How far back do you go....

As I read some of the posts and comments on this forums, I am amazed at the diversity of people who inhabit it. Not only different nationalities, but different ages, programming experiences, skill levels, etc. Once-in-a-while someone mentions something from the "good old days" when programming was simple and people were amazed by the potential of computers and I can't help but feel a bit nostalgic.

Just wondering how far back some of the members of this forum go....... would love to hear from you!

I for one ........

* started my first programming experience on a time-sharing UNIVAC SPECTRA (IBM360 look-alike) in 1975 using FORTRAN for Engineers (WATFOR and WATFIV) using punched cards (what a pain) only to graduate to Teletype Terminals and then to the CRT Dumb Terminals with Interactive Fortran (Wow! what an amazing technological advancement!)

* Moved on to a PDP-8 minicomputer programming with FOCAL after learning to use the Binary switches to load RIM and BIN.... anyone remember that?

* Then moved on to the 8080 based Altair 8800 microcomputer writing programs in machine code. Finally upgrading it with more memory to run 8K Microsoft BASIC in ROM. And then the ultimate accomplishment was to install an 8" floppy disk drive and write a CBIOS to load and run CP/M, programming in Microsoft BASIC and PL/1

* Finally transitioned to DOS (unwillingly) -> WINDOWS (very unwillingly) -> UNIX (willingly)

Just curious to know if I am the only dinosaur on this forum (I doubt it! ?)

aminoacid said:

Moved on to a PDP-8 minicomputer programming with FOCAL after learning to use the Binary switches to load RIM and BIN.... anyone remember that?

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Closest I can get to that is I managed a VAX 11/750 in 1984 that took about half-an-hour to boot off a QIC (tape).

But once it was up, it stayed up.

aminoacid said:

Moved on to a PDP-8 minicomputer

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Actually, now I think about it:

I had a friend at school whose dad worked at home in a bungalow out the back, and he was running a PDP-something with two terminals. The entire bungalow would vibrate as the hard drive spun up during power-up. The dad used it to model the flow and settle of molten plastic inside a mold; my friend and I mostly used it to play Snake.

aminoacid said:

Just curious to know if I am the only dinosaur on this forum (I doubt it! ?)

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Not alone. Many members have come from very early stage of computers, check

emexes said:

Closest I can get to that is I managed a VAX 11/750 in 1984 that took about half-an-hour to boot off a QIC (tape).

But once it was up, it stayed up.

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Yes, I remember that one ... the University I worked for ultimately migrated to a VAX 11/780 which was a big improvement. Still used time-share terminals but no punch cards.

My first computing job was a summer placement in 1966. My main task was calculating the potentiometer values for function generators on the analogue computer, but as a treat I was allowed to try Fortran on the digital machine downstairs. The example set was the calculation of a square root, and with a little help I had that running in three or four days.

My first fulltime job was as a programmer on an IBM 7030 ("Stretch") machine with a 64-bit word length 2048 kByte memory. We sent our trays of cards off in the van every morning at 11:00 and when we got the printouts back the next day we could start debugging. A colleague of mine dropped his card tray on the staircase between two buildings. It wasn't too bad and he had them all back in order in a couple of days.

In 1969 we got one of the first time-sharing machines in the UK. You only got a 30-second slot, and that included reading in your paper tape on the teletype, but I wrote a program to compute the Ebers-Moll parameters for a transistor and thirty seconds was just enough time to run it. We had an open day and as it was a Saturday we were allowed a full hour of machine time. I wrote a demo program where visitors could type in a number and get a reply immediately telling them if it was a prime number or not. It was amazing - almost like artificial intelligence!

Wow, so many memories...
But I don't want to repeat myself now, there's enough to read in the thread under the link above. But one other thing strikes me here. Whereas in the past you had to fight for a slot of computing time to be able to test a self-written programme on a machine at all (IBM /360 and /370 with FORTRAN), I personally found it a total liberation when I had my first ATARI home computer in my hands. Equipped with a 6502 processor from MOS, a gross memory of 64k and a pre-loaded development environment for the corresponding programming language opened up unimagined possibilities. FORTRAN was so terribly limited, but what was possible with the built-in BASIC! Colourful graphics, sound and the use of peripheral devices. This little box "flew" with a programme written in assembler. With "AtariWriter" there was a comfortable word processor, with "VisiCalc" or "SynCalc" there was a great spreadsheet. With a good PASCAL compiler, you could write programs that worked more or less cross-platform on a ZX Spectrum or could be easily customised. It took years for MS-DOS computers to reach this level of performance. Somehow I miss that time.

I personally found it a total liberation when I had my first ATARI home computer in my hands.

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I agree. A friend lent me his Apple II to write a rental management application for the local electronics store. It was wonderful, and I was up at five in the morning writing code before starting my real job (nothing to do with programming at that time). I was looking at bareboard 6502 systems when the BBC Micro came out in the UK - a bit more expensive but a properly engineered system that I could actually afford. As you say, it opened up another world.

Brian Dean said:

My first computing job was a summer placement in 1966. My main task was calculating the potentiometer values for function generators on the analogue computer, but as a treat I was allowed to try Fortran on the digital machine downstairs. The example set was the calculation of a square root, and with a little help I had that running in three or four days.

My first fulltime job was as a programmer on an IBM 7030 ("Stretch") machine with a 64-bit word length 2048 kByte memory. We sent our trays of cards off in the van every morning at 11:00 and when we got the printouts back the next day we could start debugging. A colleague of mine dropped his card tray on the staircase between two buildings. It wasn't too bad and he had them all back in order in a couple of days.

In 1969 we got one of the first time-sharing machines in the UK. You only got a 30-second slot, and that included reading in your paper tape on the teletype, but I wrote a program to compute the Ebers-Moll parameters for a transistor and thirty seconds was just enough time to run it. We had an open day and as it was a Saturday we were allowed a full hour of machine time. I wrote a demo program where visitors could type in a number and get a reply immediately telling them if it was a prime number or not. It was amazing - almost like artificial intelligence!

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Very Interesting. They had a course in Analog Computers and Servo Mechanisms when I was in college but I never got to take it. In the age of slide rules and CRC tables, digital computing was a huge advancement.

BlueVision said:

Wow, so many memories...
But I don't want to repeat myself now, there's enough to read in the thread under the link above. But one other thing strikes me here. Whereas in the past you had to fight for a slot of computing time to be able to test a self-written programme on a machine at all (IBM /360 and /370 with FORTRAN), I personally found it a total liberation when I had my first ATARI home computer in my hands. Equipped with a 6502 processor from MOS, a gross memory of 64k and a pre-loaded development environment for the corresponding programming language opened up unimagined possibilities. FORTRAN was so terribly limited, but what was possible with the built-in BASIC! Colourful graphics, sound and the use of peripheral devices. This little box "flew" with a programme written in assembler. With "AtariWriter" there was a comfortable word processor, with "VisiCalc" or "SynCalc" there was a great spreadsheet. With a good PASCAL compiler, you could write programs that worked more or less cross-platform on a ZX Spectrum or could be easily customised. It took years for MS-DOS computers to reach this level of performance. Somehow I miss that time.

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Yes, I agree! Just the ability to run small programs in BASIC and see the results immediately was amazing. I, like many others chose to build a Z-80 based microcomputer using S-100 bus boards (like the ALTAIR). Ended up writing my own "OS" for it in Assembly Language, and upgraded it for several years, adding more memory, a TinkerToys S-100 disk controller and 8" Shugart floppy drive, plenty of RS232 Ports and I could finally run CP/M with a wealth of software available for it. I resisted moving to the PC and DOS for a long time, since CP/M and the Z-80 processor was far superior than the 8088 with DOS and initially had more software available. But finally caved in and put together a PC clone based on the 80286 which followed in the same footsteps as the previous machine, ultimately becoming a Pentium running Windows 3.1. What a great experience!

My first computer

This reminds me the Curta calculator I used as a young engineer when my Aristo Sudio slide rule, I still have it, was not precise enough.

How many memories and how many dinosaurs.
I am reminded of the nights when I watched the sun rise in the university teletype room programming with a PDP11-20.
Before PCs of course!!!
But we have enjoyed the evolution of machines and languages, and as long as we can laugh about it, we are alive!!!

Jaume Guillem said:

How many memories and how many dinosaurs.
I am reminded of the nights when I watched the sun rise in the university teletype room programming with a PDP11-20.
Before PCs of course!!!
But we have enjoyed the evolution of machines and languages, and as long as we can laugh about it, we are alive!!!

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I remember the long nights in the teletype room but not the sun rising, since the room was in a basement with no windows, raised floors and "freezing" temperatures. They maintained strict climate control in the room because they wanted to prevent the TTYs from going out of calibration in addition to keeping the time-share computers and peripherals cool.

klaus said:

This reminds me the Curta calculator I used as a jung engineer when my Aristo Sudio slide rule, I still have it, was not precise enough.

View attachment 149220

View attachment 149221

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We had to use a slide-rule but only for my first semester in college. After that they started phasing in hand-held scientific electronic calculators as they became affordable. I remember when I was a school kid in 1972 people used mechanical adding machines for calculations. I had taken a trip to Japan at that time and everyone out there in the stores used a small abacus instead of an adding machine to total your purchases and calculate the tax. It's amazing how skilled they were at using it. Also, Japan was one of the most advanced country in electronics in the 70's so it was surprising to see them use these devices. I purchased one as a souvenir and still have it.......

aminoacid said:

We had to use a slide-rule but only for my first semester in college. After that they started phasing in hand-held scientific electronic calculators as they became affordable. I remember when I was a school kid in 1972 people used mechanical adding machines for calculations. I had taken a trip to Japan at that time and everyone out there in the stores used a small abacus instead of an adding machine to total your purchases and calculate the tax. It's amazing how skilled they were at using it. Also, Japan was one of the most advanced country in electronics in the 70's so it was surprising to see them use these devices. I purchased one as a souvenir and still have it.......

View attachment 149236

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This originates from China and is called an abacus（算盘）. Chinese scientists used him to calculate the atomic bomb. We all have to learn it when we were in elementary school.

aminoacid said:

We had to use a slide-rule but only for my first semester in college. After that they started phasing in hand-held scientific electronic calculators as they became affordable. I remember when I was a school kid in 1972 people used mechanical adding machines for calculations. I had taken a trip to Japan at that time and everyone out there in the stores used a small abacus instead of an adding machine to total your purchases and calculate the tax. It's amazing how skilled they were at using it. Also, Japan was one of the most advanced country in electronics in the 70's so it was surprising to see them use these devices. I purchased one as a souvenir and still have it.......

View attachment 149236

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In the ex-USSR one comedian (despite the fact that in 70-th almost every store used them) has created a sketch about a turist from the USA who saw it in the store and asked a question:

- why do they do calculations on the lower back massager?