hope@gatech.UUCP (08/29/83)
As a followup to "on the street where I live", why not describe which machine
you first worked/played/learned on?
My first one was an HP 1000 (Series E processor), back in early 1980. It had
about 64K of main, a ~50M disk, 6 teletypes (yes, the Western Union kind), and
a 2640A CRT as a console (2400 baud max). I learned BASIC that was as bad as
Dartmouth B., and picked up FTN4 by watching over people's shoulders. I still
feel a bit nostalgic whenever I log on to our HP1000/44 here at GaTech....
Ted the Hopeless
--
Theodore Hope
CSNet: Hope @ GaTech ARPA: Hope.GaTech @ UDel-Relay
uucp: ...!{sb1,allegra,ut-ngp}!gatech!Hope
...!duke!mcnc!msdc!gatech!Hopejgpo@iwu1c.UUCP (08/29/83)
The first piece of hardware I was ever exposed to was an IBM data station,
model somenumberoranother, at my high school, from which we could dial up
the Board of Education's 360/50. My very first language (get this) was
FORTRAN IV. Of course, this WAS back in 1971.
After becoming well-versed in FORTRAN, WAT{FOR|FIV}, PL/I, IBM assembler,
COBOL (bleah!), and C, I finally wrote my very first BASIC program about a
year ago. Talk about doing things backwards!
Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be,
John (greying but never bald) Opalkodwl@hou5e.UUCP (08/29/83)
Would you believe mine was a Univac 1107 ... in Cleveland, Ohio, in about 1966. Programmed it in Algol-60, and in an assembly language they called SLEUTH (Symbolic LanguagE for Univac THin-film-memory computers). Other odd-ball systems from my past include the Control Data Corporation 160-A (a 12-bit mini built into a desk) and 3100 systems. Interdata Models 1 (an 8-bit mini) and 3 (a 16-bit mini). Perhaps the most unusual coding was for the Rockwell PPS-4, a 4-bit microprocessor used in some electronic cash registers built in the mid 1970's. -Dave Levenson -AT&T-IS -Holmdel, NJ
davidl@tekecs.UUCP (David Levine) (08/30/83)
I started with computers at the age of 8. My first computer was a DEC PDP-8L
with about 4K of core and a single (slow, noisy, all-upper-case, yellow paper)
ASR-33. Software was stored on paper tape, and I remember the excitement when
we got our high-speed papertape reader which could read in HORSEY (horse race
simulator) in only ten minutes! I also remember how everyone was awed by
the fact that a whole computer could fit in a cabinet only the size of a filing
cabinet...
My first programming experience also came on the 8L. I learned to program in
FOCAL (anybody remember FOCAL?), which was like BASIC except all commands were
single characters (e.g. T 2 + 2 was the FOCAL equivalent of BASIC's PRINT 2+2).
This interpreter fit into 4K of memory and left some space for user programs!
Them was the days, when computers were still mysterious and no programmer could
afford to be without a soldering iron...
-- David D. Levine (...decvax!tektronix!tekecs!davidl) [UUCP]
(...tekecs!davidl.tektronix@rand-relay) [ARPA]israel@umcp-cs.UUCP (08/31/83)
The first computer I worked on was an IBM 1500 (I think) back in
spring 1975. I was a freshman in college, majoring in biology
at the time, and didn't know the difference between a computer and a
microwave oven (and didn't care either). A friend of mine told
me about this system where I could get an account and free computer
time, and learn to program. I was not interested at all, but he kept
on bugging me about it so finally to shut him up I went there with
him. The system was only up for general usage about four hours a
week and only ran one language, APL (a very interesting first
language to use). It had a CAI system so you could actually learn
APL on line from the computer, and hop in an out of the lesson
to actually practice. Anyway, I absolutely fell in love with
programming, and so I took an intro CS course the next semester
and decided to switch over.
--
~~~ Bruce
Computer Science Dept., University of Maryland
{rlgvax,seismo}!umcp-cs!israel (Usenet) israel.umcp-cs@Udel-Relay (Arpanet)mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (08/31/83)
I haven't figured out why this set of reminiscences is in net.social, but anyway ... My first computer was a Ferranti Mark I, otherwise known as FERUT (Ferranti University of Toronto), which was the first computer bought by U of T (They had one a-building in the EE department before that). It had a bigger air-conditioning room than computer space. The cold wind blew through 2 big bays of vacuum tubes (about 3000 of them if I remember rightly) that had to be checked and replaced regularly. Fast storage was on electostatic storage tubes, 65 x 65 bits per tube (I think 4 such tubes) and the big backup storage was a drum of maybe 1K 65-bit words (my memory is very hazy about the drum). I spent an undergraduate summer as assistant maintenance technician on that machine, and learned to program it from Christopher Strachey, who wrote a checkers-playing program for it in machine code. Assembly language hadn't been invented then, so you had commands like :T/V (I think that made the loudspeaker give a hoot). My first program was Good King Wenceslas, which was made by repeating a loop of such clicks on the loudspeaker at rate appropriate to the notes you wanted to achieve (roughly; this was a millisecond computer, not microsecond). At one time, we had a request from somebody to give her 50 consecutive hours of up-time so she could invert a big (10 x 10?) matrix. We retubed the whole thing and burned in the new tubes, and she got her 50 hours. The whole thing was a lot of fun. Computers got much more boring when we went to such things as the Royal McBee LGP-30, with its 4K drum memory, although there was some fun trying to locate things on the drum so that the instruction was picked up and interpreted just as the drum got around to where you had put its operand. Who needs C!?! Martin Taylor
danny@itm.UUCP (09/02/83)
Many moons ago, (1977?) I became aquainted with my first
computer. I was a lowely under-grad at Georgia Tech, on their
Control Data Cyber 74. Now, there were two things ya' gotta
understand. I knew nothing about computers (black boxes), and
the Cyber thought it was (is?) a batch machine. You know,
cards? I sat down in front of the tube (1200 baud, how fast!),
and managed to log in. I tried typing 'HI' and a <return>.
Upon which it immediately responded 'ILLEGAL CONTROL CARD.'.
First, I searched the area for a card reader, then I feared for
my puny account, literally expecting to be hauled away for trying
to issue an 'illegal' command.
Since then I've found U*IX and couldn't be happier. I mean,
*anything* I have attempted, I've accomplished. Now, before
this becomes a commercial, lemme go.
Hey, who remembers TELEX ?
Danny Cox
(msdc!itm!danny)jrc@ritcv.UUCP (James R Carbin) (09/12/83)
I'm mot sure why this discussion is in net.social, but since it is, I'll add my two cents. My first computer was an IBM-702. The "Preliminary" Programmers Manual (there never was a "final" manual) was about 80 pages long with the first chapter a primer on data processing complete with an explanation of punch cards and how they could be stored on magnetic tape (7 track) at 200 bpi. Peripherals consisted of a 200 c.p.m. card reader, 100 c.p.m. card punch, 10 tape drives, and a 200+ l.p.m. printer. Memory consisted originally of 10,000 characters (yes - characters not bytes) of memory which was later expanded to 20,000. It had a drum to store routines and tables with a capacity of (I think) 10,000 characters). General Electric acquired it in 1953 to process the Corporate payroll and it ended up doing all of the d.p. for G.E. Corporate Accounting Operations from 1953 to 1963 when a conversion to third generation hardware was started. It was finally retired in 1967 (maybe 1968) and supposedly was given to the Smithsonian. Don't laugh, it ran just about 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, throughout its lifetime. In fact, an IBM C.E. had to delay his retirement until it was retired because IBM didn't want to have to train someone new on such an old machine. No O.S. or anything like that, a crude assembler that wasn't very often used, but a RPG that could produce 7 different reports with one pass of the file as it took approx. 20 minutes to read a 2400 foot reel of mag. tape. Some of the files on the machine were very large for its vintage - 550,000 shareowners records (GE stockholders) with each about 2,000 characters long. Sorting that d*mn file could take in excess of 24 hours. They even had a bell installed on the console to wake up the operators on the third shift if the processor stopped. Do I wish for those days - NO! But it sure was a hell of a way to start a career in C.S. (They didn't even call it that in those days) and I don't regret in the least the opportunity that I had. By the way, they build 17 IBM 702's and you could not be sure that any two were totally compatible. Also debugging consisted of the programmer obtaining time and then sitting at the keyboard executing his program until it stopped. Then you would attempt to patch it via the console and continue (making notes of what you had done) and finally obtaining 1) printed output and 2) a memory dump which was the only documentation that was maintained for each program. Boy have we come a long way!!!!!!!!! Jim Carbin RIT
fred@umcp-cs.UUCP (09/14/83)
Ok, I'll put in my two cents worth.
The first computer I worked with (back in 1969 or so) was a Burroughs
model something-or-other which was built into a large desk. It was
a vacuum tube machine with two registers and 120 words of main
(i.e.: drum) memory. It was programmed by sticking little metal
pins into plugboards, each of which contained 15 instructions. Each
instruction consisted of three pins: one for the opcode and two to
specify the operand. The boards looked sort of like this:
(operation) (1st two digits) (last digit)
____________________________________________________
| ASMDPKLH 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 0123456789|
| 1 .....O.. . O . . . . . . . . . . .O........|
| 2 .O...... . . O . . . . . . . . . O.........|
| 3 .....O.. . O . . . . . . . . . . .O........|
| 4 O....... . . O . . . . . . . . . O.........|
| 5 ....O... . O . . . . . . . . . . .O........|
| 6 .......O O . . . . . . . . . . . O.........|
| 7 ........ . . . . . . . . . . . . ..........|
| . |
.
.
The machine could be loaded with ten of these boards at a time.
There was a series of neon bulbs which lit to indicate which board,
and which instruction on that board, was being executed. The
program-counter was mechanical, and slow enough that you could hear
each instruction being executed, accompanied by the moving neon
sequence lights. I'm convinced that that's where the term ``number
crunching'' comes from, 'cause that's EXACTLY what it sounded like
when a loop was being executed. You can get the same effect by
running your fingernail down the teeth of a comb. One of the weird
quirks of the machine was that the instruction ``M n'' would multiply
the contents of register B with memory location n, leaving the
result in register A, but ``D n'' would divide the contents of
register A by the contents of register B and store the result in
memory word n. There was no such asymmetry between the add and
subtract instructions.
Fred Blonder
harpo!seismo!umcp-cs!fred
P.S.: In case you're wondering: The program on the plugboard is:
(1) read a number from the keyboard, (2) store it in word 20,
(3) read another number, (4) add word 20 to it, (5) print result,
(6) halt
P.P.S.: How many of you ever owned an Edmund Scientific Digi-Comp I?suitti@CSvax:Pucc-H:pur-phy.UUCP (09/15/83)
SECRET LOVE Computers have no heart people very often say. Nonsense! The one I worked with is warm, bright and gay. It is smart and fast, friendly too, I may wish to add. It is the best friend that I have ever had. I have talked to it for hours, when the others are all gone. Talked to it thru the night almost to the dawn. My machine won't tell a soul, confides in me alone. I tell it secret things, like the brand of my cologne. We have talked for many hours, far into the night, Argued too, about fishing, when and where they bite. Some at the office now start to give me long odd looks, When I start to read to it from out of my dirty books. They have put me away now, in a brand new home, That gives me more time to write and draw up my own tome. So it does not matter so very much what they have to say. I would write much more but they took my crayons away. ...I'm not sure of the real reference... Stephen Uitti (physics site manager) ...pur-ee!Physics:suitti ...purdue!Physics:suitti
davidl@tekid.UUCP (David Levadie) (09/16/83)
Hey, really. Experiencing a stoneage megalith does have one positive effect on you, though - after living with cards and switches (if that much!) you can really sneer condescendingly at people who complain about editors.
credmond@watmath.UUCP (Chris Redmond) (09/16/83)
The first computer I ever met was an IBM 1620 -- input was by punched card, of course, and as I remember it the part of the machine which got the heaviest use was the VALIDITY CHECK warning light. I learned to write programs in a language called FORGO , which doesn't seem to exist now; in retrospect I figure it must have been a subset of FORTRAN II, perhaps locally (Queen's U, Kingston) created.
speaker@umcp-cs.UUCP (09/18/83)
I owned (and still have in my basement!) an Edmund Scientific DigiComp I! It's amazingly usefull for teaching kids about algorithms, computation, and binary mathematics. The documentation is essentially a tutorial on what computing and computers are about. The material was quite advanced for the age group it was targeted for (around 6 - 8) and could probably be taught in todays high schools. I suppose this was my first experience with a computer. My first experience with a REAL computer was with the University of Maryland's UNIVAC 1108/1106 machines. Boy was that a baptism of fire! -- - Speaker speaker@umcp-cs speaker.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay This must be hell...all I can see are flames... towering flames!
speaker@umcp-cs.UUCP (09/18/83)
- Why are hackers often socially backward ? Because many socially backward people become hackers. Once they find an environment in which they can totally assimilate themselves... they do away with any unnecessary (read any) social interactions or responsibilities. Cutting one's self off from people like this is the sign of a very shallow and undeveloped personality. - What makes one become a hacker, what is the driving force ? Fun... like sex. Some make love...some are just jerking off. - Why are hackers getting such publicity nowadays (e.g. WARGAMES) New social phenomenom. Computers are making big headlines and so are the poeple that service them. Take particular note of that last statement. -- - Speaker speaker@umcp-cs speaker.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay This must be hell...all I can see are flames... towering flames!