end of an era

[k0ua]

From the top of my head without looking it up I think ASCII means American Standard Code for Information Interchange.

An older 5 level code is called Baudot.. do you have any idea what or who that was named after? or what it means?

 

[dave1949]

If you don't know what "9-edge face down" means, you don't know. . . . If you never walked into a computer room and had to scream over the sound of blower fans and line printers, you don't know. . . All the sciences used Fortran (FORmula TRANslation) , but COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) was the language that built business. Anyone know what the acronym ASCII stands for off the top of your head? I just say that I'm old enough to know all those things and remember the time when you really needed to know them to do anything with computers. Today, you just touch the screen and drag icons around to do work. We've gone from being pencil pushers to picture pushers.

BTW: Remember serial port printers? I talking about the old serial ports. In some ways, the printers have come full circle from serial to parallel and back to serial (USB) again. However, I love my wireless (WIFI) printer, an Epson Artisan 837. It has been very robust ever since I installed it. I guess you could really say we've come full circle from writing with a feather quill to inkjet printers that spray ink onto the page. All that laser stuff and toner mess was just a bump in the road.

Well, Fortran punch cards were made for "Talk like a Pirate Day" Arrgh! Turn in your deck, wait in the hallway, get the print-out back, repeat.

The wireless keyboard on our PC went bad the other day. The replacement (keyboard, mouse and little, tiny plug-in USB wireless (without wires too :laughing receiver) cost $20.

 

[rekees4300]

I remember punch cards and Fortran.

I love these trips down IT Memory Lane. Punch cards and COBOL were the bread & butter of my IT career and they enabled me to retired early. COBOL was the primary language for business applications. Used Fortran very little since it was mostly used for scientific applications. Lordy I must have punch millions of holes using IBM 029 card punch.

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[Soundguy]

Wow. I forgot all about Geos. You kinda dated your self with DOS and Geos. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Later,
Dan

how about cpm.. all the feel of dos.. just older..

 

[Soundguy]

If you don't know what "9-edge face down" means, you don't know. . . . If you never walked into a computer room and had to scream over the sound of blower fans and line printers, you don't know. . . All the sciences used Fortran (FORmula TRANslation) , but COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) was the language that built business. Anyone know what the acronym ASCII stands for off the top of your head? I just say that I'm old enough to know all those things and remember the time when you really needed to know them to do anything with computers. Today, you just touch the screen and drag icons around to do work. We've gone from being pencil pushers to picture pushers.

BTW: Remember serial port printers? I talking about the old serial ports. In some ways, the printers have come full circle from serial to parallel and back to serial (USB) again. However, I love my wireless (WIFI) printer, an Epson Artisan 837. It has been very robust ever since I installed it. I guess you could really say we've come full circle from writing with a feather quill to inkjet printers that spray ink onto the page. All that laser stuff and toner mess was just a bump in the road.

ascii is american standard code for information interchange ... But I think you knew that and were testing us. Remember the DMP10 printers.. and the early okidata color printers that used WAX ribbons!

 

[Soundguy]

I love these trips down IT Memory Lane. Punch cards and COBOL were the bread & butter of my IT career and they enabled me to retired early. COBOL was the primary language for business applications. Used Fortran very little since it was mostly used for scientific applications. Lordy I must have punch millions of holes using IBM 029 card punch.

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I remember having to help a buddy that was a kash n Kary manager when they got a ibm 360.

My wife used to be a switchboard operator. back when they had the patchbays with cables you connected. ( true! )

 

[creekbend]

I'll be 29 on my next birthday!

My Daddy use to say, "You can go to H*LL for LYING, just as much as You can for STEALING.

 

[farmgirl19]

My Daddy use to say, "You can go to H*LL for LYING, just as much as You can for STEALING.

That's not a very nice thing to imply!

 

[flyerdan]

Remember the old PC XT's that had a lot of cast aluminum in them? Got three in a pallet of old computer stuff from the state surplus place many years ago. Still have these squirreled away in the shop, and they did power up.

 

[dave1949]

I love these trips down IT Memory Lane. Punch cards and COBOL were the bread & butter of my IT career and they enabled me to retired early. COBOL was the primary language for business applications. Used Fortran very little since it was mostly used for scientific applications. Lordy I must have punch millions of holes using IBM 029 card punch.

Do you recall the phrase "bit bucket?"

Punch cards were good for business all around. Readers and punches were at the end of their life cycles when I entered field service. I never had to deal with them, but I think they made more than a few house payments for those who did earlier. All things considered, it was a wonder they worked as well as they did. Some larger sites had multiple readers, mostly because if the reader was down, your "mainframe" was out of business. :laughing:

 

[MossRoad]

Punch card machine was being hauled out when I was walking in. But to this day, in one corner of the computer room, if you lift a raised floor panel, the under-floor air will blow the little chads out and into your eyes!!!! AHHH IT HURTSSSSS!!!!! :cool2:

 

[dave1949]

That's not a very nice thing to imply!

You don't have to be so modest, just confess that you were smart enough to enter college at 13. We'll still like you.

 

[aczlan]

Remember the old PC XT's that had a lot of cast aluminum in them? Got three in a pallet of old computer stuff from the state surplus place many years ago. Still have these squirreled away in the shop, and they did power up.

I started on one of those... Might still have it in my parents attic.

Aaron Z

 

[Egbert]

Lots of old computer knowledge around here

I worked with JCL language, COBOL and Assembler - often writing "exit routines" for IBM Operating Systems. I started with punch cards - lol. We even had some old gear that used hard-wire boards for their programming. Up until my retirement in 2012, we ran an IBM Mainframe and, for the last 15 years or so, we had about 100 separate servers in the farm. The Mainframe was leaving about the same time I did - a B I G mistake in my opinion, as they have so much more power and security than almost any of these tinker-toy servers in use today.

It's absolutely amazing just how much technical wherewithal I've lost in just over a year into retirement. But, that's OK - I'm now into my new phase as a hobby farmer and loving it.

 

[Soundguy]

i had one of those with dual floppies and no hdd.

over the years I upgraded it with a mfm 20 meg hdd.. then later with a perstore card to get more space while slowly killing the old drive..

 

[farmgirl19]

You don't have to be so modest, just confess that you were smart enough to enter college at 13. We'll still like you.

Thank you for clarifying things for everyone, dave! :thumbsup:

 

[farmgirl19]

I think all of the keypunch, and the like was actually already obsolete when I had to work with it. The school actually got the old "hand-me-downs" that others were giving for tax write offs. I was going for a minor in Business, and had to do some computer courses at the time for that. It was a long time before I ever wanted to lay a hand on, or even think about, a computer, after dealing with that stuff.

 

[rekees4300]

I remember having to help a buddy that was a kash n Kary manager when they got a ibm 360.

The 360's were cash cows for IBM. Sold a ton of them. I was an IT manager at a ball bearing company that had one. First you would keypunch the data into cards (aka files that could have 1000's of cards) then sort it down into various sequences then suck it into the 360 that eventually spit out a pretty report(s). During the process you crossed our fingers and hoped no cards were eaten!

Do you recall the phrase "bit bucket?"

Oh yes, the generic term "bit bucket" was used to explain the lose of data when you had no idea what error really happened. The users were so IT ignorant in those days they actually believed the data vanished into the computer's "bit bucket". :hypnodisk:

It's absolutely amazing just how much technical wherewithal I've lost in just over a year into retirement. But, that's OK - I'm now into my new phase as a hobby farmer and loving it.

Ditto ... beats the he[[ outta sitting in meaningless meetings all day. Now everyday is Saturday ... FREEDOM!

 

[Soundguy]

Lots of old computer knowledge around here

...
It's absolutely amazing just how much technical wherewithal I've lost in just over a year into retirement. But, that's OK - I'm now into my new phase as a hobby farmer and loving it.

you know what the scary part is. watching the tech go by.. remembering when you were at the top of your game and ahead of the curve.. and then poof.. don't take long for all that info to be actually.. worthless.

Like many of you.. i was up on computers way before windows, GUI's, back when you needed to set jumpers on cards. no plug and play.. all comman line interfaces or worse. socketed drams.. 300ns memory was common. motorola 6500 series.. z80's and other procs were still mainline devices.. etc. hard drives were optional on small systems.. and small hdd's were just geting to some businesses.

I rememebr the first SCSI hdd we got. took a special full length controller card..a dn took all night to format!

can rememebr having to config extended ide controller cards using debug in dos to set drive parameters manually...

all that info.. beating on bare iron. old OS stuf.... that and 5$ and you can buy a cup of 5$ coffee

I was getting out of it when i think.. w98 was coming in.. 95 was the beginning of the end even..

again.. all that info.. experience.. etc. useless now..

 

[jinman]

An older 5 level code is called Baudot.. do you have any idea what or who that was named after? or what it means?

James, I don't know much about Baudot, but I do remember it. I also thought Baudot was a Frenchman, but I admit I looked it up to see that I was right.:laughing:

Back in 1967/68, I was a computer controls clerk in the Corporate Data Processing department for Texas Instruments. My job was the daily sales and billings report for the entire semi-conductor division. I got sore fingers nightly from going through drawer after drawer of IBM card tub files. I learned punch card machines, sorters, and collators so well that I could operate them in my sleep. I was advanced to a junior computer operator position when I was just 19. Unfortunately, my draft number was up and I joined the US Navy. I loved that job and it killed me to give it up.