Reminiscing about technology of old

[JohnK]

Re: Tr per - hk - jfk - ewr - yow - lax - los - lax - hk - per

That reminds me of the original web-cam on Netscape Navigator*. I think Ctrl-Alt-F or N got it going. I hope your viewing of the pay-tv channel was as relaxing as it used to be.


*Yes, I am old.

I am old too but didn't pay too much attention to the internet until ~2000. I had heard of Compuserve and Netscape but that's it.

The internet is the beginning of the collective.

 

[JohnM]

This was the computer when I started Uni-

Looks a bit like CSIRAC, drron:

CSIRAC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[drron]

Looks a bit like CSIRAC, drron:

CSIRAC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Definitely Silliac-
ICT Pioneers and Leaders - ICT Pioneers & Leaders - The University of Sydney

 

[JohnM]

Definitely Silliac-
ICT Pioneers and Leaders - ICT Pioneers & Leaders - The University of Sydney

Oh, I wasn't suggesting you had it wrong - only suggesting the similarity of those compact and powerful devices .

 

[clazman]

My first computer was a zx81, black and white,cost £99 pound in 1981.

Also had the optional black and white printer, which printed out on 6 inch thermal paper

 

[Hvr]

LOL. 3rd generation Collossus then?

Colossus computer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A visit to Bletchley Park is in order for you, drron​!

I actually visited Bletchley Park last month, here's a couple of photos of the Bombe.

Definitely worth a visit if you're in the UK.

 

[OzEire]

I sometimes peer over the counter at car hire, hotel and yes even airline counters to see what sort of computer system they are using.

A suburban Budget Rentals office was still using ribbon fed dot matrix printers with that special printer paper which has an edge perforated so it can be removed and holes so the printer can drag it through. Indeed many places still use impact printers (vs laser) to generate carbon copies.

Im not in the industry but I occasionally see businesses with a pretty GUI on screen but all the processing in the background is ancient technology - software written for monochrome text only display. Must be a nightmare to maintain.

I wonder what the airlines use?

 

[TheRealTMA]

I actually visited Bletchley Park last month, here's a couple of photos of the Bombe.

Definitely worth a visit if you're in the UK.

Yes a must visit!


a rebuilt Bombe - extraordinary engineering.

T244 Enigma machine

The Collossus rebuilt


The Collossus rebuilt

 

[Flying mermaid]

When I was at Uni there was one computer on campus and it filled a huge room. Data for SPSS analysis had to be typed in on punched cards. Get one thing wrong when typing and the whole thing failed. In those days, completing a Factor Analysis pretty much guaranteed a PhD.

When I started work as a programmer in a very busy computer bureau where all programming was done on coding sheets and then you typed them up yourself (with zero typing skills) on punch cards and put the whole thing into a box to await its turn to be run by staff in the computer room and then returned (usually a week later). It made you incredibly accurate - you could often get a clean compile the first time and get the whole thing tested and into production quite quickly. I was working on white pays as a new programmer - only the really experienced people worked on black pays (probably had another name then), as if you mucked up the program the whole mine tended to go on strike! I also became very adept at reading paper tape and fixing with a little hand punch so that pay runs weren't held up. Programmers these days don't know how lucky they are!

 

[Flying mermaid]

I wonder what the airlines use?

In the late 70s early 80s I worked for both TAA and then Qantas. TAA was totally Unisys and Qantas mainly IBM but had gone Unisys for their Cargo system. They used USAS for their software (airline package developed by Unisys, with a lot of help from Lufthansa). I supported the central software part of the package USAS*sys which was assembler based. The application modules tended to be Fortran and COBOL. I think USAS would be pretty minor now.

 

[andye]

My first computer was a zx81, black and white,cost £99 pound in 1981.

Also had the optional black and white printer, which printed out on 6 inch thermal paper

1k of memory and upload via cassette tape
The commonest BASIC programme seemed to be:

10 PRINT "Dave is a ****"
20 GOTO 10
>RUN

 

[Cossie]

When I started work as a programmer in a very busy computer bureau where all programming was done on coding sheets and then you typed them up yourself (with zero typing skills) on punch cards and put the whole thing into a box to await its turn to be run by staff in the computer room and then returned (usually a week later). It made you incredibly accurate - you could often get a clean compile the first time and get the whole thing tested and into production quite quickly. I was working on white pays as a new programmer - only the really experienced people worked on black pays (probably had another name then), as if you mucked up the program the whole mine tended to go on strike! I also became very adept at reading paper tape and fixing with a little hand punch so that pay runs weren't held up. Programmers these days don't know how lucky they are!

//*I guess you know that JCL as still used is 80 columns wide as that was the width of a punch card.

 

[Cossie]

In the old DDR last year I saw some East German copies of IBM machines at Bunkeranlage-Fuchsbau ZGS14, not unlike the ones I started with.

 

[dajop]

Our first computer was a 64kb Microbee "Computer in a Book" with 3.5" floppy, which was pretty neat, after the computers we used at school (older Microbees with cassette tapes). And remember doing assignments using the word processor, before WYSIWYG, full of codes for centre, left justification, bold, italics etc etc.

 

[DeKa]

Our first computer was a 64kb Microbee "Computer in a Book" with 3.5" floppy, which was pretty neat, after the computers we used at school (older Microbees with cassette tapes). And remember doing assignments using the word processor, before WYSIWYG, full of codes for centre, left justification, bold, italics etc etc.

Ah the Microbee. I remember my school having the tape models, but then the upgraded to the disk drive models. I found one of the assignments I wrote on one recently - and the codes typed into the word processor came to mind for me then!

 

[TheRealTMA]

1k of memory and upload via cassette tape
The commonest BASIC programme seemed to be:

10 PRINT "Dave is a ****"
20 GOTO 10
>RUN

Hi Dave! Well done!

 

[clazman]

Hello world ...

 

[TheRealTMA]

Hello world ...

No too modern. That's a B/C program! FORTRAN, BASIC or assembler programmers never did that.

 

[wazza888]

When I started work as a programmer in a very busy computer bureau where all programming was done on coding sheets and then you typed them up yourself (with zero typing skills) on punch cards and put the whole thing into a box to await its turn to be run by staff in the computer room and then returned (usually a week later).

Yep ... same here but we had data entry girls who typed it and returned it the next day. Worked on Honeywell L66 mainframes and L6 Minis. Language used was mainly
COBOL. Anyone remember RPG II?

 

[TheRealTMA]

Yep ... same here but we had data entry girls who typed it and returned it the next day. Worked on Honeywell L66 mainframes and L6 Minis. Language used was mainly
COBOL. Anyone remember RPG II?

George III?
GEORGE (operating system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia