40 Years of Unix

[Cheap Scotch Ron]

God this thread makes me feel old

I kinda know what you mean. I dont "feel" old, but as you read these kinda threads, you sure sound old.


My high school couldnt afford the punch card machines. As a freshman (1975) we had an IMSAI (8080 processor, 64K memory. It was a kit for approx $500.00). The senior class and a grad student that was teaching us assembled it. It had no keyboard interface. You programmed it using switches on the front panel. It ran CPM and a version of Basic. There was no way to store your program. Everytime you wanted to run it, you had to reprogram.

The next year they bought an "expansion unit". It allowed us to store our programs on cassette tapes.

[gore]

God this thread makes me feel old.



Gore you may appreciate this. The summer of my Freshman year in High School, I used to take a bus downtown to Wayne State and hang out in the computer lab. I was kind of the adopted geek kid and that summer I learned COBOL. Programs were written on coding forms, punched on to punch cards, and loaded into the computer.

You only dropped your stack of punch cards ONCE. Because there really wasn't anyway to put them back in order. It was easier to start over!

Wayne State? Wow man. I've seen the area by there a few times. It looks neat, but I wasn't even born when you were doing that. COBOL seems to have a huge following with some. I don't know personally anyone who uses it, but I know for a fact that not only are a lot of business apps running from it, but that even now people are using it for stuff like that, which is weird.

I just hate programming more or less heh. The only things I can say good about actual coding (Non HTML / scripts) is that Perl has a use, as does Python, and it may even be better, and that C is somethin I'd learn if I had the time and patience just because I could do anything with that, including do the OS I designed. And Assmebler... Can't forget good ol DIY Punk goals in coding lol.

Basically if it's not C, Assembler, Perl, Python, or MAYBE Java, I don't find use. That could be my in-experience in all things code, but there you go.

I have a certain amount of respect that doesn't require earning for anyone who can write Assembler (Like my Wife) or can do low level Kernel like things in C.

The Perl and Python, I find mainly interesting for the fact that using those, you can pretty much do anything non OS or Driver related. (By OS I mean Kernel stuff, which would probably not be the best idea in any language that's interpreted, though, it must be said, all languages are eventually interpreted ).

You still anywhere around Wayne ? There seems to be more of us Michigan AO people these days. Back in 2002 it was basically me and Souleman. He lives up by Saginaw.

[fourdc]

In 1971 I ran my first Fortran program on an IBM 1130 that was domiciled at my school (6 yr jr high/high school program)

Punch cards were cool. You had to run a card that basically said //FOR which told the system you were using Fortran. We discovered that it only read the //FOR so we changed the card to read //FORnication is fun

[gore]

In 1971 I ran my first Fortran program on an IBM 1130 that was domiciled at my school (6 yr jr high/high school program)

Punch cards were cool. You had to run a card that basically said //FOR which told the system you were using Fortran. We discovered that it only read the //FOR so we changed the card to read //FORnication is fun

Lol, nice. Weren't you one of the guys that was on Bolt.com that I had invited here? The name you have here is the same as one of the guys from there that I invited here a long time ago.

Anyway, that's a nice one, because a lot of those machines, from what I've read, only checked the first couple letters to see what it was going to be, so it could ignore the rest as you got it to do, and you could have a little fun.

Think of you worked on it now, heh, you could make it "FORdc"

I used to have a bunch of old Computer ads from like the 50s - 80s and I posted a link on here showing them once, but I have no clue where they are now. It would probably give some of you guys a nice trip to see that stuff again.

One of the ads I did keep was one of the Unix ones, and I kept a Microsoft Unix (Xenix) ad I found too. The rest I can't find though.

EDIT:

Found it!

http://oldcomputers.net/oldads/old-computer-ads.html

[Linen0ise]

Lol, nice. Weren't you one of the guys that was on Bolt.com that I had invited here? The name you have here is the same as one of the guys from there that I invited here a long time ago.

Gore, Im your father!

Seriously, I do not remember how in the world I found this site. I remember antionline.com in the back day that was a real hack place that stole code from other hackers. I remember antionline being hacked. and the only reason why this site was bought because of the builtin big brother crap. I knows. I used the handle 'KaOs" so I could track who was watching me\us.

bolts.com == Nuts & Bolts? That's how I learned make cables and hack analog cellphones. Their classified section made Craiglist look noobie.

[Linen0ise]

Doing assembly language and advanced assembly language on 2 donated mainframes was the coolest thing for me. You had to wait under 1 hr to get a green-bar printout.

Except C\C++ the other crap they taught bored me. Teachers passed me just for hanging late hours helping the idiots pass.

[gore]

I actually quoted Fourdc

bolt.com was like... Sort of like a social networking site before those were everywhere. I got my very first computer in September of 1999 with Windows 95 (Was crap before I got it I know!) lol.

And I know this because I got the thing used from my Uncle, no manuals, nothing, and started screwing with it and got interested in it. Two weeks later I had hooked it up to the modem it came with and he was away so I saw him type his password to get online one day and memorized it, and when he was away two weeks later in another city, I got online since it was his machine and still had Prodigy Internet installed. I was hooked from there and went on Bolt.com which kept a profile I made, and it was in the middle of September 1999, so I had an exact date of when I first used computers heh.

[Linen0ise]

darn u......same here.... Don't tell....they wont believe you. Prodigy was the real internet for our machines.

[fourdc]

I found AO from a magazine that was about where the gurus go to get their solutions.

My first "internet" was a Commo 64, 300 baud and Delphi using Tymnet to avoid the long distance charges. I remember using Kermit for the file transfers.

[t34b4g5]

I came across this place back when 2600 was half decent, if i remember in there defacement archive there was a comment about this place with a link, i clicked 'n joined up and have been here since.

thanks to the bright colours i slowly developed a problem though..