAD@gazonk.del>,
>   "Foobar T. Clown" <foobar@gazonk.del> wrote:
> > I recently completed a project on a computer that runs slightly
> > less than 1 MIPS, has 8K bytes of ROM, and has 256 BYTES of RAM.
> > I got paid for it, too.

> Do tell us what you were doing in that environment: [sounds like]
> some sort of process control, but that is as far as I got. I'm more
> of a bean-counter by trade, but I admire craftmanship.)

It's a prototype, and I can't reveal very much without getting into
trouble.  I guess it's safe to say it's a non-stepping motion
controller.  It talks to some sensors via a serial port, it scans a
matrix keypad, and it directly drives an LCD character display module. 
It's user interface has to be simple enough that a Medical Doctor can
use it, but at the same time, it deals with a whole boatload of safety
issues.

The processor is from the Intel 8051 family.  Strictly 8 bit, with 
on-chip digital i/o ports and lots of weird features for precisely
timing i/o signals.  I wrote everything in C except for the dozen or so
lines of assembly code that initialize the C runtime environment.

######

From: Charles Richmond <richmond@plano.net>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 1998 21:50:23 +0000
Organization: Cannine Computer Center
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Message-ID: <363CD79F.4BD915A@plano.net>
References: <7188v7$iij$1@saturn.bton.ac.uk> <36393E85.F8570D69@mcfi.org> <71hla5$m9j$2@ligarius.ultra.net>
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> <snip>
>
> description about the olden days.  Those people who belonged to that
> golden era didn't consider it golden at the time they were developing.
> We did not work 8:00-17:00, 5 days/week.  Limiting a work week to
> 40 daylight hours was taking time off or satisfying some pain-in-the-ass
> manager's sense of empire building.  In other words, children, we
> worked our butts off.  Maybe that's makes a golden age...tons of
> work with little compensation.
> 
> /BAH
This is *not* quite accurate.  Although it is true that there is increased
machine access, there are also increased expectations placed on people who
work with computers now.  Now I have noticed that there is a "rush hour" at 5
P.M, at 6 P.M, at 7 P.M, and sometimes even at 8 P.M.  People are working
longer hours these days because of corporate downsizing.  There just are
enough people to get the work done in a 40 hour week.

+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Charles and Francis Richmond     <richmond@plano.net>   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+

######

From: p98mccabe@aol.com (P98McCabe)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Lines: 50
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The 'old school':

CS-101 Professor is teaching you the base-2 arithmetic you learned in Jr. High.

FORTRAN programming problem includes the use of Newton's method to find a
square root or perhaps solve a quadratic equation.

Model 33 teletypes are all in use for timesharing; keypunch is available.  Try
it?  Why not?

You can't figure out why the keypunch won't give you alphabetic characters
(nobody taught you how to work the damned thing!)

Helpful stranger show you how to disengage the drum card!

Cards punched.  Re-punch several obvious errors.

Submit cards to operator.  He hasn't seen this from a student in several years
(everybody else uses the teletypes!)  This job is first in que.

Job aborts.  JCL is all wrong.  Bored operator (not much real work this
evening) spends 45 minutes teaching you how program.  You discover the
professor hasn't touched a computer since before they invented the ASSIGN
command.

JCL and program source are fixed.  Job resubmitted.  Still number one in the
que.  Processing complete.  Operator shows you how to work that fancy line
printer & decollate everybody's output.  Time passess.....

It worked?  Huh?  Thank operator profusely!  Leave machine room, output in
hand.  Pass through terminal area.  Other students still can't find their input
file.  Many still waiting for access to teletype.

months later....

Someone in the terminal area asks "How do I..." aloud.  You show them.

The moral of the story:

I like computers.  I remember the magic of watching the lights, tapes, cards,
and paper.  Most of the fun was interacting with other _People_ who watched the
show.

The Lone Hacker may have existed; but I didn't see him.

Micheal H. McCabe
p98mccabe@aol.com

P.S.  -  I like being a "clueless" AOL luser.

######

From: daveva#earthling.net (Dave Vandervies)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 02 Nov 1998 04:49:32 GMT
Organization: TCT-Internet
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This is what I would have liked to get started with.  I cut my teeth
on a Commodore 64 (BASIC) and went from there to C on Intel (first
under DOS, now Linux) through QBasic, with a lot of non-programming
stuff like messing around with the utilities DOS comes with and some
of the user-level utilities in Netware along the way.  I've never been
a ``social hacker'', but always more of a loner (usually because of
necessity - I'm the only person near my age I know who shares my
interest).  Now I'm going to take my first formal computer programming
course in my last year of high school (waiver of prerequisite:
``student is self-taught to an equivalent level of knowlege''), and
I'm hoping I'll get somewhere in the way of education without
schooling getting in the way.  (Is there hope for me?)

On 2 Nov 1998 00:11:39 GMT, p98mccabe@aol.com (P98McCabe) wrote:

>The 'old school':
>
>CS-101 Professor is teaching you the base-2 arithmetic you learned in Jr. High.
>
>FORTRAN programming problem includes the use of Newton's method to find a
>square root or perhaps solve a quadratic equation.
>
>Model 33 teletypes are all in use for timesharing; keypunch is available.  Try
>it?  Why not?
>
>You can't figure out why the keypunch won't give you alphabetic characters
>(nobody taught you how to work the damned thing!)
>
>Helpful stranger show you how to disengage the drum card!
>
>Cards punched.  Re-punch several obvious errors.
>
>Submit cards to operator.  He hasn't seen this from a student in several years
>(everybody else uses the teletypes!)  This job is first in que.
>
>Job aborts.  JCL is all wrong.  Bored operator (not much real work this
>evening) spends 45 minutes teaching you how program.  You discover the
>professor hasn't touched a computer since before they invented the ASSIGN
>command.
>
>JCL and program source are fixed.  Job resubmitted.  Still number one in the
>que.  Processing complete.  Operator shows you how to work that fancy line
>printer & decollate everybody's output.  Time passess.....
>
>It worked?  Huh?  Thank operator profusely!  Leave machine room, output in
>hand.  Pass through terminal area.  Other students still can't find their input
>file.  Many still waiting for access to teletype.
>
>months later....
>
>Someone in the terminal area asks "How do I..." aloud.  You show them.
>
>The moral of the story:
>
>I like computers.  I remember the magic of watching the lights, tapes, cards,
>and paper.  Most of the fun was interacting with other _People_ who watched the
>show.
>
>The Lone Hacker may have existed; but I didn't see him.
>
>Micheal H. McCabe
>p98mccabe@aol.com
>
>P.S.  -  I like being a "clueless" AOL luser.
>

######

From: arargh@arargh.com (Arargh!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 02 Nov 1998 09:05:52 GMT
Organization: Arargh!!
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On Sat, 31 Oct 1998 08:31:23 GMT, newcomer@flounder.com (Joseph M.
Newcomer) wrote:

<snip>

>Well, I started programming in 1963, and as I write this I've been
>active in the field for 35 years. Here's a test to take to see if
>you're really from the Good Old Days or not.  Note that some of the
>answers are penalties and deduct points. My score is 268 on this
>scale, as I missed vacuum tubes and rotating drum memories.
>
>But computers are still a passion with me. I just don't see how
>passion for understanding computers is equated with misery in using
>them.
<snip>
>
>Joseph M. Newcomer
>newcomer@flounder.com
>http://www3.pgh.net/~newcomer

Well, I get about 140 on the little test, which is cute because the
first computer I had real experience on was a 1401.  That was in
college back in 1968, I think.

Does having written a simulator of your first machine (in BASIC on a
mini) count for anything?

Arargh

######

Message-ID: <363DC75B.4E7A@gazonk.del>
Date: Mon, 02 Nov 1998 09:53:15 -0500
From: "Foobar T. Clown" <foobar@gazonk.del>
Organization: Blurp
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Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
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Dave Vandervies wrote:
> 
> This [keypunching FORTRAN programs and learning OS/360 JCL] is what
> I would have liked to get started with. I cut my teeth on a
> Commodore 64 (BASIC) and went from there to C on Intel (first under
> DOS, now Linux)  [...]  I'm the only person near my age I know who
> shares my interest).  Now I'm going to take my first formal computer
> programming course in my last year of high school [...], and I'm
> hoping I'll get somewhere in the way of education without schooling
> getting in the way.  (Is there hope for me?)

Sounds like there's a lot of hope.  Don't worry about the antiques,
though, you can learn the nuts and bolts on modern computers, and you
can probably learn them faster.

You made the right choice by turning toward Linux.  It's hard to learn
about the nuts and bolts level of computers in the Microsoft world.
Every new release of their tools adds several more layers of crap
beetween you and the hardware, and you can get deeply lost learning
details that aren't important on any other operating system.

Don't give up on school.  It's a good sign that you got around the
requirements to get into a programming class.  Keep pushing the system. 
Look for a college that has classes on operating system design, compiler
design, and computer architecture.  Get yourself into it/them.  That's
where you'll learn more about how computers really work than most
programmers ever know.  Stay away from schools and/or classes that focus
on specific programming languages, specific software tools, or specific
application domains.  If they try to teach you "Interfacing to SQL
systems from COBOL," run away, fast!

######

Date: 02 Nov 98 10:35:30 -0800
From: "Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@sky.bus.com>
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
References: <71hfl8$9pv$1@news.seed.net.tw>
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In article <71hfl8$9pv$1@news.seed.net.tw> dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx
(Dan Strychalski) writes:

>Hex should be a required part of the K-12 curriculum. Everyone should
>be able to understand a hex ASCII table and have the experience of
>changing a value and seeing program behavior change. No one is
>computer-literate who is not comfortable with hex.

Back when I was in about grade 8 (1963 or so), we got an introduction
to different number bases.  We started with base 4, then base 12 (the
book used T for 10 and E for 11).  It was enough to get a basic feel
for different bases (as well as modulo arithmetic), but it never went
beyond that.  And it certainly didn't pay enough attention to bases
2, 8, and 16 - but I guess that's hindsight talking.

>It's kind of like learning basic math even though we now have
>calculators.

Yes, and some people will attack it as a waste of time, which
explains the young woman who once asked me, "What's 9 times 7?"
(This was in an office environment 20 years ago.  I nearly had
a fit.)  Recommended reading: "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac
Asimov, which contains some startlingly accurate predictions
considering it was written back when hand-held calculators
were just a pipe dream.

--
cgibbs@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs)
Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply.

######

From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 02 Nov 98 12:49:41 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <363CD79F.4BD915A@plano.net>,
   Charles Richmond <richmond@plano.net> wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> 
>> <snip>
>>
>> description about the olden days.  Those people who belonged to that
>> golden era didn't consider it golden at the time they were developing.
>> We did not work 8:00-17:00, 5 days/week.  Limiting a work week to
>> 40 daylight hours was taking time off or satisfying some pain-in-the-ass
>> manager's sense of empire building.  In other words, children, we
>> worked our butts off.  Maybe that's makes a golden age...tons of
>> work with little compensation.
>> 
>> /BAH
>This is *not* quite accurate.  Although it is true that there is increased
>machine access, there are also increased expectations placed on people who
>work with computers now.  Now I have noticed that there is a "rush hour" 
at 5
>P.M, at 6 P.M, at 7 P.M, and sometimes even at 8 P.M.  People are working
>longer hours these days because of corporate downsizing.  There just are
>enough people to get the work done in a 40 hour week.

Huh?  None of this computes.  We have been talking about the
ol' days of computer development...haven't we?  Today, those
who want to develop don't have to drive to the computer.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

######

From: "Samael" <Samael@dial.pipex.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 12:59:17 -0000
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Donald Fisk wrote in message
<3639AEAD.BBC56154@bt-sys.spamblock.bt.co.uk>...
>Michael Benveniste wrote:
>
>> What probably is over is the day of the lone wolf programmer.  This is
>> the case in most research fields, however.
>
>This is largely a result of research being increasingly corporately or
>research council directed, rather being serendipitous.   William White
>noticed the trend towards multiply authored research papers back in
>the 1950s and was critical of it back then in his book The Organization
>Man.   His words still apply today.
>
>As for the lone wolf programmer's days being over, this perception
>is presumably because it's impossible for a single individual to write
>something as large as Netscape, MS Word, a JDK or even
>Emacs in a reasonable amount of time.   This is because today's
>software is becoming increasingly bloated with useless, or at best
>rarely useful, functionality.   MS Word '97's animated paper clip is
>positively evil, and it's hard to find a practical purpose for Emacs's
>M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead command.   In contrast, IIRC, Turbo
>Pascal fitted onto a single 350k floppy.


While the animates paper-clip is annoying to you, you _can_ turn it off.
And my mother (who is not a computer expert) finds it much more comfortable
asking questions of something with a personality, even if it is a fake one.
The ability to ask questions in (semi) plain english is also a godsend as
far as as she's concerned.  I tend to find that as computer expand further
into the maistream, they build up 'coatings' that get in the way of us
_real_ programmers, while making life a lot easier for the many, many people
who know nothing about computers.

Samael

######

From: jmb36@bton.ac.uk (Rage Matrix)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 2 Nov 1998 14:56:18 GMT
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I think several people missed the point of my original post. I did not say
that the older computers were better, because largely they were not. My
point was that fewer people were "into" computers and therefore, those who
were were more passionate about it. I just think that that is missing from
the modern world. The "golden age" of computing wasn't about the machines
themselves, IMHO, but the mentality that went with it.
However, I do wish that the primary operating system of most computers
today wasn't Windows because I think it is too bloated for what it
actually does. This is just my opinion, of course. As a student, I don't
pretend to fully understand EVERYTHING about OS's, but it is my wish,
never the less.

Cheers,

-- Jonathan Baker.
=============================================================================
Jonathan M Baker                     Member of PLOT
J.M.Baker@bton.ac.uk                (Programmers Legion of Obvious Talent)
Tron Software                       "Hey...kinda feel like God"
   - - - - - - - - MEMBER OF THE FIRST CHURCH OF WINTERMUTE - - - - - - - 
=============================================================================

######

From: "Andrew Cadley" <a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 15:47:04 -0000
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daveva#earthling.net (Dave Vandervies) wrote in message
<363d2db0.8691771@news.tct.net>...
:This is what I would have liked to get started with.  I cut my teeth
:on a Commodore 64 (BASIC)

Congratulations!

Anyone that could suffer the dreadful BASIC in C64s and still want to get
into programming deserves a medal. ;)

AndyC

######

From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 2 Nov 1998 17:00:36 GMT
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On 1998-10-31 mhb@mcfi.org said:
   :On the other hand, it would only produce .COM files, which limited
   :your program to 64K for the code, stack and data.  If you needed
   :more, you had better be prepared to use in-line assembly.  Debugging

I thought Turbo Pascal had always done overlays (breaking code
restrictions) and dynamic memory allocation (ditto data)? Also, I don't
believe an inline assembler arrived until TP4; before then, it was
inline hex bytes. Much more fun. :> (I have a clone of Turbo Pascal 3
here, called Surpas, which is only 30k, but does support the features
I've mentioned.)

   :pretty much meant WriteLn statements, but the really intrepid could
   :use DEBUG.

Hey, I like WriteLns! The way I tend to debug is use a debugger to find
out where I crash and then sprinkle WriteLns (well, printf()s) around
like confetti to find out why. :>

   :In short, if your application was small enough and you didn't need
   :more I/O than a text screen, keyboard, and an ASCII printer, Turbo
   :Pascal was a godsend, especially compared to the awful compilers
   :offered by Microsoft and Digital Research.  But for commercial
   :development of business software, it was essentially a dead end.

A fair few apps were written in Turbo Pascal <4, though; it can't have
been all that bad.
--
Communa (together) we remember...             we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing             to sing within her...

######

From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 2 Nov 1998 17:00:39 GMT
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On 1998-11-01 dmr@bell-labs.com said:
   :Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
   :Joseph M. Newcomer wrote:
   :>  Here's a test to take to see if
   :> you're really from the Good Old Days or not.  Note that some of
   :>the  answers are penalties and deduct points. My score is 268 on
   :>this  scale, as I missed vacuum tubes and rotating drum memories.

   :You also missed those who learned on a machine with acoustic delay
   :memory in mercury tanks consisting of 1000 words of 12 6-bit
   :characters.

Which one was that? I know of a fair few British machines that used
acoustic delay lines (some of the Elliotts even used electrostrictive
delay lines - or electrosomething, anyway. Same principle, I think, but
different material) but don't know much about early American machines.

(Obviously, being 24, I don't remember them...)
--
Communa (together) we remember...             we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing             to sing within her...

######

From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 2 Nov 1998 17:00:43 GMT
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On 1998-11-01 a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk said:
   :Oooh, I suddenly feel all young again. :) I learnt about computers
   :and programming from a mildly popular machine with a rubber
   :keyboard and an ordinary cassette recorder. Blessed with such
   :luxuries as 16K memory and "hi resolution" graphics. I guess I was
   :just spoilt...

Well, I beat you 'cos my machine had a flat keyboard and 1k of memory,
and couldn't even store a program and a complete screen display at
once! ;P (ok, compared to the idea of a 48-bit machine that occupied a
room and contained a serial ALU that consisted of 600 valves, it's still
luxurious, but you get the idea ;> )

   ::I recognize the following opcodes (machine language) and the
   ::machine they are on
   ::    (some address values are selected randomly)
   :: 42
   ::[   ] 1

   :LD B,D? Z80 assuming the number is in hex anyway :)
   :and there was me hoping for a CB DD 00 07 or LD A,RLC (IX+0), or
   :another wierd undocumented opcode.

I'd venture the opinion that it's an EDSAC instruction, but I'd also lay
moey on being wrong. My favourite sight ever was a sheet of paper on
which Alan Turing had been debugging a program, consisting of many rows
of things that looked like:

@??@ /@@@ //@? @//@ @//@ /@/@

and a penned arrow into the middle of this mess saying "What happened
here?" That was a binary dump from the Manchester Mark I. Neat BAUDOT
output. (I don't claim to have reproduced it anything like accurately
either; there were many more symbols, and it looked much more like line
noise.)

   ::The speed of my first memory was
   :: 750ns..1uS
   ::[ X ] 0
   :I'm guessing here, since I honestly don't know. A little Maths
   :suggest something like this. It was certainly the upper speed on
   :memory access anyway.

I read somewhere that Spectrum memory bandwidth was something like
600kHz, after the video generator had taken its share. Chances are the
RAM chips were 250ns, though. Which counts...?
--
Communa (together) we remember...             we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing             to sing within her...

######

From: Ariel Scolnicov <ariels@compugen.co.il>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 02 Nov 1998 21:57:41 +0200
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lisard@zetnet.co.uk writes:

> On 1998-11-01 dmr@bell-labs.com said:
>    :Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
>    :Joseph M. Newcomer wrote:
>    :>  Here's a test to take to see if
>    :> you're really from the Good Old Days or not.  Note that some of
>    :>the  answers are penalties and deduct points. My score is 268 on
>    :>this  scale, as I missed vacuum tubes and rotating drum memories.
> 
>    :You also missed those who learned on a machine with acoustic delay
>    :memory in mercury tanks consisting of 1000 words of 12 6-bit
>    :characters.
> 
> Which one was that? I know of a fair few British machines that used
> acoustic delay lines (some of the Elliotts even used electrostrictive
> delay lines - or electrosomething, anyway. Same principle, I think, but
> different material) but don't know much about early American machines.
> 
> (Obviously, being 24, I don't remember them...)

Being 27, I think I can chip in with something here.  Turing (?)
designed (at Manchester (?)) a machine called either Pilot or Ace.  A
few years back I read a book containing the original design for the
machine.  I don't remember too many details (not even if it was
built), but I seem to remember mercury (acoustic) delay lines being
one of the "features"...

-- 
Ariel "and in my day we fought over the 512-byte 8085 boards" Scolnicov

######

From: jtNOSPAM@epix.net (Julian Thomas)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 02 Nov 1998 16:59:02 -0500
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In <yzqaf29vpe2.fsf@compugen.co.il>, on 11/02/98 
   at 09:57 PM, Ariel Scolnicov <ariels@compugen.co.il> said:

>>    :You also missed those who learned on a machine with acoustic delay
>>    :memory in mercury tanks consisting of 1000 words of 12 6-bit
>>    :characters.
>> 
>> Which one was that? I know of a fair few British machines that used
>> acoustic delay lines (some of the Elliotts even used electrostrictive
>> delay lines - or electrosomething, anyway. Same principle, I think, but
>> different material) but don't know much about early American machines.

There were early one of a kind US machines with mercury tanks, but the
machine in question (about the 3rd one I learned on) was unquestionably
the Univac I.

But in addition to the 1000 words there were 2 60 word buffers, one for
tape input and one for tape output.

And the 6 bit characters were a bastardized form of BCD with excess 3
coding for the numeric part - i.e. A was 01 0100  (I think I have the zone
bits right there).

Anyone remember

DTMB-OMNIBUS ?
 
-- 
 Julian Thomas: jt at epix dot net  http://home.epix.net/~jt
 Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc  http://www.possi.org
 In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
 -- --
 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.

######

Message-ID: <363DE62A.161DFF74@trailing-edge.com>
From: Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com>
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology
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Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> 
> In article <71hfl8$9pv$1@news.seed.net.tw> dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx
> (Dan Strychalski) writes:
> 
> >Hex should be a required part of the K-12 curriculum. Everyone should
> >be able to understand a hex ASCII table and have the experience of
> >changing a value and seeing program behavior change. No one is
> >computer-literate who is not comfortable with hex.
> 
> Back when I was in about grade 8 (1963 or so), we got an introduction
> to different number bases.  We started with base 4, then base 12 (the
> book used T for 10 and E for 11).  It was enough to get a basic feel
> for different bases (as well as modulo arithmetic), but it never went
> beyond that.  And it certainly didn't pay enough attention to bases
> 2, 8, and 16 - but I guess that's hindsight talking.

In 1963, base 12 was a very good technical choice, far better
than hex would've been.  Besides, most of us in North America
do mod 12 arithmetic every day when computing time differences
over noon :-)

Tim.

######

From: hellsop@execpc.com (Peter H. Coffin)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
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Dan Strychalski <dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx> wrote:

> Hex should be a required part of the K-12 curriculum.

Used to be. It was just called "New Math"... Damned if it didn't work
too.

-- 
Security-wise, NT is a server with a "Kick me" sign taped to it.
                                                   -- Peter Gutmann

######

From: "Andrew Cadley" <a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 20:48:10 -0000
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Samael wrote in message <363daca5.0@127.0.0.1>...

:While the animates paper-clip is annoying to you, you _can_ turn it off.

How? The best I've managed is to disable it if you press F1. It still has a
habit of popping up at other times to get in the way though. Although it's
not a paperclip anymore, it's a cat. Which is marginally less annoying.

:And my mother (who is not a computer expert) finds it much more comfortable
:asking questions of something with a personality, even if it is a fake one.


My mom described it as "an ifuriating little thing that is less help than
the old way" and she certainly isn't a computer expert either.

:The ability to ask questions in (semi) plain english is also a godsend as
:far as as she's concerned.  I tend to find that as computer expand further
:into the maistream, they build up 'coatings' that get in the way of us
:_real_ programmers, while making life a lot easier for the many, many
people
:who know nothing about computers.


I'll accept that it can make the software a bit more approachable to the
completely techno paranoid. I still don't think it's that useful though, it
doesn't help anyone get anything done faster and you *can't* get rid of the
bugger.

AndyC

######

From: "Andrew Cadley" <a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 20:59:52 -0000
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lisard@zetnet.co.uk wrote in message <71kofr$ouu$9@irk.zetnet.co.uk>...
:
:
:On 1998-11-01 a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk said:

:Well, I beat you 'cos my machine had a flat keyboard and 1k of memory,
:and couldn't even store a program and a complete screen display at
:once! ;P (ok, compared to the idea of a 48-bit machine that occupied a
:room and contained a serial ALU that consisted of 600 valves, it's still
:luxurious, but you get the idea ;> )


You still had graphics though. Okay so the "pixels" were whopping great big
squares, but you can still have a good game of 3D monster maze. :)

:I read somewhere that Spectrum memory bandwidth was something like
:600kHz, after the video generator had taken its share. Chances are the
:RAM chips were 250ns, though. Which counts...?


Ooh, I'd forgotten about the video chip. I was just working on the
assumption that a 3.54 Mhz processor, which takes 3 cycles to read from
memory, would be using RAM rated at about 750ns. Of course you're probably
right, memory speed wasn't necessarily the biggest bottleneck back in those
days.

AndyC

######

From: "Adam Atkinson" <ghira@mistral.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 02 Nov 98 21:48:45 +0000
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On 02-Nov-98 20:48:10, Andrew Cadley said:

>:While the animates paper-clip is annoying to you, you _can_ turn it off.

>How? The best I've managed is to disable it if you press F1. It still has a
>habit of popping up at other times to get in the way though. Although it's
>not a paperclip anymore, it's a cat. Which is marginally less annoying.

You can turn it off a lot of of the time by normal means (settings
etc.) Rename the "Agents" directory to "DeadAgents" (or, I guess,
anything else) and the assistants never ever appear. Naturally, I have
done this on my machine at work.

-- 
Adam Atkinson (ghira@mistral.co.uk)
Viva la pappa col pomodoro! (G. Stoppani)

######

From: daveva#earthling.net (Dave Vandervies)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 02 Nov 1998 23:18:26 GMT
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On 02 Nov 98 10:35:30 -0800, "Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@sky.bus.com>
wrote:

>In article <71hfl8$9pv$1@news.seed.net.tw> dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx
>(Dan Strychalski) writes:
>
>>It's kind of like learning basic math even though we now have
>>calculators.
>
>Yes, and some people will attack it as a waste of time, which
>explains the young woman who once asked me, "What's 9 times 7?"

I can understand this completely... I've never had a graphing
calculator (moving forward a few levels of knowledge/technology), and
probably as a result of that I can draw reasonably accurate graphs of
a lot of simple functions faster than most of the people in my (high
school) calculus class can punch the equation into their calculators.
Guess who's getting 99% midterm marks, and who's barely passing?

######

From: daveva#earthling.net (Dave Vandervies)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 02 Nov 1998 23:18:37 GMT
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On Mon, 2 Nov 1998 15:47:04 -0000, "Andrew Cadley"
<a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk> wrote:

>
>daveva#earthling.net (Dave Vandervies) wrote in message
><363d2db0.8691771@news.tct.net>...
>:This is what I would have liked to get started with.  I cut my teeth
>:on a Commodore 64 (BASIC)
>
>Congratulations!
>
>Anyone that could suffer the dreadful BASIC in C64s and still want to get
>into programming deserves a medal. ;)

Hey, I *LIKED* C64 BASIC!  Of course, it was really nice to get into a
language that allowed recursion and finally understand how a Quicksort
was supposed to work, but...
(If there are any other suckers for punishment out there, I might
still be able to dig up the non-recursive quicksort algorithm that I
gave up on.  I took it out of a magazine article (back when computer
magazines still had relevant nuts-and-bolts information) on sorts, and
the bubble sort and shell sort I didn't have any trouble with, but the
quicksort was just insane.)

######

From: Raoul Golan <raoul@xenon.triode.net.au>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 3 Nov 1998 00:21:32 GMT
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In alt.folklore.computers Rage Matrix <jmb36@bton.ac.uk> wrote:
> I think several people missed the point of my original post. I did not say
> that the older computers were better, because largely they were not. My
> point was that fewer people were "into" computers and therefore, those who
> were were more passionate about it. I just think that that is missing from
> the modern world. The "golden age" of computing wasn't about the machines
> themselves, IMHO, but the mentality that went with it.

I'm 33 now, which probably makes me too young to have been part
of the "golden age" - I cut my teeth on TRS-80's and Apple II's
in the late 70's early 80's.

For what it's worth, however, I've noticed that not a great deal
has changed.  The hardware and software is different, but the
same passion that drove programmers to code at 4 AM is still
there.  Witness Linux and the various GNU projects... 
the spirit is alive and well.

The only difference back then was that you were more limited
by the hardware... but then, that's only relative.  The first
personal computers were seen as liberating compared to mainframes
and minis.  Today we see our PCs as liberating.  In the future,
we may even romanticise these days as a "golden age" of sorts.

Can you imagine in the future saying to your kids: "In my
time, proprietary software still ruled... Linux and GNU were
just starting to become mainstream... the software world
was still gripped by hidden protocols and secret APIs.
The Open Source Software Revolution was picking up
speed.  OSS would eventually topple proprietary software,
those were the glory days of the revolutionary hacker."

I think things are as exciting as ever.

######

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
References: <71hfl8$9pv$1@news.seed.net.tw> <1321.610T1538T6354515@sky.bus.com> <363DE62A.161DFF74@trailing-edge.com>
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From: bauer@shell3.ba.best.com (Jerry Bauer)
Date: 03 Nov 1998 00:28:00 GMT
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In article <363DE62A.161DFF74@trailing-edge.com>,
Tim Shoppa  <shoppa@trailing-edge.com> wrote:
>Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> 
>> In article <71hfl8$9pv$1@news.seed.net.tw> dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx
>> (Dan Strychalski) writes:
>> 
>> >Hex should be a required part of the K-12 curriculum. Everyone should
>> >be able to understand a hex ASCII table and have the experience of
>> >changing a value and seeing program behavior change. No one is
>> >computer-literate who is not comfortable with hex.
>> 
>> Back when I was in about grade 8 (1963 or so), we got an introduction
>> to different number bases.  We started with base 4, then base 12 (the
>> book used T for 10 and E for 11).  It was enough to get a basic feel
>> for different bases (as well as modulo arithmetic), but it never went
>> beyond that.  And it certainly didn't pay enough attention to bases
>> 2, 8, and 16 - but I guess that's hindsight talking.
>
>In 1963, base 12 was a very good technical choice, far better
>than hex would've been.  Besides, most of us in North America
>do mod 12 arithmetic every day when computing time differences
>over noon :-)
>
>Tim.


In 1961, I invented the binary numbering system, along with numbering
systems for base 3 through 9.  It didn't occur to me to go beyond base
10.  I got in trouble for numbering my spelling test in binary.

Every week, in my third-grade class, we'd have two spelling tests, a
pre-test, and the real test.  Each time, the instruction was "take a
piece of paper and number the lines from one to twenty.  I had come up
with the idea to write the ones column first and the tens column
second, because it was faster.

Later, I messed around with numbering, probably when I should have
been memorizing the Presidents or something.  I began leaving off the
nine, then the eight, and so on.  When I left off the one, it became
problematic, so I stopped.

So, on the next spelling test, I left off everything except the zeros
and ones, numbering the lines in binary and earning the disapproval of
the teacher.  Oh, I was a bad one!

Admittedly, I was not the first to invent binary, and I had seen a
very nice explanation of it in "The Big Golden Book Of Mathematics" or
some such.  Even so, I clearly remember the process I went through
discovering it as I've described here.

In the sixth grade, the school I then attended had adopted the "New
Math", and I sat bored and bemused through classes taught by a teacher
who did not "get it" and probably resented having to teach it.  A
significant effort was expended and essentially wasted in this effort,
trying to teach different bases.  I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in
the class that "got it", and I already "had it".

The "New Math" was a revelation to me.  For the benefit of you
foreigners and whippersnappers out in usenet-land, here's what it was:
After the success of Sputnik, American educators decided that our
primary education should be heavier on science and mathematics.  As
part of this, educators invented the "New Math".  It was supposed to
elevate mathematics instructions out of add/subtract/multiply/divide
and expose students to the inner workings of the language.  It
included such things as other bases, modulus arithmetic, and set
theory.

It didn't work.  A conservative public didn't understand it.  The
teachers who had been in the profession for thirty years didn't
believe in it.  Whenever a politician wanted to attack a budget or
taxation proposal, it was called "new math".  It was seen as math
voodoo at worst, and as unnecessarily complicated at best.
Philistines!

Of course, I loved it.  It was like finding a home.

Jerry Randal Bauer

######

From: Scott Andrew Borton <borton@uiuc.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 3 Nov 1998 02:55:57 GMT
Organization: Mizar-5 Welcome Wagon
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Dan Strychalski <dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx> wrote:

: Hex should be a required part of the K-12 curriculum. Everyone should be
: able to understand a hex ASCII table and have the experience of changing
: a value and seeing program behavior change. No one is computer-literate 
: who is not comfortable with hex.

Sure. Why not? Let's extend this:

Car Mechanic: Everyone should learn how to rebuild a carbuerator by the
time they're in the 8th grade. Nobody can really drive a car until they
learn the inner workings of an engine. 

Linguist: Chomsky should be required reading for any secondary student.
Who can really understand language without knowing the basics of
transformational generative grammar?

Photographer: It's essential for all students to be able to explain the
chemical processes involved in photography. True appreciation of printed
images is not possible otherwise. 

It's easy for computer-oriented people to say that K-12 students should be
trained in such topics as hex ASCII tables. It's not so easy to put into
practice-- and I'm not sure that it's a good priority when education is
lacking in more fundamental respects. 


--scott

######

From: Dennis Ritchie <dmr@bell-labs.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 04:30:14 +0000
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Julian Thomas wrote (with some subquotes):
> >>    : ... learned on a machine with acoustic delay
> >>    :memory in mercury tanks consisting of 1000 words of 12 6-bit
> >>    :characters.
> >>
> >> Which one was that? ...
> 
> There were early one of a kind US machines with mercury tanks, but the
> machine in question (about the 3rd one I learned on) was unquestionably
> the Univac I.
> 
That's indeed the one I was referrering to: the first commercial
computer.

Apallingly inefficient in some ways (today one would not use
the 1000 words of memory, each 72 bits, to represent 11-digit
decimal numbers, or two instructions that each addressed the 1000
words; 12 alphanumeric characters was OK in retrospect.)

The undergrad computing course I took around 1961 had two major
lab parts, the first being plugboard wiring for analog computers,
the second a project that implemented operators that I realized
a year or so later were early APL.  The second was done on the
Univac.  Input was by writing raw machine code on paper that
was transcribed onto steel tape by a typist.  Each student had
a total of about an hour next to the Univac operator to try
the program and debug it.

In grad school (1963+), I TA'd the same course (then E.S. 110)
for three years. By then Harvard had a 7090/94, and though
conditions were still primitive (teaching assembler, Fortran
and MAD) they were considerably advanced by comparison.

As a bit of amusement, Kernighan spent a semester teaching the
direct descendant of this very same course a couple of years ago.
This time in C.
 
	Dennis

######

From: "George R. Gonzalez" <grg@foundsys.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 09:47:26 -0600
Organization: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus
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D. Peschel wrote in message <71mtuh$r30$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu>...


>It's a safe bet that the tape drive and the transcription machine had
brand
>names that started with "UNI-" since that was UNIVAC's ultra-cool
marketing
>style.  So you bought a UNIVAC with a UNITYPER and other such things.


IIRC the tape drives were "Uni-Servos".  The service guys that came out
to fix things would bring their little vacuum cleaner in to dust out the
drives--
they'd call it their "Uni-Suck".

Many years ago I worked at a place that could get Govt. Surplus equipmen
just for the cost of shipping.  Our crazy boss ordered a bunch of
Uni-Servo tape drives, thinking they could somehow be hooked up to our
little PDP-8's.  Of course the shipping charges turned out to be
horrendous-- each tape drive was about the size of a large refrigerator
and probably weighed 500 pounds each.    All this to write at, what,
556bpi?

######

From: "Samael" <Samael@dial.pipex.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 11:07:27 -0000
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Rage Matrix wrote in message <71kh6i$olb$1@saturn.bton.ac.uk>...
>However, I do wish that the primary operating system of most computers
>today wasn't Windows because I think it is too bloated for what it
>actually does. This is just my opinion, of course. As a student, I don't
>pretend to fully understand EVERYTHING about OS's, but it is my wish,
>never the less.



Windows is more bloated than it needs to be, but it is not as vastly
overbloated as some people would have you believe.  You have to bear in mind
that one of the reasons for Windows size is that it has to be backwards
compatible with Win16 programs and DOS programs.  It also provides support
for three interfaces (Win 3 (at least bits of), Win95 and IE4) and hundreds
of third party hardware items.  It also has support for different languages,
two different sorts of font types that work in different ways, etc, etc.

Yes, it is badly designed.  Yes it isn't stable enough (it's more stable on
modern hardware under a clean install, but it should cope better than it
does).  But for everyone I know, it works pretty damn well at doing all the
things they want it to.

However, the sooner everyone gets off of Win98 and onto Win2000, the happier
I'll be.

Ob:Folklore:  How old does a system have to be before it passes into
folklore?  Does DOS qualify yet?

Samael

######

From: spalding@iol.ie (Nick Spalding)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 11:40:15 GMT
Organization: Ireland On-Line
Lines: 8
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References: <7188v7$iij$1@saturn.bton.ac.uk> <36393E85.F8570D69@mcfi.org> <3639AEAD.BBC56154@bt-sys.spamblock.bt.co.uk> <363daca5.0@127.0.0.1> <71kh6i$olb$1@saturn.bton.ac.uk> <71liac$48q$1@hyperion.triode.net.au>
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Raoul Golan wrote:

> The only difference back then was that you were more limited
> by the hardware... but then, that's only relative.

The real limitation was access to the hardware.
-- 
Nick Spalding

######

From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 98 11:47:28 GMT
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In article <363E86D5.4ACA@bell-labs.com>,
   Dennis Ritchie <dmr@bell-labs.com> wrote:
>Julian Thomas wrote (with some subquotes):
>> >>    : ... learned on a machine with acoustic delay
>> >>    :memory in mercury tanks consisting of 1000 words of 12 6-bit
>> >>    :characters.
>> >>
>> >> Which one was that? ...
>> 
>> There were early one of a kind US machines with mercury tanks, but the
>> machine in question (about the 3rd one I learned on) was unquestionably
>> the Univac I.
>> 
>That's indeed the one I was referrering to: the first commercial
>computer.
>
>Apallingly inefficient in some ways (today one would not use
>the 1000 words of memory, each 72 bits, to represent 11-digit
>decimal numbers, or two instructions that each addressed the 1000
>words; 12 alphanumeric characters was OK in retrospect.)
>
>The undergrad computing course I took around 1961 had two major
>lab parts, the first being plugboard wiring for analog computers,
>the second a project that implemented operators that I realized
>a year or so later were early APL.  The second was done on the
>Univac.  Input was by writing raw machine code on paper that
>was transcribed onto steel tape by a typist.

Steel tape?  Would you mind elaborating?  I never encountered 
that media (and I thought I had done it all when grunting at my
university's computer center).  Was the configuration anything
like paper tape?  I guess one couldn't fanfold it :-).

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

######

From: dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 3 Nov 1998 12:46:09 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
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In article <71mrgs$nev$1@ligarius.ultra.net>,  <jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <363E86D5.4ACA@bell-labs.com>,
>   Dennis Ritchie <dmr@bell-labs.com> wrote:

>>The undergrad computing course I took around 1961 had two major
>>lab parts, the first being plugboard wiring for analog computers,
>>the second a project that implemented operators that I realized
>>a year or so later were early APL.  The second was done on the
>>Univac.  Input was by writing raw machine code on paper that
>>was transcribed onto steel tape by a typist.

>Steel tape?  Would you mind elaborating?  I never encountered 
>that media (and I thought I had done it all when grunting at my
>university's computer center).  Was the configuration anything
>like paper tape?  I guess one couldn't fanfold it :-).

I'm jumping in because I know a little about the topic.  The UNIVAC was way,
way before my time though.

The tape was an early form of magnetic tape.  So no, it didn't have holes
punched in it or anything exotic.  The transcription was undoubtedly done with
some kind of key-to-tape machine (also before my time, thank God).

It's a safe bet that the tape drive and the transcription machine had brand
names that started with "UNI-" since that was UNIVAC's ultra-cool marketing
style.  So you bought a UNIVAC with a UNITYPER and other such things.

I thought the tape contained some bronze too, but I don't have any references
handy to check.  I think (having glanced at the timeline of an interesting new
_Scientific American_ article about magnetic media) that coated plastic tape
had just been developed in the late 40's or early 50's.  But much of the work
on magnetic recording was being done in Germany, so it took the US time to
adapt the technology.

I hope Mr. Ritchie's reply will be much more enlightening than mine... I'm
looking forward to it.

BTW, the article begins with Poulsen's Telegraphone, which was designed as a
telephone answering machine (among other things) and used to create the first
magnetic recording -- *at the turn of the century*.  Amazing.  (It was also
rejected by the Patent Office as being "contrary to all known laws of magne-
tism", despite the fact that the working model worked.)

-- Derek

######

From: jtNOSPAM@epix.net (Julian Thomas)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 12:52:13 -0500
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In <363E86D5.4ACA@bell-labs.com>, on 11/03/98 
   at 04:30 AM, Dennis Ritchie <dmr@bell-labs.com> said:

>The undergrad computing course I took around 1961 had two major lab
>parts, the first being plugboard wiring for analog computers, the second
>a project that implemented operators that I realized a year or so later
>were early APL.  The second was done on the Univac.  Input was by writing
>raw machine code on paper that was transcribed onto steel tape by a
>typist.  Each student had a total of about an hour next to the Univac
>operator to try the program and debug it.

You had a typist for the unityper?  In my day the students typed their own
code!

>In grad school (1963+), I TA'd the same course (then E.S. 110) for three
>years. By then Harvard had a 7090/94, and though
>conditions were still primitive (teaching assembler, Fortran and MAD)
>they were considerably advanced by comparison.

I TA'd that course myself around 1958 or 59 - still Univac I days.  But
there was no analog computer at that time; the plugboard experience was
with EAM equipment.
 
-- 
 Julian Thomas: jt at epix dot net  http://home.epix.net/~jt
 Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc  http://www.possi.org
 In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
 -- --
 "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
                                         -Henry IV

######

From: jtNOSPAM@epix.net (Julian Thomas)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 12:54:24 -0500
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In <71mrgs$nev$1@ligarius.ultra.net>, on 11/03/98 
   at 11:47 AM, jmfbahciv@aol.com said:

>Steel tape?  Would you mind elaborating?  I never encountered  that media
>(and I thought I had done it all when grunting at my university's
>computer center).  Was the configuration anything like paper tape?  I
>guess one couldn't fanfold it :-).

Univac I used steel tape as magnetic tape.  The Unityper actually recorded
magnetically.
 
-- 
 Julian Thomas: jt at epix dot net  http://home.epix.net/~jt
 Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc  http://www.possi.org
 In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
 -- --
 Two wrongs are only the beginning.

######

From: jtNOSPAM@epix.net (Julian Thomas)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 12:55:46 -0500
Organization: epix Internet Services
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In <71n8or$npk$1@news1.tc.umn.edu>, on 11/03/98 
   at 09:47 AM, "George R. Gonzalez" <grg@foundsys.com> said:

>IRC the tape drives were "Uni-Servos". 

Indeed.  Sometimes one would get stuck with both the forward and backward
thyratron ON.  Fix was to unplug one (using a thick rag; they were HOT)
and then reinstall it.
 
-- 
 Julian Thomas: jt at epix dot net  http://home.epix.net/~jt
 Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc  http://www.possi.org
 In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
 -- --
 "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
                                         -Henry IV

######

From: Dan Strychalski <dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 3 Nov 1998 14:16:29 GMT
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In <news:71lrbt$pjb$1@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, Scott Borton <borton@uiuc.edu>
responded as follows to my statement that hexadecimal should be a required
part of the K-12 curriculum:

> Sure. Why not? Let's extend this:

I would prefer to extend it without unnecessary exaggeration.

> Car Mechanic: [...] Nobody can really drive a car until they learn the
> inner workings of an engine.
>
> Linguist: Chomsky should be required reading for any secondary student.
  [...]
> Photographer: It's essential for all students to be able to explain the
> chemical processes involved in photography. [...]

I was a good but not exceptional student; nevertheless, I knew something
about Chomsky, had read up on the chemical processes involved in
photography, and could describe the inner workings of an automobile
engine in great detail by the time I finished junior high school. This
does not seem out of the ordinary to me -- certainly not for anyone
hoping to go to college (which is, or at one time was, fifty percent of
high-schoolers or high-school grads or some such in the U.S.).

I have never been interested in photography, and I didn't learn to drive
until age 38 (I'm a city boy, and a cycling-and-public-transport type).

> It's easy for computer-oriented people to say that K-12 students should
> be trained in such topics as hex ASCII tables.

I'm not sure I qualify as a computer-oriented person. I majored in
Chinese and minored in French, became a translator, and eventually -- to
my complete surprise -- acquired an Apple II as a substitute for a
typewriter (I'm a night person and wanted something quiet). I used the
computer fairly happily for a year or so without knowing or wanting to
know much about it. This was in the early eighties.

Then circumstances led to my learning hex -- and I suddenly felt as
though I had been blind and now could see. The manuals I had received
with the system and found completely incomprehensible suddenly made
sense. I modified my software to suit my own preferences, and went on to
make it do things it wasn't designed to do (bitmapped graphics in CP/M
WordStar, anyone?). An opportunity to work in the IT field came along, I
grabbed it with complete confidence, and now I are a teknikul writer.

Shortly after starting my current career in the mid eighties, I had
opportunities to work with the Mac and Windows. I had heard of GUIs, and
they had seemed like an excellent idea to me -- but on the basis of my
knowledge of hex and ASCII, I firmly rejected both the Mac and Windows
on first inspection. Experience suggests that most contributors to this
newsgroup will find this a result fervently to be desired.

>                                                It's not so easy to put
> into practice-- and I'm not sure that it's a good priority when education
> is lacking in more fundamental respects.

I don't doubt that there are other necessary reforms that should be
given equal or higher priority, but I do feel that this should be given
*very* high priority. Computers and software will be more important than
cars or cameras (or telephones or televisions or radios or newspapers or
magazines) ever were.

The basic principles of computers are so simple it *hurts* -- they're
*not hard*, they're just *alien* to our usual ways of thinking. That's
why, once we "get it," those principles quickly become second nature and
we tend to forget how non-initiates view computers and computing.

Anyone can learn those principles, and on the cheapest equipment
imaginable. I believe this as strongly as I have ever believed anything
in my life: having a basic understanding of the inner workings of
computers is as important as knowing how to read and do arithmetic, and
such an understanding can be taught far more easily than reading and
arithmetic.

One more thing: throughout my schooling I was at the absolute rock
bottom of my class in math. Sure, I was in good classes, and we did
bases other than ten in high school, but I was completely at sea when we
did that work. A decade and a half later, when I had a use for hex, when
I could relate it to something in the "real world," I was *stunned* at
how easily I picked it up. Learning it opened up new worlds for me --
and I think everyone should have the same chance.

Dan Strychalski                dski at cameonet, cameo, com, tw (no _x_)
   (Apologies for the anti-spam devices and non-threading newsreader)

    A calmness came over me when I realized computers were just like
    any other machine. They just don't have grease all over them.
             -- Bill Schoolcroft, San Francisco dockyard steelworker
                <http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/story?id=363667570>

    I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the
people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise
their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
them, but to inform their discretion by education.     -- Thomas Jefferson

#######

Message-ID: <363F5CB6.40F9@gazonk.del>
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 14:42:46 -0500
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Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
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Andrew Cadley wrote:
> 
> Well if K-12 means what I think it does (Sixth formers[1]) then
> [...]

Close!  It means kindergarten through twelfth grade (what you call sixth
form).  "K-12" has become a common net abbreviation for all pre-college
education ever since the creation of the top-level domain, k12.

######

From: James Ellingsen <jime@shell11.ba.best.com>
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
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> : Hex should be a required part of the K-12 curriculum. Everyone should be
> : able to understand a hex ASCII table and have the experience of changing
> : a value and seeing program behavior change. No one is computer-literate 
> : who is not comfortable with hex.

Hex and octal were certainly part of the K-12 curriculum when I was going to 
school in the 1960s.  I remember learning to do arithmetic in different bases
in 8th grade.

######

From: "Samael" <Samael@dial.pipex.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 15:27:41 -0000
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Dan Strychalski wrote in message <71n37t$4nq$1@news.seed.net.tw>...
>One more thing: throughout my schooling I was at the absolute rock
>bottom of my class in math. Sure, I was in good classes, and we did
>bases other than ten in high school, but I was completely at sea when we
>did that work. A decade and a half later, when I had a use for hex, when
>I could relate it to something in the "real world," I was *stunned* at
>how easily I picked it up. Learning it opened up new worlds for me --
>and I think everyone should have the same chance.


I agree.  People learn much, much faster when they have an application for
their knowledge.

I spend two years not understanding calculus until the teacher finally said
'Here is how we use calculus to calculate the angle of a curve'. and 'pow' I
understaood how it worked.

Samael

######

From: "Andrew Cadley" <a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 15:54:33 -0000
Organization: University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, NR47TJ, UK
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Jerry Bauer wrote in message <363e4e10$0$29764@nntp1.ba.best.com>...

:When I left off the one, it became
:problematic, so I stopped.


Ohh Peano arithmetic, now *that* is fun.

I don't think. ;-)

AndyC


######

From: "Andrew Cadley" <a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 16:00:43 -0000
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Scott Andrew Borton wrote in message <71lrbt$pjb$1@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>...

:It's easy for computer-oriented people to say that K-12 students should be
:trained in such topics as hex ASCII tables. It's not so easy to put into
:practice-- and I'm not sure that it's a good priority when education is
:lacking in more fundamental respects.


Well if K-12 means what I think it does (Sixth formers[1]) then at least
those studying computing should be able to understand hex. Hex (and indeed
Binary) should be part of any A-level type curriculum on computing.

[1]Yikes, only 21 and already thinking in terms of "old" numbering systems.
Sixth formers, for those who don't know, are those aged 16+ and at college
or possibly high school.

AndyC

######

From: Dan Strychalski <dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 3 Nov 1998 16:14:39 GMT
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James Ellingsen <jime@shell11.ba.best.com> wrote --

> Hex and octal were certainly part of the K-12 curriculum when I was going
> to school in the 1960s.  I remember learning to do arithmetic in different
> bases in 8th grade.

I vaguely recall doing base 5, *maybe* a bit of binary ;-) and base 8.
I'm not the type who enjoys math for math's sake, and it seemed useless,
unconnected with anything. Long, long afterward, when I realized that
the funny numbers in my computer manuals were base 16 and I saw the
elegance of ASCII and learned to make useful patches, I thought, WOW,
this ROCKS.

Nowadays I meet thirtyish folk who *took computer courses* in high
school but have no idea what they're looking at when I show them a hex
dump (I did this when one such guy asked me how I'd recovered stuff from
a file of his that had gone blooey). Something is very, very wrong here.

Dan Strychalski                dski at cameonet, cameo, com, tw (no _x_)
   (Apologies for the anti-spam devices and non-threading newsreader)

######

From: fms@cs.umd.edu (Marat Fayzullin)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 3 Nov 1998 16:23:40 GMT
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Scott Andrew Borton (borton@uiuc.edu) wrote:
: Sure. Why not? Let's extend this:

: Car Mechanic: Everyone should learn how to rebuild a carbuerator by the
: time they're in the 8th grade. Nobody can really drive a car until they
: learn the inner workings of an engine. 
I think you take it too far: not all american car mechanics know how to do
this kind of stuff. The oil change instructions are quite in order for an
8-grader though, if he is expected to drive a car for the rest of his
life. 

: Linguist: Chomsky should be required reading for any secondary student.
: Who can really understand language without knowing the basics of
: transformational generative grammar?
Again, you are taking it too far.

: Photographer: It's essential for all students to be able to explain the
: chemical processes involved in photography. True appreciation of printed
: images is not possible otherwise. 
This is completely correct (except for the true appreciation part) and
should be given during the course of Chemistry. As a matter of fact,
I think it is done in Russian schools (either in Physics, when they
learn Optics, or Chemistry, when they learn Industrial Processes,
but probably the first).

: It's easy for computer-oriented people to say that K-12 students should be
: trained in such topics as hex ASCII tables. It's not so easy to put into
: practice-- and I'm not sure that it's a good priority when education is
: lacking in more fundamental respects. 
Well, the "ASCII" term made it into Webster Dictionary now. As to the
education, it is simply too time consuming to list all the aspects in
which American K-12 education is lacking. School which alows a student to
evade Physics or Chemistry classes *completely* does not deserve to be
called a school. 

######

Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 16:47:21 -0500
From: karl@simons-rock.edu (Karl A. Krueger)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Message-ID: <karl-0311981647210001@karl.simons-rock.edu>
References: <363C1463.2BA1@bell-labs.com> <363e2c79$7$wg$mr2ice@news.epix.net> <363E86D5.4ACA@bell-labs.com> <71mrgs$nev$1@ligarius.ultra.net> <71mtuh$r30$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu>
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In article <71mtuh$r30$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu>,
dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel) wrote:
> It's a safe bet that the tape drive and the transcription machine had brand
> names that started with "UNI-" since that was UNIVAC's ultra-cool marketing
> style.  So you bought a UNIVAC with a UNITYPER and other such things.

What I want to know is, if your program crashed, did that make you the
UNIBOMBER?

(Sorry.)

-- 
Karl A. Krueger
#include <disclaimer.h>

######

From: ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 3 Nov 1998 16:52:54 GMT
Organization: The National Capital FreeNet
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Dan Strychalski (dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx) writes:
> James Ellingsen <jime@shell11.ba.best.com> wrote --
> 
>> Hex and octal were certainly part of the K-12 curriculum when I was going
>> to school in the 1960s.  I remember learning to do arithmetic in different
>> bases in 8th grade.
> 
> I vaguely recall doing base 5, *maybe* a bit of binary ;-) and base 8.
> I'm not the type who enjoys math for math's sake, and it seemed useless,
> unconnected with anything. Long, long afterward, when I realized that
> the funny numbers in my computer manuals were base 16 and I saw the
> elegance of ASCII and learned to make useful patches, I thought, WOW,
> this ROCKS.
[snip] 
  
  In the late 60's, when I was in Gr. 12 or 13, and at a time when
  just to see a computer was worth a class trip, I'd read that the
  SAME computer could do both binary and decimal arithmetic.  So
  one day I asked my math teacher how that was done.  Not a clue.
  Starting in 1970, many's the time I pored over a hex dump trying
  to find the cause of a S0C7 on the /360 line!

######

From: joet@jtcs.net (joet)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 16:17:24 -0500
Organization: jtcs
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In article <71n37t$4nq$1@news.seed.net.tw>, dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx 
says...
 
> The basic principles of computers are so simple it *hurts* -- they're
> *not hard*, they're just *alien* to our usual ways of thinking. That's
> why, once we "get it," those principles quickly become second nature and
> we tend to forget how non-initiates view computers and computing.

The "non-initiates" pool gets larger and larger as a technology becomes 
more common and easier to use.  Thank god I don't have to grow wheat and 
raise chickens to have breakfast.

How many people in a society really *have* to know how a printing press 
works?  Computers are on the fast track to becoming as useful and 
ubiquitous as books.  To paraphrase, "It's the interface, stupid!"  
That's all you need to know to make effective use something once it's 
perfected.

Sure, some people (like myself) appreciate knowing low and mid level 
science and manufacturing techniques, but there's a big difference 
between hobbies and survival skills.

At one time, 100% of all programmers knew and used assembly language.  
Unix comes along and look what happens.

-joet

######

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
References: <71hfl8$9pv$1@news.seed.net.tw> <71lrbt$pjb$1@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
	<71namc$f5h$1@cronkite.cs.umd.edu>
From: Charlton W Wilbur <cwwilbur@wilde.oit.umass.edu>
Date: 03 Nov 1998 17:42:45 -0500
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fms@cs.umd.edu (Marat Fayzullin) writes:


> Well, the "ASCII" term made it into Webster Dictionary now. As to the
> education, it is simply too time consuming to list all the aspects in
> which American K-12 education is lacking. School which alows a student to
> evade Physics or Chemistry classes *completely* does not deserve to be
> called a school. 

Let's not be biased in favor of SCIENCE!, please.  (I'm not saying
that you are, but I want to stop it before it starts.)  I don't
consider anyone who can't discuss science at a _Scientific American_
level educated, true, and I'll grant you that point.  On the other
hand, neither do I consider someone educated who can't get something
out of Shakespeare, Beethoven, Monet, Yeats, or Dickens, who only
speaks English, or who can't place the Renaissance in the right
century.  Compared to education in the arts and humanities, American
education in the hard sciences is of amazingly high quality.

It's true that you can get a high school degree without taking
chemistry or physics -- I almost managed to evade chemistry in favor
of two years of physics -- but it's also true, sadly, that you can get
a high school degree without even having the *option* of taking a
music theory, music history, or art history course, or without being
fluent in a second language.

The value of something is only rarely directly related to how much you
can get paid for doing it.  I wish more people realized that.

Charlton 

######

From: Charles Richmond <richmond@plano.net>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 22:18:02 +0000
Organization: Cannine Computer Center
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Dan Strychalski wrote:
> 
>     [snip...]     [snip...]    [snip...]
> 
> The basic principles of computers are so simple it *hurts* -- they're
> *not hard*, they're just *alien* to our usual ways of thinking. That's
> why, once we "get it," those principles quickly become second nature and
> we tend to forget how non-initiates view computers and computing.
> 
> Anyone can learn those principles, and on the cheapest equipment
> imaginable. I believe this as strongly as I have ever believed anything
> in my life: having a basic understanding of the inner workings of
> computers is as important as knowing how to read and do arithmetic, and
> such an understanding can be taught far more easily than reading and
> arithmetic.
>
And do *not* leave out---it is so much *fun* to learn and use computers on
this level!!!  I spent some of my happiest and most contented moments
twiddling bits, hand-assembling code, poking values into memory, and generally
making my little microcomputer do a lot of interesting (to me) things.  I got
feelings of intense satisfaction by mastering small parts of this interesting
little machine.  It had the effect at times of centering my thoughts and
feelings, and helping me feel at peace with the world.  There are a couple of
nights I spent computing (twenty years ago, I might add) that I still recall
vividly and with great fondness.
> 
> One more thing: throughout my schooling I was at the absolute rock
> bottom of my class in math. Sure, I was in good classes, and we did
> bases other than ten in high school, but I was completely at sea when we
> did that work. A decade and a half later, when I had a use for hex, when
> I could relate it to something in the "real world," I was *stunned* at
> how easily I picked it up. Learning it opened up new worlds for me --
> and I think everyone should have the same chance.
> 
Seeing how something is useful can *greatly* facilitate the learning and
retention of knowledge.  In the 60's and 70's, students wanted their education
to be "relevant".  Same thing.

-- 
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Charles and Francis Richmond     <richmond@plano.net>   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+

######

From: Charles Richmond <richmond@plano.net>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 22:23:26 +0000
Organization: Cannine Computer Center
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lisard@zetnet.co.uk wrote:
> 
>     [anip...]     [anip...]     [snip...]
> 
> Mercury was the memory for the Pilot ACE (and the full ACE too, I
> believe), leading to a contorted scheme of "optimal programming" which
> relied on knowing that the delay was 32 words in the main lines, and 1
> word (maybe more?) in the short accumulator lines. Since the Pilot ACE
> had a serial arithmetic unit, the restriction to serial memory devices
> wouldn't have been too terrible a problem.
> 
I am sure that I read that the EDVAC (I am *not* talking about the EDSAC)
built at Princeton by Von Neumann had mercury delay lines.  I believe that was
somewhere around 1950.  I also recall reading that J. Presper Eckert (of ENIAC
fame) did some design work on mercury delay lines, perhaps for the
Eckert-Mauckly Computer Company.

-- 
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Charles and Francis Richmond     <richmond@plano.net>   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+

######

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: eric@fudge.uchicago.edu (Eric Fischer)
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: fudge.uchicago.edu
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D. Peschel <dpeschel@u.washington.edu> wrote:

> I'm jumping in because I know a little about the topic.  The UNIVAC was way,
> way before my time though.
> 
> The tape was an early form of magnetic tape.  So no, it didn't have holes
> punched in it or anything exotic.

Actually, it *did* have holes punched in it, but for error correction,
not for data!  From "The UNIVAC System":

   The tape is metal base and we put a magnetic plating on it.
   We do have pin holes, and other defects in the tape but we
   take care of them by punching out the occasional bad spots
   on the tape, before the tape gets to UNIVAC.

(proceedings of the 1952 Eastern Joint Computer Conference, p. 16)

eric

######

From: jvarela@mind.spring.com (John Varela)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 3 Nov 1998 22:59:05 GMT
Organization: MindSpring Enterprises
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On Mon, 2 Nov 1998 18:35:30, "Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@sky.bus.com> wrote:

> Back when I was in about grade 8 (1963 or so), we got an introduction
> to different number bases.  We started with base 4, then base 12 

In 1960 I took a course in assembler programming and the instructor started by 
teaching us binary and octal arithmetic.  I had two engineering degrees from MIT
-- and my classmates were similarly well educated -- and none of us knew any 
number system but decimal.

--  
    John "didn't take the new math" Varela
    (delete . between mind and spring to e-mail me)

######

From: dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 3 Nov 1998 23:39:50 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
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In article <71n37t$4nq$1@news.seed.net.tw>,
Dan Strychalski  <dski@cameonet.cameo.com.twx> wrote:

>Then circumstances led to my learning hex -- and I suddenly felt as
>though I had been blind and now could see. The manuals I had received
>with the system and found completely incomprehensible suddenly made
>sense. I modified my software to suit my own preferences, and went on to
>make it do things it wasn't designed to do (bitmapped graphics in CP/M
>WordStar, anyone?). An opportunity to work in the IT field came along, I
>grabbed it with complete confidence, and now I are a teknikul writer.

Did you get WordStar to recognize the sizes of the bitmap graphics?  It's
relatively easy to trick WordStar into printing stuff it doesn't know about;
what's harder is to get it to know as well as printing.  (The canonical
example seems to be proportional spacing -- the program just wasn't designed
with it in mind, and I hear that a lot of the "Add proportional spacing to
WordStar" programs are rather ugly hacks.  You'd need to rewrite the formatting
routines to do it right.)

>The basic principles of computers are so simple it *hurts* -- they're
>*not hard*, they're just *alien* to our usual ways of thinking. That's
>why, once we "get it," those principles quickly become second nature and
>we tend to forget how non-initiates view computers and computing.

And those are...?  Since you didn't say, I can only guess.  Are you thinking
of the way computers mindlessly/logically/predictably/endlessly obey their
programmed instructions?  And the way that just because you want a computer to
work a certain way doesn't mean it will?

Actually, I think that modern software may complicate things by making the
computer look more intelligent... the problem is that you don't always get the
same results.  (e.g., with a wierdly designed spelling checker, or some sort
of conversational agent)

>Anyone can learn those principles, and on the cheapest equipment
>imaginable. I believe this as strongly as I have ever believed anything
>in my life: having a basic understanding of the inner workings of
>computers is as important as knowing how to read and do arithmetic, and
>such an understanding can be taught far more easily than reading and
>arithmetic.

I enjoyed seeing lots of 80's home computers at the Vintage Computer Festival
(in San Jose, Sept. 26-27).  I wish more people had come, but I hope the
novices that came had a mini-epiphany. :)

>One more thing: throughout my schooling I was at the absolute rock
>bottom of my class in math. Sure, I was in good classes, and we did
>bases other than ten in high school, but I was completely at sea when we
>did that work. A decade and a half later, when I had a use for hex, when
>I could relate it to something in the "real world," I was *stunned* at
>how easily I picked it up. Learning it opened up new worlds for me --
>and I think everyone should have the same chance.

As you point out, it can be difficult to motivate people.  Can you think of
anything that might have made you understand the subject the first time you
learned it (in school) instead of the second time (later on)?

You make good points, but I always like discussing details and playing with
ideas, which is why I replied in this way.

-- Derek

######

From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 4 Nov 1998 00:04:58 GMT
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On 1998-11-02 ariels@compugen.co.il said:
   :Being 27, I think I can chip in with something here.  Turing (?)
   :designed (at Manchester (?)) a machine called either Pilot or Ace.

Turing designed, in 1945 I believe, a machine called the ACE. What the A
stood for I have no idea, but the other two initials were Computing
Engine. Then he gravitated to NPL, where a Pilot ACE was begun, but he
left after encountering friction with some of the other staff (he was
apparently not the easiest of men to get along with), thence going (I
believe) to Manchester and doing early programming work on the Mark I
there. He also investigated what could now be called the concept of
genetic programming (small fragments of code that could be assembled to
produce any program, similar to Forth in concept) and said some
uncomplimentary things about the introduction of microcode into the
EDSAC II.

   :A few years back I read a book containing the original design for
   :the machine.  I don't remember too many details (not even if it was
   :built), but I seem to remember mercury (acoustic) delay lines being
   :one of the "features"...

Mercury was the memory for the Pilot ACE (and the full ACE too, I
believe), leading to a contorted scheme of "optimal programming" which
relied on knowing that the delay was 32 words in the main lines, and 1
word (maybe more?) in the short accumulator lines. Since the Pilot ACE
had a serial arithmetic unit, the restriction to serial memory devices
wouldn't have been too terrible a problem.

The first commercial English Electric computer was derived from this
project, incidentally; it was the DEUCE, which was notable also for
being the first commercial computer (in England, certainly) which had a
"modular" construction. That led to the valve count almost doubling, but
made blown valves far easier to manage.

It's quite interesting to see how the design efforts at various
universities and other research establishments resulted in commercial
offspring in this country:

Manchester Mark I ----->  Ferranti Mark I
Cambridge EDSAC   ----->  Lyons LEO I
NPL Pilot ACE     ----->  English Electric DEUCE
London APE(R)C    ----->  BTM 1200 series

Then you had the notable pioneering companies, such as Elliott.

Incidentally, can anyone supply any further details on the APE(R)C? When
I read of it, I was impressed by the concept of one man working alone
and in the absence of much funding, creating small computers. This one
had apparently half the valve count of its contemporaries, and a drum
for its main memory, but more I don't know.
--
Communa (together) we remember...             we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing             to sing within her...

######

From: fms@cs.umd.edu (Marat Fayzullin)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 4 Nov 1998 00:19:50 GMT
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Charlton W Wilbur (cwwilbur@wilde.oit.umass.edu) wrote:
: Let's not be biased in favor of SCIENCE!, please.  (I'm not saying
: that you are, but I want to stop it before it starts.)  I don't
: consider anyone who can't discuss science at a _Scientific American_
: level educated, true, and I'll grant you that point.  On the other
: hand, neither do I consider someone educated who can't get something
: out of Shakespeare, Beethoven, Monet, Yeats, or Dickens, who only
: speaks English, or who can't place the Renaissance in the right
: century.  Compared to education in the arts and humanities, American
: education in the hard sciences is of amazingly high quality.
Well, there is nothing in your words which I can argue with.

: The value of something is only rarely directly related to how much you
: can get paid for doing it.  I wish more people realized that.
You don't get paid much for pure chemistry or physics nowadays.

######

From: dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 4 Nov 1998 00:28:42 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
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In article <71o5na$tpr$4@irk.zetnet.co.uk>,  <lisard@zetnet.co.uk> wrote:

>Turing designed, in 1945 I believe, a machine called the ACE. What the A
>stood for I have no idea, but the other two initials were Computing
>Engine. Then he gravitated to NPL, where a Pilot ACE was begun, but he

Automatic, I think.

>apparently not the easiest of men to get along with), thence going (I
>believe) to Manchester and doing early programming work on the Mark I
>there. He also investigated what could now be called the concept of
>genetic programming (small fragments of code that could be assembled to
>produce any program, similar to Forth in concept) and said some
>uncomplimentary things about the introduction of microcode into the
>EDSAC II.

I thought the original EDSAC also had microcode.

Anyway, as you pointed out in another post, he was adamant that his clunky
unintuitive interface to the Mark I (?) (use the teleprinter code, which was
already pretty bizarre, directly as opcodes and data; suffer with paged
memory and no relocation) was more worthwhile than Wilke's elegane interface
to the EDSAC (a less bizarre teleprinter code; letting opcodes be arbitrary
to suit the character code, thanks to microcode; a useful relocation and
loading program that would always work if you made a fresh copy from ROM).

In other words, he was obviously quite stubborn and perhaps figured that if
HE could handle it, everyone should be able to.  People may downplay the
relation between his Bletchley work and his later work, but I wonder about
some relationship (at least in spirit).

But I think it was von Neumann, not Turing, who said, "Why are you wasting
such valuable hardware?  Get back to your number-crunching." (more or less)
when shown an early assembler program.

-- Derek

######

From: hnsngr@sirius.com (Ron Hunsinger)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 00:48:43 -0800
Organization: ErsteSoft
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In article <363f20ee.0@127.0.0.1>, "Samael" <Samael@dial.pipex.com> wrote:

> I agree.  People learn much, much faster when they have an application for
> their knowledge.
> 
> I spend two years not understanding calculus until the teacher finally said
> 'Here is how we use calculus to calculate the angle of a curve'. and 'pow' I

When I was in first grade (first year of "real" school, usually at age 6,
for the non-'Merkins out there), we had a substitute teacher one day. She
mentioned to us that she usually taught 3rd grade, and somebody asked her
what was different about 1st and 3rd grade.

She said that, for example, in Math instead of studying addition the 3rd
graders were studying multiplication. That led to the inevitable "what's
multiplication?" question.

She decide to explain it by example. Holding the U.S. flag out straight
(there was always a flag in every classroom), she said "Suppose we wanted
to know how many stars there are on the flag. We could count them..." and
she started to count across the top row "...1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8". Being
full of myself, I was trying to count faster than she could, so by the time
she had finished the first row, I was already beginning the second. I heard
her continue "... and counting down, we get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 rows." This
was odd, but I wasn't to be distracted. I was well into the third row when
she said "and 6 times 8 is 48, so there are 48 stars on the flag."

I remember being blown away. I wasn't even close to half way, and she was
already done. I said to myself "Whoa! I want to learn how to do that!" I
went home and made my older brother, in 3rd grade, teach me multiplication.
A week later, I went to my 5th grade brother, and made him teach me
division. It was all easy, because I UNDERSTOOD WHAT IT WAS FOR.
Multiplication was to compute area, and it was a heck of a lot faster than
counting.


The other thing you need to learn anything is, you have to believe it. If
you don't believe something, you can't learn it. Or at least I can't.

I couldn't learn FORTRAN at first, because the one thing I understood
intuitively about computers was that they were stupid. I couldn't believe a
computer could understand FORTRAN, and without that belief I couldn't learn
it.

Machine language was another matter. The IBM 1620 Principles of Operations
manual made imminent sense, right from the beginning. It started with an
explanation of how core memory worked, how bits were put together to make
digits, how digits were put together to make numbers and instructions. I
could believe it, so it was easy to learn.

Afterwards, things in the FORTRAN manual that didn't make sense before
suddenly did. The difference between INTEGER and FLOAT (this was FORTRAN
II, so it wasn't REAL yet) reflected the two different internal number
representations, and their corresponding different machine language
instructions. Before, I couldn't understand the problem with mixed mode
arithmetic, because I couldn't believe it made any difference. Now, I
understood that the machine language instructions were different, and
that's why you couldn't add an INTEGER to a FLOAT. That was enough to let
me suspend my disbelief long enough to learn it.

And I took the final step on the day I was casting about for an ambitious
project to do (in machine language), and it occured to me that I could
write a program to translate FORTRAN into machine language. In a sudden
flash of insight, I realized that someone had already done it. And that
removed my final doubts about FORTRAN. I finally believed that a computer
could understand it.


The same thing happened later when I tried to learn semiconductors. The
initial descriptions of transistors I heard neglected to mention the
physical geometry. Without that, I couldn't understand how a transistor
could possibly do any of the magical things it was supposed to be able to
do. And, not being able to believe in transistors, I couldn't understand
amplifiers, gates, flip-flops, or any of the other things built from them.

Then one morning, laying in bed, I saw in my mind a transistor, and watched
the minority carriers in the base wandering around, sometimes combining
with majority carriers, sometimes wandering close to the base-collector
junction and being swept across. And for the first time, I realized how the
SHAPE of the transistor affects the relative odds of those outcomes, and
how that explains how a transistor works.

When I got up, I pulled out all the circuit diagrams that had seemed so
non-sensical before, and lo and behold they now all made perfect sense. All
because I now BELIEVED in transistors.

-Ron Hunsinger

######

From: william.hamblen@nashville.com (William Hamblen)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 01:57:27 GMT
Organization: utterly disorganized
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On Tue, 3 Nov 1998 11:07:27 -0000, "Samael" <Samael@dial.pipex.com>
wrote:

>Ob:Folklore:  How old does a system have to be before it passes into
>folklore?  Does DOS qualify yet?

It's not folkloric so long at it can be bought off the shelf.  IBM
sells PC-DOS 2000 and Caldera DR-DOS 7.02 nowadays. 

######

From: william.hamblen@nashville.com (William Hamblen)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 01:57:28 GMT
Organization: utterly disorganized
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On Tue, 03 Nov 98 11:47:28 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

>Steel tape?  Would you mind elaborating?  I never encountered 
>that media (and I thought I had done it all when grunting at my
>university's computer center).  Was the configuration anything
>like paper tape?  I guess one couldn't fanfold it :-).

Univac once used ferromagnetic alloy tape.  I guess the alloy was
similar to the one used for wire recorders.  The operator must have
got quite a workout mounting and unmounting those reels.

######

From: Dennis Ritchie <dmr@bell-labs.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 02:47:30 +0000
Organization: Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies
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Julian Thomas and others (e.g. Peschel) confirmed the
memory of steel tape on Univac I.  I was only a student
and a user.  But the technology was a precursor more to
today's (or yesterday's) magtape than to paper tape.
It was on reels, not fan-folded; written in blocks
or records; and did use refrigerator-sized tape drives.
I don't think they used vacuum-column mechanisms (which
came to their own for light per unit-length plastic
oxide-coated tape) but I could be wrong here.

If it had holes punched in it, I don't remember them,
at least for information carriage.  It might well be
that there were beginning- or end-of-tape indicators
done this way, or even small nasty bits chopped out.

It could indeed be generated by direct key-to-tape
machines.  (I remembered the term "Unityper" or
approximate but wasn't sure enough to include it.)

	Dennis

######

From: Kin Hoong CHUNG <khchung@maths.unsw.edu.au>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 4 Nov 1998 08:19:12 GMT
Organization: University of New South Wales
Lines: 16
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lisard@zetnet.co.uk wrote:


: Turing designed, in 1945 I believe, a machine called the ACE. What the A
: stood for I have no idea, but the other two initials were Computing
: Engine. Then he gravitated to NPL, where a Pilot ACE was begun, but he
: left after encountering friction with some of the other staff (he was
: apparently not the easiest of men to get along with), thence going (I

Well, from what I was told by Peter Hilton (at a talk), Turing was not
hard to get along with, but then Peter Hilton is a mathematician, rather
than a computer scientist (and this probably made a huge difference).

Cheers,

Kin Hoong

######

From: Kin Hoong CHUNG <khchung@maths.unsw.edu.au>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 4 Nov 1998 08:25:21 GMT
Organization: University of New South Wales
Lines: 16
Message-ID: <71p31h$pcn$2@mirv.unsw.edu.au>
References: <71hfl8$9pv$1@news.seed.net.tw> <1321.610T1538T6354515@sky.bus.com> <363DE62A.161DFF74@trailing-edge.com> <363e4e10$0$29764@nntp1.ba.best.com> <71n92q$2o8@cpca3.uea.ac.uk>
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Andrew Cadley <a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk> wrote:

: Jerry Bauer wrote in message <363e4e10$0$29764@nntp1.ba.best.com>...

: :When I left off the one, it became
: :problematic, so I stopped.

: Ohh Peano arithmetic, now *that* is fun.
: I don't think. ;-)

Should I mention epsilons and deltas?  Peano arithmetic is painful, but
it was easier than finding the appropriate delta for the #$%&* epsilon.

Cheers,

Kin Hoong

######

From: bill_h <bill_h@azstarnet.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 08:26:43 -0800
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Ron Hunsinger wrote:
.......
> Then one morning, laying in bed, I saw in my mind a transistor, and watched
> the minority carriers in the base wandering around, sometimes combining
> with majority carriers, sometimes wandering close to the base-collector
> junction and being swept across. And for the first time, I realized how the
> SHAPE of the transistor affects the relative odds of those outcomes, and
> how that explains how a transistor works.
> 
> When I got up, I pulled out all the circuit diagrams that had seemed so
> non-sensical before, and lo and behold they now all made perfect sense. All
> because I now BELIEVED in transistors.

please..........PLEASE!  don't tell me now that you believe in
ALIENS!!!!!!!

you're a sorta spooky guy!

Bill
Tucson

######

From: shokwave@well.com (Rob Hafernik)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 10:58:11 -0600
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<snip>
 
> The other thing you need to learn anything is, you have to believe it. If
> you don't believe something, you can't learn it. Or at least I can't.
> 
> I couldn't learn FORTRAN at first, because the one thing I understood
> intuitively about computers was that they were stupid. I couldn't believe a
> computer could understand FORTRAN, and without that belief I couldn't learn
> it.

Well, I'm not sure I BELIEVE in FORTRAN to this day... <g>

<SNIP>
> 
> Afterwards, things in the FORTRAN manual that didn't make sense before
> suddenly did. The difference between INTEGER and FLOAT (this was FORTRAN
> II, so it wasn't REAL yet) reflected the two different internal number
> representations, and their corresponding different machine language
> instructions. Before, I couldn't understand the problem with mixed mode
> arithmetic, because I couldn't believe it made any difference. Now, I
> understood that the machine language instructions were different, and
> that's why you couldn't add an INTEGER to a FLOAT. That was enough to let
> me suspend my disbelief long enough to learn it.
> 
> And I took the final step on the day I was casting about for an ambitious
> project to do (in machine language), and it occured to me that I could
> write a program to translate FORTRAN into machine language. In a sudden
> flash of insight, I realized that someone had already done it. And that
> removed my final doubts about FORTRAN. I finally believed that a computer
> could understand it.

A similar thing happened for me.  I had been writing C code for years, but
I was always nervous about pointers and addresses and arrays and things. 
Somehow, I just couldn't be comfortable using them.

Then, I went to work for a company that was producing a COMPILER. 
Suddenly, I was exposed (boy, was I ever exposed) to the inner workings of
the compiler and what it DID with those pointers and arrays and things.

Once I got an understanding of what was going on under the hood, all of it
made perfect sense.  Hell, by understanding what the parser had to go
through to figure out the statements, you could even understand WHY some
of the dopey sytax was the way it was.  Lightbulb time!

I don't think you can be completely at home in a language until you've
understood how the compiler translates it to assembly.  You don't have to
know every detail, but an understanding of the basics really helps.

######

From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 98 13:09:57 GMT
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In article <363FC042.2777@bell-labs.com>,
   Dennis Ritchie <dmr@bell-labs.com> wrote:
>Julian Thomas and others (e.g. Peschel) confirmed the
>memory of steel tape on Univac I.  I was only a student
>and a user.  But the technology was a precursor more to
>today's (or yesterday's) magtape than to paper tape.

Yes, in hindsight, it's obvious it would have been magtape.
I used to maintain the backup program for our OS and have
earned a prejudice against the beasts, causing a memory block.

>It was on reels, not fan-folded; written in blocks
>or records; and did use refrigerator-sized tape drives.

I suppose I assumed paper tape as a simile because I didn't
think one could magnetize steel.  It would also be interesting
to have somebody explain how (or if) data corrections were done.
There were always unofficial tricks of the trade for cards, 
paper tape, etc.  It would also be interesting to learn the
hazards of working with the media (e.g., cards produced wickedly
sharp chad).  Oh, yeah, how robust was the data retention of
the media?  

>I don't think they used vacuum-column mechanisms (which
>came to their own for light per unit-length plastic
>oxide-coated tape) but I could be wrong here.

That would be interesting to know.  My very first magtape
encounter at college was a TU-10, god's gift to man to 
prove there is a hell.  In all of our [my company's] magtape 
drive development, it seems that the coordination of both hubs
was always the show stopper.

>
>If it had holes punched in it, I don't remember them,
>at least for information carriage.  It might well be
>that there were beginning- or end-of-tape indicators
>done this way, or even small nasty bits chopped out.
>
>It could indeed be generated by direct key-to-tape
>machines.  (I remembered the term "Unityper" or
>approximate but wasn't sure enough to include it.)

I appreciated all that delicious cybercrud that this
media apprently generated :-).  There had to have been
some really good puns.

Thanks for mentioning it.  It's real nice to know that
I don't know all about it...yet :-).

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

######

From: cpierce1@mail.ford.com (Clinton Pierce)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 15:46:05 GMT
Organization: Ford Motor Company
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Message-ID: <364273e4.3151509@news.ford.com>
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On Wed, 04 Nov 1998 00:48:43 -0800, hnsngr@sirius.com (Ron Hunsinger)
wrote:

>In article <363f20ee.0@127.0.0.1>, "Samael" <Samael@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>> I agree.  People learn much, much faster when they have an application for
>> their knowledge.
>> 
>> I spend two years not understanding calculus until the teacher finally said
>> 'Here is how we use calculus to calculate the angle of a curve'. and 'pow' I
>
>I remember being blown away. I wasn't even close to half way, and she was
>already done. I said to myself "Whoa! I want to learn how to do that!" I
>went home and made my older brother, in 3rd grade, teach me multiplication.
>A week later, I went to my 5th grade brother, and made him teach me
>division. It was all easy, because I UNDERSTOOD WHAT IT WAS FOR.
>Multiplication was to compute area, and it was a heck of a lot faster than
>counting.

Agreed, 100%.  To continue on multiplication, when I learned
multiplication I thought it was nonsense, useless, and just didn't get
it.  Then my class started getting worksheets that looked like this:

(cue the monospace font)

	    10
        ##########
    4   ##########    10 x 4 = 40.
        ##########
        ##########

CLICK.  Multiplication made sense.  I'm dismayed, however, that some 
school materials now don't approach multiplication in this visual sort
of way.  Rote tables, meaningless numbers.  No sense of scale.  No
wonder some kids from my generation (I'm 30) and younger rely so heavily
on calculators.  They don't have a clue what this stuff is for.

As an aside, I STILL haven't gotten around to memorizing the
multiplication tables completely.  :-)  7x6?  Hell, I dunno.  But
7x3 is 21, 3x2 is 6, so 21x2 is 42.  My brain just isn't wired for 
multiplication unless I think of it as a series of additions.  And if it
weren't for Schoolhouse Rock, I'm convinced that I wouldn't know any
shortcuts, and have to start adding from 0.  

-- 
"If you rush a Miracle Man, you get rotten miracles"
                     --Miracle Max, The Princess Bride
DNRC: "Grand Inquisitor of Out At 5 Doctrine"  06/96

######

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
References: <71n37t$4nq$1@news.seed.net.tw> <363f20ee.0@127.0.0.1> <hnsngr-ya023180000411980048430001@news.sirius.com> <364273e4.3151509@news.ford.com>
Organization: Plethora Internet
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From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach)
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Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 17:22:28 GMT
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In article <364273e4.3151509@news.ford.com>,
Clinton Pierce <cpierce1@mail.ford.com> wrote:
>CLICK.  Multiplication made sense.  I'm dismayed, however, that some 
>school materials now don't approach multiplication in this visual sort
>of way.  Rote tables, meaningless numbers.

I never got the visual stuff.  The rote tables for 1..9x1..9 are actually
very useful; I need to be able to do that without thinking to do larger
numbers in my head.

I dunno.  Multiplication was never confusing.  I was raised by mathematicians,
so I don't expect things to correspond to the outside world.

-s
-- 
Copyright 1998, All rights reserved.  Peter Seebach / seebs@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter.  Boycott Spamazon!
Seeking interesting programming projects.  Not interested in commuting.
Visit my new ISP <URL:http://www.plethora.net/> --- More Net, Less Spam!

######

From: Kin Hoong CHUNG <khchung@maths.unsw.edu.au>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: 5 Nov 1998 03:48:38 GMT
Organization: University of New South Wales
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <71r76m$42$1@mirv.unsw.edu.au>
References: <71hjqj$r98@cpca3.uea.ac.uk> <19981101191139.23615.00002694@ng-fb1.aol.com> <363d2db0.8691771@news.tct.net> <71kk8l$dgk@cpca3.uea.ac.uk>
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Andrew Cadley <a.p.cadley@uea.ac.uk> wrote:

: daveva#earthling.net (Dave Vandervies) wrote in message
: <363d2db0.8691771@news.tct.net>...
: :This is what I would have liked to get started with.  I cut my teeth
: :on a Commodore 64 (BASIC)

: Congratulations!

: Anyone that could suffer the dreadful BASIC in C64s and still want to get
: into programming deserves a medal. ;)

Ah, yes, BASIC on a 1 MHz micro... I remember that (not the C64, but
the RS CoCo).  It was fine until I wanted to plot a line, one dot at
a time... at which point I decided I wanted to learn assembly.  Just
as well it was a 6809 :-).

Cheers,

Kin Hoong

######

From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 98 13:39:26 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <71sarb$71d$2@ligarius.ultra.net>
References: <71n37t$4nq$1@news.seed.net.tw> <363f20ee.0@127.0.0.1> <hnsngr-ya023180000411980048430001@news.sirius.com> <shokwave-0411981058110001@as1-dialup-74.io.com>
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In article <shokwave-0411981058110001@as1-dialup-74.io.com>,
   shokwave@well.com (Rob Hafernik) wrote:

>> Afterwards, things in the FORTRAN manual that didn't make sense before
>> suddenly did. The difference between INTEGER and FLOAT (this was FORTRAN
>> II, so it wasn't REAL yet) reflected the two different internal number
>> representations, and their corresponding different machine language
>> instructions. Before, I couldn't understand the problem with mixed mode
>> arithmetic, because I couldn't believe it made any difference. Now, I
>> understood that the machine language instructions were different, and
>> that's why you couldn't add an INTEGER to a FLOAT. That was enough to 
let
>> me suspend my disbelief long enough to learn it.
>> 
>> And I took the final step on the day I was casting about for an 
ambitious
>> project to do (in machine language), and it occured to me that I could
>> write a program to translate FORTRAN into machine language. In a sudden
>> flash of insight, I realized that someone had already done it. And that
>> removed my final doubts about FORTRAN. I finally believed that a 
computer
>> could understand it.
>
>A similar thing happened for me.  I had been writing C code for years, but
>I was always nervous about pointers and addresses and arrays and things. 
>Somehow, I just couldn't be comfortable using them.
>
>Then, I went to work for a company that was producing a COMPILER. 
>Suddenly, I was exposed (boy, was I ever exposed) to the inner workings of
>the compiler and what it DID with those pointers and arrays and things.

Chuckle.  Yup.  
>
>Once I got an understanding of what was going on under the hood, all of it
>made perfect sense.  Hell, by understanding what the parser had to go
>through to figure out the statements, you could even understand WHY some
>of the dopey sytax was the way it was.  Lightbulb time!
>
>I don't think you can be completely at home in a language until you've
>understood how the compiler translates it to assembly.  You don't have to
>know every detail, but an understanding of the basics really helps.

This is a very important point.  Nice post :-).

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

######

From: "Carl R. Friend" <carl.friend@stoneweb.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sat, 07 Nov 1998 08:54:50 -0500
Organization: as little as possible!
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jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> 
> [...]  My very first magtape encounter at college was a TU-10, god's
> gift to man to prove there is a hell.

   Good one! There was, of course, also the infamous TS-11. I don't
know if DEC _really_ wanted to name it the "Tape Stretcher" but that
was the way the things worked out. ARRRGHH!

> In all of our [my company's] magtape drive development, it seems
> that the coordination of both hubs was always the show stopper.

   Or the tape breaker....

   Actually, reel coordination can be _very_ simple and does not need
to be tied to the capstan at all. Simply let the vacuum columns (or
buffer arms) send commands to the reel servos and tell them to "give
me tape" or "take tape away".

   All in all, I regard tape drives as the spawn of the Devil, but
they're a necessary evil. I'm glad for RAID now, thank-you-very-much.

-- 
 ______________________________________________________________________
|                                                |                     |
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:carl.friend@stoneweb.com                |                     |
| http://www.ultranet.com/~crfriend/museum       | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 |
|________________________________________________|_____________________|

######

Message-ID: <36457E8C.4AF5DD30@trailing-edge.com>
From: Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com>
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03Gold (X11; I; OpenVMS V7.0     DEC 3000 Model 300L)
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Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
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			 <363E86D5.4ACA@bell-labs.com> 
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Carl R. Friend wrote:
> > In all of our [my company's] magtape drive development, it seems
> > that the coordination of both hubs was always the show stopper.
> 
>    Or the tape breaker....
> 
>    Actually, reel coordination can be _very_ simple and does not need
> to be tied to the capstan at all. Simply let the vacuum columns (or
> buffer arms) send commands to the reel servos and tell them to "give
> me tape" or "take tape away".

In theory, yes, it's this simple.  But in practice the servo
amplifiers driving the reels must be well-balanced or else you
end up with "runaway" situations.  The higher-performance the
tape drive, the more dramatic these situations become.  With
a nominal 175 IPS tape drive, which has a peak speed of maybe
500 IPS, in well under a minute you can empty a 2400' reel
of tape onto the floor (or, even worse, inside the drive door)
when things aren't all properly aligned.

The longer your vacuum columns, the less touchy the servo
amplifiers have to be.

>    All in all, I regard tape drives as the spawn of the Devil, but
> they're a necessary evil. I'm glad for RAID now, thank-you-very-much.

And others of us strongly believe that it's not a *real*
computer unless you've got a couple of 7- or 9-track drives
hooked up :-)

-- 
 Tim Shoppa                        Email: shoppa@trailing-edge.com
 Trailing Edge Technology          WWW:   http://www.trailing-edge.com/
 7328 Bradley Blvd                 Voice: 301-767-5917
 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817           Fax:   301-767-5927

######

From: hshubs@mindspring.com (Howard S Shubs)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1998 11:48:18 -0600
Organization: MindSpring Enterprises
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In article <36457E8C.4AF5DD30@trailing-edge.com>, Tim Shoppa
<shoppa@trailing-edge.com> wrote:

>And others of us strongly believe that it's not a *real*
>computer unless you've got a couple of 7- or 9-track drives
>hooked up :-)

Er, in that case it's a REEL OLDE computer.  Is anyone aware of a
SCSI-based 9-track tape drive?
-- 
Howard S Shubs                                      The Denim Adept

######

From: jtNOSPAM@epix.net (Julian Thomas)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1998 13:17:58 -0500
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In <36457E8C.4AF5DD30@trailing-edge.com>, on 11/08/98 
   at 11:20 AM, Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com> said:

>With
>a nominal 175 IPS tape drive, which has a peak speed of maybe 500 IPS, in
>well under a minute you can empty a 2400' reel
>of tape onto the floor (or, even worse, inside the drive door) when
>things aren't all properly aligned.

I saw a 729 drive (on a 360) do this once.
 
-- 
 Julian Thomas: jt at epix dot net  http://home.epix.net/~jt
 Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc  http://www.possi.org
 In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
 -- --
 Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.

######

Message-ID: <3645A0B0.1733FDA9@trailing-edge.com>
From: Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com>
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology
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Howard S Shubs wrote:
> 
> In article <36457E8C.4AF5DD30@trailing-edge.com>, Tim Shoppa
> <shoppa@trailing-edge.com> wrote:
> 
> >And others of us strongly believe that it's not a *real*
> >computer unless you've got a couple of 7- or 9-track drives
> >hooked up :-)
> 
> Er, in that case it's a REEL OLDE computer.

Not necessarily "olde", though of course "reel" counts for
a lot :-).  Mostly mini's from the 70's and 80's, though
the PC (Personal Cluster) now has a nice modern Alpha in it as 
well.

>  Is anyone aware of a
> SCSI-based 9-track tape drive?

Overland Data is the most commonly found new SCSI 9-track today,
but SCSI 9-track drives from Kennedy, Cipher, and Fujitsu
are readily available on the used minicomputer market.  SCSI
controllers for Pertec-formatted and Pertec-unformatted
drives are available, too, though often it's more economical
just to buy a drive with a SCSI interface in the first place.

-- 
 Tim Shoppa                        Email: shoppa@trailing-edge.com
 Trailing Edge Technology          WWW:   http://www.trailing-edge.com/
 7328 Bradley Blvd                 Voice: 301-767-5917
 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817           Fax:   301-767-5927

######

From: jmfbahciv@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 98 15:33:52 GMT
Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc.
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In article <3644512A.124B778A@stoneweb.com>,
   "Carl R. Friend" <carl.friend@stoneweb.com> wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>> 
>> [...]  My very first magtape encounter at college was a TU-10, god's
>> gift to man to prove there is a hell.
>
>   Good one! There was, of course, also the infamous TS-11. I don't
>know if DEC _really_ wanted to name it the "Tape Stretcher" but that
>was the way the things worked out. ARRRGHH!
>
>> In all of our [my company's] magtape drive development, it seems
>> that the coordination of both hubs was always the show stopper.
>
>   Or the tape breaker....
>
>   Actually, reel coordination can be _very_ simple and does not need
>to be tied to the capstan at all. Simply let the vacuum columns (or
>buffer arms) send commands to the reel servos and tell them to "give
>me tape" or "take tape away".

Well, that was the theory.  The engineers found it quite difficult
to implement.  I heard that it's all a matter of timing.
>
>   All in all, I regard tape drives as the spawn of the Devil, but
>they're a necessary evil. I'm glad for RAID now, thank-you-very-much.
>

TW always maintained (especially after wrestling with a new 
magtape drive) that "god never meant for there to be magtapes".

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

######

From: "Jack Peacock" <peacock@simconv.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 00:12:11 -0800
Organization: personal use
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Howard S Shubs wrote in message ...
>In article <36457E8C.4AF5DD30@trailing-edge.com>, Tim Shoppa
>Er, in that case it's a REEL OLDE computer.  Is anyone aware of
a
>SCSI-based 9-track tape drive?
>--
I believe DEC/Compaq still make SCSI 9 track drives, or at least
OEM them from someone.  I have a customer who bought one last
year for his VMS Alpha machine, it has a DEC logo on it, a 6450
BPI 9 track with a SCSI interface.
   Jack Peacock

######

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
From: alderson@netcom.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
In-Reply-To: hshubs@mindspring.com's message of Sun, 08 Nov 1998 11:48:18 -0600
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	<36457E8C.4AF5DD30@trailing-edge.com>
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Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 19:36:48 GMT
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In article <hshubs-0811981148180001@user-38ldk5i.dialup.mindspring.com>
hshubs@mindspring.com (Howard S Shubs) writes:

>Er, in that case it's a REEL OLDE computer.  Is anyone aware of a SCSI-based
>9-track tape drive?

We qualified three different brands, and chose the M4 9914 as the preferred
model for Toad-1 customers that needed to read 9-track tapes (i. e., all of
them ;-).  The others were from QualStar and Cypher.  I use an M4 here when
I need to read old DUMPER or BACKUP tapes.
-- 
Rich Alderson			Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991
				Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170)
last name @ XKL dot COM		Chief systems administrator, XKL LLC, 1998-now

######

From: "Carl R. Friend" <carl.friend@stoneweb.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 08:53:08 -0500
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Tim Shoppa wrote:
> 
> Carl R. Friend wrote:
> >
> >    All in all, I regard tape drives as the spawn of the Devil, but
> > they're a necessary evil. [...]
> 
> And others of us strongly believe that it's not a *real*
> computer unless you've got a couple of 7- or 9-track drives
> hooked up :-)

   I was merely commenting on them from a too-long history of (trying
to) fix the things, which I never _quite_ got the hang of. This goes
double for all those &^$@*$^ auto-loaders which get used in large
data centers (and a few basements).

   To paraphrase Dr. McCoy (from "Star Trek"), "I'm a field engineer,
dammit, not a plumber!"

   I actually saw the innards of such a drive the other day, and aside
from my usual fascination with the things my biggest response to
the experience was, "I'm glad I don't do that for a living anymore."

-- 
 ______________________________________________________________________
|                                                |                     |
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:carl.friend@stoneweb.com                |                     |
| http://www.ultranet.com/~crfriend/museum       | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 |
|________________________________________________|_____________________|

######

From: bill_h <bill_h@azstarnet.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 10:31:38 -0800
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Howard S Shubs wrote:
> 
> Tim Shoppa  <shoppa@trailing-edge.com> wrote:
> 
> >And others of us strongly believe that it's not a *real*
> >computer unless you've got a couple of 7- or 9-track drives
> >hooked up :-)
> 
> Er, in that case it's a REEL OLDE computer.  Is anyone aware of a
> SCSI-based 9-track tape drive?
> --
> Howard S Shubs                                      The Denim Adept

Well, I've got a Qualcom SCSI 9-track in my garage..... need software!

Also, a couple Cipher front-loaders F800? F880? I'd sell cheap.
Along with a Cipher/Pertec ISA 8-bit card. Got software for these.

Bill
Tucson

######

From: jnickelsen@acm.org (Juergen Nickelsen)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: What happened to the old school?
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 23:36:58 +0100
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Greg Menke <nospam@erols.com> wrote:

> I regularly do systems on CPUs with 2k ROM and 120 or so bytes RAM;

These seem to be not really rare in some areas. About a year ago I heard
at my (then) employer's that they were thinking about a project which
could turn out a little tough since there were only 135 bytes of RAM.
The ROM was plenty with 4, or 8, or even 16 K, though.

To answer the question about the environment of such conditions from
another article: This was in a car stereo component.

-- 
Juergen Nickelsen