#6. I'm so old that my first modem was a 2400 baud POS that I used to connect to pre-internet BBS boards. A tiny 1MB program would take 15 minutes to download.
My first intercomputer comm used a Honeywell 716 that had a 5 character hex "keyboard", attached to a 6060 mainframe running GCOS that was about the size of a grocery store. I could send a single line of ASCII text to any of the other 20 systems on the network. 20 users, that was the internet when I started using it. So how old does that make me?
Yes, but my first modem was a 300 baud modem used with a 24 line, 40 character wide (text only) portable terminal used to knock out easy problems at 3:00 in the morning so we did not have to drive in. It worked only for the most trivial of issues. But, we saw it as a tremendous piece of great technology. The terminal in my office had a printer that would copy the screen image by, literally, burning an aluminum powder coating off of the paper as it traversed the lines of text on the screen. I admit it, I am a dinosaur. I have stories...
I learned to program as a Junior in H.S. on a TTY machine connected to the main frame at the local university. We enter 8 column ticker tape with our programs that had been proofed by our teacher to ensure we didn't put the poor main frame into an infinite loop and spend all of the schools allotted funds on that one program. Main frame time was way way expensive and it was the kind of computer built with tubes...... There were 9 other schools in the area also in the program. That was our 'internet'.
Hell 2400 baud would have been like broadband! I had a 600 baud modem, dot-matrix printer, and had only the built-in floppy disk so I had to swap between my program disk and disk I was saving work on. We've come a very long way!
I'm getting a kick out of the "one upmanship" in the replies. So, here goes. My first computer was a KIM-1 with a hex keypad, LED display, and 4K of ram. My first dialup was through a 300 baud acoustic modem. Various kit processors (Z8, 8008, 8080), Radio Shack, Apple, Commodore, and a few oddballs (Ever hear of a Tano Outpost 11?) in no particular order, and eventually on to PC's. I ran a BBS for a while on an Apple II with two floppies (I forget the name of the software) and eventually wrote my own BBS software for a system the company I worked for built and sold.
I'm really not trying to one up anyone here, but the very first "computer" I ever worked on was an analog, electro-mechanical device that took inputs from various sensors and solved for angles - it was an analog fire-control computer that was older than I was.
Oh, you mean digital? Well, the first digital computer I worked on had vacuum tubes. It wasn't older than me, but it was as old *as* me. And my first modem was a 300 baud acoustic coupler. You first dialed the telephone and when you heard the handshake tones, you set the handset into the coupler and away you went.
I learned with punch cards, so I win. Yeah, punch cards. You bought a box of em first day of class. They were called Hollerith cards, named after a guy who worked at Ellis Island. You waited for a card punch to be available, then loaded your cards. If you were adept, you pre punched a card that went into a small barrel thingie that made punching easier to skip fields. Yeah, FORTRAN II! Numbers in columns 1 thru 5. 6 was open. 7 started the command. Then you took your stack of cards, gave em to a geek, who then ran them thru the mainframe. You waited forever to get the deck back and find out you fucked up the spelling of subroutine. You never forget this shit and I’m 72.
Teletypes operated at 110 baud, and I used my share of them. I recall when a 300 baud modem was good, and remember my thrill when, several years later, we 1200 baud. I was using a 2400 baud modem in my dorm room to use the campus academic mainframe in 1990.
My first computer had some floppy things I put in slots and then typed in some stuff and then after it went ____ Can't make that sound, it was ready to go. First work computer was in August 1976, for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. I still remember some of the shortcut codes.
My programming experiences began on a Univac mainframe, programming in FORTRAN, on a deck of computer punchcards. Each punchcard was a single line of code. God help you if you dropped your deck of cards. Later, we graduated to 300/1200 baud modems on microcomputers sporting 8” floppy drives. No such thing as a color monitor back then.
I remember my teenage daughter complaining "Dad's on the computer again!" as I connected to the PDP-11 at the office, on the weekend, via 300 Baud acoustic modem.
Well, guess we're all a bunch of old geeks! Punched cards...check. PDP-8...check. 8" floppies...check. I even worked on a machine with hand wire-wrapped boards, a 5mb hard disc, and a mag tape reel. That monstrosity was a film printer that printed the glow effects used in the original Tron movie. Yup. Old fast here too.
Reagan's also the one that outlawed open carry in California when he was governor as well as closing a bunch of the mental institutions, putting a shitload of crazy people into the streets. And did you notice that once he became president. all of a sudden your SSN became your personal ID number for a lot of things? He wasn't a bad president, but he damned sure wasn't the god a lot of people make him out to be.
#6. I'm so old that my first modem was a 2400 baud POS that I used to connect to pre-internet BBS boards. A tiny 1MB program would take 15 minutes to download.
ReplyDeleteMy first intercomputer comm used a Honeywell 716 that had a 5 character hex "keyboard", attached to a 6060 mainframe running GCOS that was about the size of a grocery store. I could send a single line of ASCII text to any of the other 20 systems on the network. 20 users, that was the internet when I started using it. So how old does that make me?
DeleteI started out with 300/1200 and RAN one of those pre-Internet BBS.
DeleteBut at least they gave you that delightful handshake music. Another thing kids have no clue what they're missing.
DeleteYes, but my first modem was a 300 baud modem used with a 24 line, 40 character wide (text only) portable terminal used to knock out easy problems at 3:00 in the morning so we did not have to drive in. It worked only for the most trivial of issues. But, we saw it as a tremendous piece of great technology. The terminal in my office had a printer that would copy the screen image by, literally, burning an aluminum powder coating off of the paper as it traversed the lines of text on the screen. I admit it, I am a dinosaur. I have stories...
DeleteI'm pretty sure my first one was less than 2400 but I'm so old I can't remember how much. I do remember when I thought 56K was great.
DeleteAnd I remember 30k hdd.
DeleteI guess that was meg. Do you believe I just built another computer?
DeleteI learned to program as a Junior in H.S. on a TTY machine connected to the main frame at the local university. We enter 8 column ticker tape with our programs that had been proofed by our teacher to ensure we didn't put the poor main frame into an infinite loop and spend all of the schools allotted funds on that one program. Main frame time was way way expensive and it was the kind of computer built with tubes...... There were 9 other schools in the area also in the program. That was our 'internet'.
DeleteI still hang out with the people I met from those old BBS boards..we play D&D together.
DeleteECIS was one of the big ones..they had 16 phone lines! 16 people on the board at once! Trade Wars was awesome LOL
I'm so old we used steam powered computers... ;-)
DeleteThe Listening Post BBS
DeleteSysOp: Tenebrous
Software: WWIV
Speed: 2400 baud
Amateurs. 300 baud.
DeleteMy first computer ran on an 286 chip. Glad you all are closer to death than me.
DeleteI owned and operated cutting machines whose operating system was on paper punched tape.
DeleteHell 2400 baud would have been like broadband! I had a 600 baud modem, dot-matrix printer, and had only the built-in floppy disk so I had to swap between my program disk and disk I was saving work on.
DeleteWe've come a very long way!
I'm getting a kick out of the "one upmanship" in the replies. So, here goes. My first computer was a KIM-1 with a hex keypad, LED display, and 4K of ram. My first dialup was through a 300 baud acoustic modem. Various kit processors (Z8, 8008, 8080), Radio Shack, Apple, Commodore, and a few oddballs (Ever hear of a Tano Outpost 11?) in no particular order, and eventually on to PC's. I ran a BBS for a while on an Apple II with two floppies (I forget the name of the software) and eventually wrote my own BBS software for a system the company I worked for built and sold.
DeleteI'm really not trying to one up anyone here, but the very first "computer" I ever worked on was an analog, electro-mechanical device that took inputs from various sensors and solved for angles - it was an analog fire-control computer that was older than I was.
DeleteOh, you mean digital? Well, the first digital computer I worked on had vacuum tubes. It wasn't older than me, but it was as old *as* me. And my first modem was a 300 baud acoustic coupler. You first dialed the telephone and when you heard the handshake tones, you set the handset into the coupler and away you went.
I learned with punch cards, so I win. Yeah, punch cards. You bought a box of em first day of class. They were called Hollerith cards, named after a guy who worked at Ellis Island. You waited for a card punch to be available, then loaded your cards. If you were adept, you pre punched a card that went into a small barrel thingie that made punching easier to skip fields. Yeah, FORTRAN II! Numbers in columns 1 thru 5. 6 was open. 7 started the command. Then you took your stack of cards, gave em to a geek, who then ran them thru the mainframe. You waited forever to get the deck back and find out you fucked up the spelling of subroutine. You never forget this shit and I’m 72.
DeleteTeletypes operated at 110 baud, and I used my share of them. I recall when a 300 baud modem was good, and remember my thrill when, several years later, we 1200 baud. I was using a 2400 baud modem in my dorm room to use the campus academic mainframe in 1990.
Delete300 baud acoustic coupler
Delete#1 reminds me that I think that Greta might look better with a Jo'burg necklace.
ReplyDeleteJohn in Indy
She can't help it. She has, at the very least, Asperger's. Its her socialist neo-hippie parents and handlers that need to be strung up.
DeleteThe Winnie Mandela collection is especially fetching.
DeleteWe'd all be better off if her country's "vibrant diversity" got a hold of her.
Delete-WDS
As I recall, she is autistic. The Rev is correct.
Delete56K?
ReplyDeleteI remember 50 WPM teletype.
#6 Used my 9600 which would drop to 2400 at the drop of a hat while downloading the 100k email file that I could read offline.
ReplyDelete#6 I still have a 300 baud auto-answer acoustic modem.
ReplyDeleteMy first computer had some floppy things I put in slots and then typed in some stuff and then after it went ____ Can't make that sound, it was ready to go. First work computer was in August 1976, for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. I still remember some of the shortcut codes.
ReplyDeleteAh, the good ol' Startlegram! 76 was sometime around the period when they called the Rangers the Strangers, maybe 78 or so.
DeleteI remember 300 baud TTY and paper tape. Old. So old...
ReplyDeleteMy programming experiences began on a Univac mainframe, programming in FORTRAN, on a deck of computer punchcards. Each punchcard was a single line of code. God help you if you dropped your deck of cards. Later, we graduated to 300/1200 baud modems on microcomputers sporting 8” floppy drives. No such thing as a color monitor back then.
ReplyDeleteI remember my teenage daughter complaining "Dad's on the computer again!" as I connected to the PDP-11 at the office, on the weekend, via 300 Baud acoustic modem.
ReplyDeleteWell, guess we're all a bunch of old geeks! Punched cards...check. PDP-8...check. 8" floppies...check. I even worked on a machine with hand wire-wrapped boards, a 5mb hard disc, and a mag tape reel. That monstrosity was a film printer that printed the glow effects used in the original Tron movie. Yup. Old fast here too.
ReplyDeleteReagan does not belong in #3 meme, he was for limited government and warned early amd often to be wary of government solutions to problems they cause.
ReplyDeleteReagan's also the one that outlawed open carry in California when he was governor as well as closing a bunch of the mental institutions, putting a shitload of crazy people into the streets.
DeleteAnd did you notice that once he became president. all of a sudden your SSN became your personal ID number for a lot of things?
He wasn't a bad president, but he damned sure wasn't the god a lot of people make him out to be.
Why, I remember when I invented the internet!!
ReplyDelete