what is kudos?

[JÞB]

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smercurio_fc wrote:

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altenbach wrote:

Anyone remember the paper stock that was patterned and ruled correctly to write FORTRAN programs with paper and pencil? That's how you design the program before going to the card puncher. 80 spaces, starting with comment, statement number, continuation field, statement, and ID field at the end.

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I do! I do!

Wait... why am I so quick to age myself? 

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Yup- my intro to programing  for Plato IV required the pencil & paper before the first punch in the card.  WOW was I impressed with the 77 baud teletype terminal! and you (almost) never ran through a whole roll of paper!  

Thanks for the amnesia trip !

[altenbach]

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Jeff Bohrer wrote: 
Yup- my intro to programing  for Plato IV required the pencil & paper before the first punch in the card. 

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 Don't forget, its paper, pencil and eraser. 😄 (Only the real hardcore hackers coded in ink).

 Tells you how much has changed. Not much!!!

(Look at the figure 4 of the plato IV manual. Looks like LabVIEW, even comes with a shift regisiter. :D)

 

Message Edited by altenbach on 04-08-2010 10:50 AM

Message Edited by altenbach on 04-08-2010 10:51 AM

[Jason_P]

I still look back fondly on my days learning BASIC on a TRS-80 Model III... But I gave it up for an Apple IIe with the 128kB EXTENDED memory.  🙂

JasonP - CLD

[SteveChandler]

Wow. Some of these old threads that I stumble upon. What is kudos leads to a trip down memory lane.

This is the first computer ever got to program.

[Cerati]

Aaah...Atari. Such a beautiful machine. My friend had one of those and was the most popular guy in the neighbourhood. I myself started with Oric 1, then swiftly moved to VIC-20 and later to Commodore 64 - the ultimate gaming machine. Programming with those wasn't exactly as easy as with LabVIEW, but I remember achieving some low-level adventure games for my own entertainment.

Talking about "kudos", it means "tissue" in Finnish language (my native tongue) and that's why it has always sounded odd when I hear it being used...

Cheers,

Cerati

[LV_Pro]

Ah, Commodore 64! Bought two of them long after the rest of the world moved on, there were some fun games and a lot of interesting work for amateur radio (Ham radio), for decoding teletype signal tones, Morse code, etc. Still have them somewhere in storage, along with a Netronix COSMAC ELF II using an RCA 1802 processor, with 256 bytes of memory. The 1802 is currently the terrestrially built (as opposed to any E.T. one's) processor that is the farthest from Earth. A whole collection of interesting (to nerds, not wives) computers from the beginning. Don't have a front panel, do have an 8K core memory plane (not the 16"X16" card though). Still marvel at the power of almost every electronic device these days, from my iPOD touch 8G (8G vs 256 bytes!) to my son's new i7 laptop with 16Gb of ram. Not the Jetsons, but closer than we might realize!

FORTRAN IV was my first language, running on a CDC Cyber 6600 super computer (for the day!)

[Ben]

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@LV_Pro wrote:

Ah, Commodore 64! Bought two of them long after the rest of the world moved on, there were some fun games and a lot of interesting work for amateur radio (Ham radio), for decoding teletype signal tones, Morse code, etc. Still have them somewhere in storage, along with a Netronix COSMAC ELF II using an RCA 1802 processor, with 256 bytes of memory. The 1802 is currently the terrestrially built (as opposed to any E.T. one's) processor that is the farthest from Earth. A whole collection of interesting (to nerds, not wives) computers from the beginning. Don't have a front panel, do have an 8K core memory plane (not the 16"X16" card though). Still marvel at the power of almost every electronic device these days, from my iPOD touch 8G (8G vs 256 bytes!) to my son's new i7 laptop with 16Gb of ram. Not the Jetsons, but closer than we might realize!

FORTRAN IV was my first language, running on a CDC Cyber 6600 super computer (for the day!)

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Within arms reach I have on my desk

1) Computer punch cards

2) 8-1/2 inch floppy disk

3) Front panel of a PDP 11/70 (last one under contract to DEC in Pittsburgh. Used to run a Fortran-77 app under RSX-11M (not the plus version silly) to keep track of the amount of gas stored in old wells.

But at home waiting to be mounted in a frame is a 512 BIT (not byte) core memory array.

I alos have the deck and linear postioner assembly from an old CDC 9762

that I'll eventually turn into a really mean sub-woofer or an Tesla earthquake machine.

Ben

[LV_Pro]

For those that don't know, the old hard drive that Ben has pictured has/had an enormously strong magnet for driving the R/W head assembly (which were several heads as these were multiplatter disks). You had to remember to take off your watch before working around it, and if you dropped a tool it would vanish as its normal ballistic curve would get bent to fly to the magnet. I maintained a number of these or similar models back in the '70's. It was funny, I was moonlighting as station engineer for two radio stations at the time and had to be careful to degauss my tools before working on taped decks, etc. as just passing them near those voice coil magnets would strongly magnetize them.

You must have a very large, or very crowded desk Ben!

Got rid of my last 8" floppy a while ago, then two weeks later a friend who maintains really old systems called and asked if I had any.

[Ben]

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@LV_Pro wrote:

For those that don't know, the old hard drive that Ben has pictured has/had an enormously strong magnet for driving the R/W head assembly (which were several heads as these were multiplatter disks). You had to remember to take off your watch before working around it, and if you dropped a tool it would vanish as its normal ballistic curve would get bent to fly to the magnet. I maintained a number of these or similar models back in the '70's. It was funny, I was moonlighting as station engineer for two radio stations at the time and had to be careful to degauss my tools before working on taped decks, etc. as just passing them near those voice coil magnets would strongly magnetize them.

You must have a very large, or very crowded desk Ben!

Got rid of my last 8" floppy a while ago, then two weeks later a friend who maintains really old systems called and asked if I had any.

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You got it.

When the tach rod went bad (it provided the speed feedback to the postioner servo system) there was no feed back keeping the positioner from accelerating. This resulted in a condition that I called "seek to forever" and had a very distinctive sound when the postioner slammed into the forward mechanical stop and then retracted. It would scare teh He#@ out of you if you were not expecting it. Of course all of the heads had to be realligned after that.

Just trying to bolt down the magnet to the deck was a challenge since the magnet would rip the allen wrench out of your hand and the wrench would knock the magnet out of allignment. You had to gradually sneak up on the bolts keping the allen wrench in contact with the magnet and then leverage into the allen screw.

Ben

[Moobe]

So what are Kudos again?