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Old farts reminiscing about computers
- Thread starter HankLloydRight
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Fun thread.
I find myself fascinated with the mini-computer era that I was born too late for... DEC in particular. Perhaps that's becasue I found the story of Dave Cutler leaving them and re-implementing DEC's Mica (the planned next foundation for VMS) as Windows NT for Microsoft, and what was Prism (his cancelled CPU project), was largely re-born as Alpha.
So, in the vein of fun reading about the good ol' days and computing history, I present my recommended reading list:
I've found many of the above fascinating... and I have a few more floating around. I'd be interested in recommendations from others as well...
I find myself fascinated with the mini-computer era that I was born too late for... DEC in particular. Perhaps that's becasue I found the story of Dave Cutler leaving them and re-implementing DEC's Mica (the planned next foundation for VMS) as Windows NT for Microsoft, and what was Prism (his cancelled CPU project), was largely re-born as Alpha.
So, in the vein of fun reading about the good ol' days and computing history, I present my recommended reading list:
- The Ultimate Entrepreneur (Rifkin) - Interesting, if somewhat dry, look at how Olsen built, and ultimately ran DEC
- DEC is dead: Long Live DEC (Schein) - Fascinating look at the rise and fall of DEC and many of the factors
- Inside Windows NT 1st Edition (Custer) - Mostly technical detail about the NT OS, but interesting forward from Cutler, and insights as to what they built
- Showstopper! (Pascal) - The inside scoop on how Cutler and the boys Gates hired away from DEC built NT
- Dealers of Lightning (Hiltzik) - Fascinating story of PARC, how it came to be, and what they did
- Soul of a new Machine (Kidder) - Classic reading of the inside story of building a new OS for Data General's hot new machine
- Where Wizards Stay Up Late (Hafner) - the story of DARPA/Arpanet/Internet, and how BBN, Stanford, etc... brought it all to be
- Fire in the Valley (Swaine & Freiberger) - The story of the birth of the PC revolution
- Accidental Empires (Cringely) - The rather famous columnist's account of the PC era origins
- Inside the Plex (Levy) - The inside story of the rise of Google
- Steve Jobs (Isaacson) - The account of Apple's origins and history, with unfettered access to Jobs by the author
- Inside the Cuckoo's Egg (Stohl) - Great tale of chasing a hacker in the early micro/mini days
- Ghost in the Wire (Mitnick) - Kevin's accout of his own life as the world's most sought after hacker
- Masters of Doom (Kushner) -Interesting story iD software and their ground-breaking game Doom!
- Folklore.org - Inside accounts from the guys who built the Mac. Presented as snippets.
- Dave Cutler, PRISM, Mica, Emerald, etc. - Some interesting first hand notes regarding DEC's Alpha, Prism, Mica, etc... projects.
I've found many of the above fascinating... and I have a few more floating around. I'd be interested in recommendations from others as well...
wcalvin - so what's your take on the long tortuous road neural networks and, nowadays, "deep learning" has taken? Seems that with folks like Mobileye, neural nets are finally solving significant real world problems.
My own take is that I'm still underwhelmed by the hardware that is available, and underwhelmed by the lack of complexity of the models.
My own take is that I'm still underwhelmed by the hardware that is available, and underwhelmed by the lack of complexity of the models.
I don't know how I missed this thread for so long.
My first computer was also a Timex Sinclair 1000, with a whopping 2K of RAM that my dad bought me at the drugstore! No external storage, so you had to manually type in any code you wanted it to execute. I don't know how I had the patience to do that on a daily basis. I had copies of PC Mag and another computer magazine (can't remember the name) that had line-by-line printed BASIC programs suitable for the TS1000, and I'd faithfully type them in, attempt to run them, hunt down the typos, fix, retry, etc. Every time! It was tedious, but highly instructive. Once I saved my pennies and bought the 16K expansion pack I really thought I'd hit the big time - now I could spend the entire day typing in 'real programs'. Ha!
After my dad saw that I had a genuine interest in computers he surprised me with a Commodore 64 and ... (drum roll) ... a floppy drive! Then came a modem and the world of BBSs. That's where I connected with other geeks (my social group generally pretended I didn't have these embarrassing interests) and learned enough from them to track down the parts and build my first PC-clone when I was probably 13. Probably the only time my dad really regretted his encouragement was when that $600+ bill came in from GEnie (a pre-internet service similar in concept to AOL, except text-based). It used to cost $25-30/hr during 'prime hours' to be connected!
From then until my late 20's I have to say it was a really exciting time to be a geek. It felt like there was some revolutionary and exciting breakthrough every week!
During those years I worked for a pretty geek-tastic mail-order electronics company, and hung out with a lot of people who were excited about technology - playing with it, challenging it - this was how we had fun. One of these friends was converting an ICE car into an electric vehicle in his garage. This was in the 80s. It was all really hush-hush and we weren't supposed to tell anyone about it, since it couldn't be legally registered in California and, at least according to his belief (though I never looked into the laws surrounding this) he and his brother could get into some trouble and have it taken from them.
Anyway, I feel like electric vehicle/Tesla ownership is really just a natural progression for me, and it seems that way for many of you who posted to this thread. Thanks for sharing your stories, so much fun to read.
My first computer was also a Timex Sinclair 1000, with a whopping 2K of RAM that my dad bought me at the drugstore! No external storage, so you had to manually type in any code you wanted it to execute. I don't know how I had the patience to do that on a daily basis. I had copies of PC Mag and another computer magazine (can't remember the name) that had line-by-line printed BASIC programs suitable for the TS1000, and I'd faithfully type them in, attempt to run them, hunt down the typos, fix, retry, etc. Every time! It was tedious, but highly instructive. Once I saved my pennies and bought the 16K expansion pack I really thought I'd hit the big time - now I could spend the entire day typing in 'real programs'. Ha!
After my dad saw that I had a genuine interest in computers he surprised me with a Commodore 64 and ... (drum roll) ... a floppy drive! Then came a modem and the world of BBSs. That's where I connected with other geeks (my social group generally pretended I didn't have these embarrassing interests) and learned enough from them to track down the parts and build my first PC-clone when I was probably 13. Probably the only time my dad really regretted his encouragement was when that $600+ bill came in from GEnie (a pre-internet service similar in concept to AOL, except text-based). It used to cost $25-30/hr during 'prime hours' to be connected!
From then until my late 20's I have to say it was a really exciting time to be a geek. It felt like there was some revolutionary and exciting breakthrough every week!
During those years I worked for a pretty geek-tastic mail-order electronics company, and hung out with a lot of people who were excited about technology - playing with it, challenging it - this was how we had fun. One of these friends was converting an ICE car into an electric vehicle in his garage. This was in the 80s. It was all really hush-hush and we weren't supposed to tell anyone about it, since it couldn't be legally registered in California and, at least according to his belief (though I never looked into the laws surrounding this) he and his brother could get into some trouble and have it taken from them.
Anyway, I feel like electric vehicle/Tesla ownership is really just a natural progression for me, and it seems that way for many of you who posted to this thread. Thanks for sharing your stories, so much fun to read.
I'm 53. Born in '62 and got my introduction to computers in '65. My adoptive mother worked an overnight shift at a large firm and, instead of hiring a babysitter, she'd take me in with her. I'd sit at one of those newfangled "teletypewriters" (think IBM Selectric for starters) and fool around. When I got tired, I'd curl up in a sleeping bag in a store room and wake up at home, ready for school.
One night I asked her how old she'd be when I turned 21. She wouldn't answer. Instead, she showed me how to write a program in a newfangled language called Beginner's All Purpose Standard Instruction Code - "BASIC", for short (it had just been invented). She'd previously taught me to type before I could write by writing the letters and numbers on my fingers. That was my introduction to programming.
In the 70s, one of my high schools was lucky enough to have some old donated equipment from which they cobbled together a 'lab'. There was a Wang 2200A, a DEC PDP-8E with a few ASR 33 Teletypes hooked up to it and two brand-spanking new VT52 DECScopes. Myself and two friends ended up being 'the three musketeers' of that lab.
I got my first internship in 1976, full time work in 1978 and didn't stop doing everything from software architecture and design through development, testing, implementation, documentation and retirement until I was transferred from one Air Force job to another in 2012. Now I manage developers.
In all that time, I've worked on IBMs (5150s, PCs, 360/30), many OTHER brands of home computers (Atari 800 & 1040ST, Amiga 2000, PC Clones all to way to today's Ultrabooks and a NUC), DEC systems from those early PDP-8 models, through the PDP-11 series and into a wide variety of VAXes and Alphas. I've forgotten about as many operating systems as I remember (VMS, RSTS/E, RT-11, DOS, Windows, TRSDOS, AmigaDOS, RSX-11M, Unix, etc) and quite a few programming languages (3 types of COBOL, innumerable types of BASIC (PLUS, PLUS-2, DEC, VAX, True, every version of VB through VB.NET) and even a little bit of "C", FORTRAN and MACRO-32). I've seen a blizzard of editors and text processors (TECO, EDT, TPU or RUNOFF, anyone?). I've saved programs and data to paper tape, magtape, tape cartridges, hard drives, hard cards, removable winchester drives, thumb drives and NOTEBOOK PAPER.
I've been on networks since they were born. Before the Internet I was on everything from the ARPAnet to DEC's EASYnet to GEnie and innumerable BBS systems. My house is wired for 2 phone lines in every room because, back in the 1980s, my adoptive mother wanted a separate line for the modems no matter what room she 'picked' as her office. My next house will have at least Cat6 in every room.
This 'tech' thing appears to be in my blood. When I was about 30, I met my half-brother for the first time. Come to find out he built satellite systems and, you guessed it, computers.
I just can't get away from this stuff...
One night I asked her how old she'd be when I turned 21. She wouldn't answer. Instead, she showed me how to write a program in a newfangled language called Beginner's All Purpose Standard Instruction Code - "BASIC", for short (it had just been invented). She'd previously taught me to type before I could write by writing the letters and numbers on my fingers. That was my introduction to programming.
In the 70s, one of my high schools was lucky enough to have some old donated equipment from which they cobbled together a 'lab'. There was a Wang 2200A, a DEC PDP-8E with a few ASR 33 Teletypes hooked up to it and two brand-spanking new VT52 DECScopes. Myself and two friends ended up being 'the three musketeers' of that lab.
I got my first internship in 1976, full time work in 1978 and didn't stop doing everything from software architecture and design through development, testing, implementation, documentation and retirement until I was transferred from one Air Force job to another in 2012. Now I manage developers.
In all that time, I've worked on IBMs (5150s, PCs, 360/30), many OTHER brands of home computers (Atari 800 & 1040ST, Amiga 2000, PC Clones all to way to today's Ultrabooks and a NUC), DEC systems from those early PDP-8 models, through the PDP-11 series and into a wide variety of VAXes and Alphas. I've forgotten about as many operating systems as I remember (VMS, RSTS/E, RT-11, DOS, Windows, TRSDOS, AmigaDOS, RSX-11M, Unix, etc) and quite a few programming languages (3 types of COBOL, innumerable types of BASIC (PLUS, PLUS-2, DEC, VAX, True, every version of VB through VB.NET) and even a little bit of "C", FORTRAN and MACRO-32). I've seen a blizzard of editors and text processors (TECO, EDT, TPU or RUNOFF, anyone?). I've saved programs and data to paper tape, magtape, tape cartridges, hard drives, hard cards, removable winchester drives, thumb drives and NOTEBOOK PAPER.
I've been on networks since they were born. Before the Internet I was on everything from the ARPAnet to DEC's EASYnet to GEnie and innumerable BBS systems. My house is wired for 2 phone lines in every room because, back in the 1980s, my adoptive mother wanted a separate line for the modems no matter what room she 'picked' as her office. My next house will have at least Cat6 in every room.
This 'tech' thing appears to be in my blood. When I was about 30, I met my half-brother for the first time. Come to find out he built satellite systems and, you guessed it, computers.
I just can't get away from this stuff...
IBM 650
Good to run across another 650 programmer. It seems weird that the greatest optimization you could perform to get a program to run faster was by changing the locations where programs and data were stored on the drum memory. My second computer was an IBM1620, then a 709 (another vacuum-tube machine), then onto the 7090, 7094, and 360. I also did some work on the Univac File computer, then the 1108. I spent lots of time on the Burroughs stack machines, the B5500, B6500/6700.
Shifted over to microprocessors when Intel came out with the 8086 and never looked back at the big iron.
Good to run across another 650 programmer. It seems weird that the greatest optimization you could perform to get a program to run faster was by changing the locations where programs and data were stored on the drum memory. My second computer was an IBM1620, then a 709 (another vacuum-tube machine), then onto the 7090, 7094, and 360. I also did some work on the Univac File computer, then the 1108. I spent lots of time on the Burroughs stack machines, the B5500, B6500/6700.
Shifted over to microprocessors when Intel came out with the 8086 and never looked back at the big iron.
I stumbled upon this not too long ago -- it's a great story.
You can watch the entire NOVA epside online here (starring Cliff Stoll as himself): The KGB, the Computer, and Me (Complete) - YouTube
And 30 years later, Cliff Stoll did a hilarious TED talk here: Clifford Stoll: The call to learn | TED Talk | TED.com
He also designs and sells Klein Bottles. Really unique dude.
Zapped
Model S - PURE EV
There must be some "old farts" stories about those that worked on the first computer anti-virus software..
What would computer history be without a reference to those first virus attacks and the great guys that stopped them.
Unfortunately I can't specifically recall when I had to buy my first AV software.
What would computer history be without a reference to those first virus attacks and the great guys that stopped them.
Unfortunately I can't specifically recall when I had to buy my first AV software.
Cyclone
Cyclonic Member ((.oO))
I remember needing antivirus software for Mac OS 7 and as a kid, having my uncle driving me to the next county to the right computer shop to get Virex. Then I learned of mail order catalogs and never saw my allowance again!
Zapped
Model S - PURE EV
That is amazing . Thanks for your offer to discuss cloud implementation
My son has taken over the IT at the business using mobile devices for data collection and information access etc ( data not on our servers , Cloud servers I assume)
I'm relegated to maintaining the old Delphi code.
So hard to keep up, I'm now the old guy who doesn't want to be responsible for change anymore.
Just live it in my Model S
When I was in college (1986 or so), there was a TSR virus going around that infected floppies.
But a few years later (88/89), I remember there was this program by Mcafee that scanned for 40-some different viruses. Each week I'd download a new version from a BBS -- and the number of viruses would go up a few more -- 45, 55, 62, etc. It was just one .exe file. I don't remember if it removed the viruses. I think back then in the DOS days, they were all TSRs and could be easily unloaded from memory and deleted from the hard drive.
You left out the fact that his Doctorate was in optics, specifically correction of spherical aberration, when the Hubble space telescope was first launched. You know, the incorrectly ground mirror. He was involved in the design of the "space glasses" that corrected it.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
While we are reminiscing, let's not forget the 20th anniversary of Clifford Stoll's Newsweek essay about the Internet:
http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306
http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306
I read that book around 1990-91. A couple of years later, I was working with one of the guys mentioned in it.
In a "flash from the past" moment today, I was having lunch with a friend of mine, and mentioned finding the VHDL PDP-8 model on opencores.org, and the PDP-8 implementation I found on sparetimegizmos.com (long after the last group buy was done).
His response was to offer me the PDP-8 and ASR-33 teletype gathering dust in his basement.
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Any of you old farts looking for work? NASA is hiring.
Why NASA Needs a Programmer Fluent In 60-Year-Old Languages
Why NASA Needs a Programmer Fluent In 60-Year-Old Languages
SW2Fiddler
We Are Cognitive Dissidents
Ancient Viruses... I have to confess. I remember my wife's birthday easily ...just because it is the same as Michelangelo's birthday.
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