Mine was on a teletype on a timeshare system. I was really glad when they bought me a paper tape unit. This was basically design problems that were best solved this way. Later they let me use the company main frame. Mostly Fortran and punched cards with lots of lovely ladies about to actually punch the cards. Later a dec system with 5 users one on the end of a leased line. Commercial stuff that I found boring once I had the input routines sorted out. Then on to what would best be described as firmware with some electronics as well. Far more time doing that than the other stuff.

PC's at home - I've actually joined dial up bulletin boards when there was no net. Net - as soon as it was available in B'ham. It was great then until America woke up,

John

-

Hi Ajohnw,

This takes me back - been there, done that, got the t-shirt, as they say. At one point (1970-ish) I had to set up a Honeywell computer which had originally been designed to fit inside a tank for aiming the gun - we modified it so it could be used to control a fully steerable parabolic antenna to track satellites. It used a paper tape reader to load tracking data that fed the tape so quickly that it came out as confetti. Great fun if we forgot to make a backup tape. No integrated circuits in those days either - all the logic circuits were built up using transistors operating in non-saturated mode, so they would switch quickly enough. This meant they ran very hot, so the cooling unit for the computer was bigger than the computer. I never did find out how they got it all into a tank.

Just to put it all in perspective - some years later I used a homebuilt Sinclair ZX81 with modifications to do the same job. Them were the days!

First rule for forum moderators - never allow discussion of sex, politics or religion.

I am beginning to wonder if Linux comes under the heading of religion.

Neil

Windows 10 - A Warning from history!

Hmmm. Might be politics... not religion

I stopped visiting computer programming sites years ago because of the level of dogma and fervent belief, cage fighting computer geeks are not a pretty sight

Pretty much the same experience here, around the same time (63/64) .... programming in Autocode for a Pegasus (Ferranti if memory serves).

Then the University got a deal on a test installation of the latest and greatest (and perhaps first for all I know) ICT machine. They only had to knock three lecture rooms into one to house it!

If you're still interested (or for nostalgia sake) there is a Pegasus simulator here

We have switched from talking about Linux Neil. I have a pretty sensible rule about such subjects - I know what I want to use and to be honest might suggest that some one else does something similar but it's up to them.

same with "model engineering"

John

-

When ever I have to work in assembler lots of things like that make me laugh 'cause that can have structure and can be maintained for long periods - if it's written sensibly and yes it will have go to's and other devilish structures in it.

Best not get me going on so called object orientated programming. I will add one thing on that Microsoft came up with an excellent example of what that really means. Of late it's been turned into a productivity tool as usually happens with just about any compiler eventually ..................

John

-

Edited By Ajohnw on 29/03/2016 22:48:54

and yes it will have go to's and other devilish structures

Ooooh... the dreaded goto heresy would bring the mods down like a ton of bricks and some places would even delete your post

Same experience here. First programmed an Elliot 803 in 1964/5 at what was to become Surrey University. We had luxury, an Algol compiler, but still used Teletypes to punch and read the paper tapes. A year or two later I spent the summer vac programming an 803 at Mullard Research Labs using the assembler (SAP?).

A bit later at Southampton U. we had the luxury of a £3M ICL computer and could use punched cards and even hard disk drives. My smartphone today has a much more powerful processor and much more memory!

Russell

Not quite true. TTL circuits became available in the mid 1960s. In fact I designed a floating point arithmetic unit for a Honeywell computer as my MSc project in 1968 using 74 series logic.

Russell.

74 series TTL, I have an assortment of those tucked away in a box. Perhaps I should list them on ebay as vintage, probably be able to retire on precedes?

Mark

"Ooooh... the dreaded goto heresy would bring the mods down like a ton of bricks and some places would even delete your post" -Ady1

You know, for people who are supposed to be computer programmers, they sound like a pretty medieval bunch.

Michael W

Most of the advances in software in this general area are aimed at eradicating the mistakes that programmers "typically" make Michael and also in an odd sort of way make it more readable which has a knock on effect on maintaining it - "improving ir" - using it elsewhere etc.

Other changes are aimed at sensible structure and minimising the amount of code via abstraction and of late object orientated design which isn't really what it used to be now, probably because it's a case of being able to recognise suitable objects which can be a rather difficult thing to do.

Yet more changes are aimed at deskilling the task. People are often told that they must do something in a particular way and do. Doesn't stop them from producing unreadable code though or making mistakes.

John

-

I usually avoid adding to posts where people talk about what they did 40-50 years ago....but I used that (ICL 2902 IIRC?) in 1979 for my final year project ...about 1000 punched cards if I remember, and no, I don't think I ever dropped them all at once

Edited By MM57 on 30/03/2016 14:06:19

Edited By MM57 on 30/03/2016 14:06:33

Pegasus computer using a Friden Flexowriter for the 5 hole paper tape input.

When I got to university in 1981, I was horrified to discover I was expected to use punched cards on the Honeywell 6080*, having been spoiled by exposure to Acorn and Sinclair machines.

I discovered that signing up for an evening Pascal course brought an unlimited account AND let me get access to the remote consoles. All that was left was hacking the job size limits (I suspect I know how I did it (submit everything as 'Jumbo' to run overnight and collect four reams of line printer output in the morning) - I didn't break under interrogation!) Sadly User VB4 (password RATTUS) seems ton have been delete during the 1990s although it lasted a good while

Next treat was when they bought in one of the first batch of Sirius PC clones, Must have taken me several days to get onto those.

Main achievements: completing Colossal Cave, being crap at Star Trek and sussing out the F0RTRAN GHOST graphics extension before the lecturers

Neil

*1MIPS - approximately the same as the BBC Model B one of my flatmates in 82/83 had.

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 30/03/2016 14:46:30

It's the change in hardware costs which has been amazing

I sold a 2 bedroom flat in 1993 for 30k and used 2k to get a new DOS computer, so it cost 7% of the cost of a home. 16mb ram, p90, 1gig HDD

The same flat is now 100k+ while a top of the line surface pro is about 500quid

All this talk of computers-- All we had was a biro & a slide rule

But try telling kids of today that- they would never believe you !!!

Came across my slide rule in a draw a few weeks back decided to have a play and yes 55 years later some of it came back

H

I had a Nascom that used a Z80 processor. Going back to MS some one notice that the OS wasn't re enterent. Fixed in under a month. I think I still have it somewhere along with a termiprinter. Several of us bought termiprinters at the same time. Mine turned out to be the only one with a problem - had to replace one of the hammer drives.

**LINK**

Printer prices are amazing too. A man from Brother just turned up and repaired our colour laser. Looks like the hot roller overheated due to a manufacturing fault. Cost circa £200 with fax, photo copier, wifi, network, usb ....... Relatively a well used may have faults termiprinter costed more.

John

-