Do you remember before computers?

I got out of the Air Force and joined IBM in 1967. The big computer of the day was the 360. Personal Computers, forget it.

I built my first computer, by hand, based on plans in Popular Science. It used an Intel 8008 processor and 1 K of RAM. The keyboard and printer was a Teletype model 15. The display was a TV with a home made video card. Forget graphics, it was character mode only. Mass storage was a 5 button cassette tape recorder.

To boot up th OS I had to hand key (using switches) a 24 byte program to read the tape into memory. There were NO applications unless you wrote your own, in machine language, octal.

Somewhere around here I have a picture of that system. If I can find it I'll post it.

Ah, the good old days, NOT!

Bob

 

Bob

I bet you had experience with SAGE - Semi Automatic Ground Environment, AKA AN/FSQ-7. Fascinating how there were over 20 of those vacuum tube monsters scattered all across the US, even the backup one in North Bay, Ontario. The system was housed in a windowless blockhouse sort of 4 story concrete blast-resistant building

It was the beginning of such concepts as wide area networking. Kind of neat how the consoles had built-in ashtrays and cigarette lighters. The 3 MW of onsite diesel power was probably split 50/50 between the computer and the air conditioning

I understand there was a "panic button" - we would now call it an Emergency Power Off - that would instantly kill the computer if the A/C quit. Apparently the drum storage would melt down within 60 secs if the chillers quit working

The first time I saw a personal computer I was just finishing high school, they had Commodore Business Machines PET and a VIC 20. Ah, the good ole days

jay

 

How about recording as we know it today. When I started out in Radio as a Disk Jockey, I recorded all my commercials on a "WIRE" recorder. To play the commercial, we had to que it up and rewind each time.
Oh, and the first computer I had was a Commodore 64. It was the best at the time and in full color with a WYSIWYG format.... Shows to go you how the best can totally go to dust by not changing with the times. Today, I am on a Mac G5 Dual 2 gig with 1 terrabite hard drive. My first Mac had a 20 Meg hard drive and the salesman moved me up from the 10 meg I wanted with the pitch that it was all the space I would ever need.... jf :hurt:

 

my family got our first home computer in 1998 or 99. we did not have regular internet service until shortly before i moved out. i remember years before then, i was in complete awe of my friend's family's new tandy. she and her brothers were rarely allowed to touch it.

 

I remember what it was like before computers, but I don't want to go back. I learned how to type on a plain old mechanical typewriter and here I am now, 100 wpm, on my laptop. My first electronic typing experience was on an IBM, back when IBM was king. I couldn't believe how good I had it! I remember DOS and Atari being the best thing I had ever seen since Star Wars. Before that, I played Pong. My first computer of my own was a Gateway (and it still works, although quite outdated). It sits in a closet because I can't bear (not bare, dammit) to throw it away. I deducted it because I was working at home as a transcriptionist, so I would be able to stay home with my son during his developmental years.

I remember the quiet. I remember 8-tracks and records. I remember when people talked to each other much more than they do today. It seems everyone today is separated - on their blue toothes & cell phones, listening to their Ipods, typing away on their laptops, and hurrying about. I remember that there were a lot more children outside, instead of those of today, who are enthralled by various technological devices. I limit the amount of time my son spends engaged in that type of entertainment. I give him choices (i.e., you can read or go outside and play, but no more PS2 or Internet). I do want him to know of earth, not just the images of it. The problem is that he is an only child and there is no one to play with, since many other children are inside getting whiter and fatter. We spend at least one of each of our weekends, he and I, on trails, swimming in the ocean, riding our bikes...just getting some precious, fresh air. So, there are good things and bad things about all of our new technology. My son's electronic generation will, perhaps, miss out on many things they will never know, but they will also have many advantages that I never had. Is this not what every generation does, as they look back on the next? These kids are sharp - they have the whole world at their fingertips. I had encyclopedias. At least I read...books. Technology gives some and takes some.

The convenience that technology brings us - great things - and I enjoy so much of it - I'm glad I get to experience the remarkable progress of this human race, with all its failings, but it also takes something away. Daniel Boorstin, in his brilliant essay, "Technology and Democracy," spoke of what technology takes from each of us, such as the view of the world through your camera lens, as opposed to the magnificent view your own eyes provide. The desire to keep something forever sold for the immense beauty spread out before you. Perhaps the happy medium is the ability to appreciate both. I've seen such beauty with my eyes and my mind has recorded it, but will it last as long as the pictures I should have taken, instead? I traveled light, wanting to walk further. Will telling my son and grandchildren one day of the sights I have seen be as inspiring as that which I might have photographed? Probably, they will appreciate the imagery I paint with my gift of expression and it will bring us closer. However, long after I am gone, the computer image will remain. What gift is best to present to them? Still, as far as the here and now and living the my personal experiences goes, a selfish pursuit perhaps, I would rather have my eyes and my fine mind experience the beauty.

That said, I would probably beat your nice person if you tried to take my cell phone...

 

Back in my day, we had to walk five miles to school, uphill both ways, through knee-deep snow just to play with our abacus.

 

Hey, I've been to San Antonio, Texas. It's miles to anything that even looks like a hill. hehehe

Bob

 

Hey, my dad was a Methodist minister and I remember he had a wire recorder well into the 80s. He used it for all kinds of things around the church. Last time I saw it he was trying to sell it at a garage sale. It still worked but I would have hated to try and tubes tubes for it.

I never did find out if it sold. He had a whole box of stainless steel wire on those little spools.

Bob

 

I found the picture of my first computer. I don't see the printer. It could be back in that dark corner. Teletypes were painted dark brown or black. The black square behind the keyboard was a piece of dark Plexiglas lined with switches used to load a small program to boot up off of the cassette recorder.



If you look close, to the right of the TV, in the very back you can see the card that contained the 1K of memory.

I can't tell you how many hours were spent sitting there flipping switches and writing the simplest of programs.

Bob

 

hahahahahahaha!!! Reminds me of Bill Cospy...uphill...both ways...

 

I used digibits interfaced to an HP2100A to run my masters thesis and doctoral dissertation. I used handwired macpanels to "program" the digibits and talked to the computer via teletype, paper tape (photoreader) and the front switch register. Changing a line of code was about an 8-9 step process, not including a four-pass compiler. The HP sported a massive 8k of memory, none of it ROM. If I ever turned it off it took the better part of a morning to get it running again (had to enter the basic binary loader routine in through the front switch register).

I wrote a dumb terminal program, borrowed an acoustic couple modem, and used a Vic20 attached to our TV to run some mainframe data analyses from home (luxury).

Typed the thesis on an IBM selectric, but was able to type the dissertation on a Terak LSI lab computer running UCSD-Pascal. I still have the 8in floppy.
I bought one first IBM PCs about the time my son was born. Floppy drives were not available yet although a 10Mb winchester drive was. Zork was the first video game I purchased for it, massive dude!

Many years later I was in a blockhouse at the cape observing a Delta launch of a GPS satellite for work; and I noticed that they were using an HP2100A to run some aspects of the launch sequence. I was able to strut my stuff and do a little repair work on the photoreader for the staff.

 

I remember when I was young, I shown like the sun.

Cry on, you crazy diamond, I would say.

And I can recall, the days before home computers, and what a sort of wonderful time it was.

 

So, are you category 1 or 2? It sounds like 2, but I am curious about your definition of the difference between each category.

I too had the experience of using punch cards for COBOL programming. At the college I went to, we had a mainframe computer (which filled a room at the time) for the COBOL class and had to submit our programs on punch cards. Unfortunately, many of the card punch machines would get out of synch and while a 3 might be typed (and printed on the respective column on the card), what was punched was something else. And it would vary by each card that was run through the punch machine. Talk about frustration. My solution was to have about 4 decks of cards (4 copies of the program). I would submit the 4 decks and get the error report back and start weeding out the true syntax or logic errors from the mis-typed cards. Once I got a completely 'good' deck of cards, I would submit the good deck for my 'official' project submission.

BASIC programming was the refrigerator-sized CPU (DEC PDP 11/70 if memory serves). When I got to use the CRT to create my programs, my immediate thought was why the f**k did I have to endure the punch cards when this was available? That was my first experience with resource allocation.

My first PC was the IBM PC-XT that I purchased via the employee purchase program at work.

 

I do remember life before computers. I also remember life before electric/electronic calculators, commercial jets and antibiotics.

 

I remember when water came by truck once a week, before we moved to the city.

 

Actually, it looks like approaching 90% of people responding are "pre-computer" in some sense (options 1 and 2 taken together.) I think that there are probably some cross-over answers as there's a fair amount of interpretation needed to distinguish between them.

 

Count me as one who grew up during the age of manual typewriters. I too was one of those college students in the early '70s who had to write in Fortran using punch cards which you then submitted to the computer operator to be run in the evening and my programs never worked. My first desktop computer was an original apple with the works and the monitor built together. The monitor was about 6 square inches. The printer was an IBM Selectric which was somehow hooked up to the apple. My first IBM computer used floppy disks and was so slow I often made it a race to see if I could do the calculation by hand before the computer could 'riddle' it's way through the maze. I often won. It's hard to believe that we all have at our fingertips more computing power than the Apollo moon landing mission!

 

For that matter, we have more computing power at our fingertips than the Space Shuttle has on board.