Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:38:57 -0500 (CDT) From: Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd@qeng-ho.org Subject: Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks & BSD) Message-ID: <201010211138.o9LBcvai003950@mail.r-bonomi.com>
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> From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Thu Oct 21 02:18:28 2010 > Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 08:20:07 +0100 > From: Arthur Chance <freebsd@qeng-ho.org> > To: FreeBSD-Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> > Subject: Re: Greybeards (Re: Netbooks & BSD) > > On 10/20/10 23:07, Gary Kline wrote: > > On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 09:10:28PM +0100, Arthur Chance wrote: > >> On 10/20/10 20:46, Bob Hall wrote: > >>> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:07:55PM -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote: > >>>> On 10/20/2010 11:55 AM, Gary Kline wrote: > >>>>> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:47:38AM -0700, perryh@pluto.rain.com wrote: > >>>>>> Matthias Apitz<guru@unixarea.de> wrote: > >>>>>>> El d?a Tuesday, October 19, 2010 a las 07:29:46PM -0700, Gary Kline escribi?: > >>>>>>>> PS: I really _was_ current on hardware stuff. Back in the VAX > >>>>>>>> 780 days :-) > >>>>>>> I booted my first UNIX V7 tape on a PDP-11 around 1982, I think. > >>>>>> > >>>>>> Gotcha beat :) UNIX V6, PDP-11/34, RK05 disk cartridge, 1975. > >>>>>> The whole runtime fit on one RK05. The sources took a second one. > >>>>> > >>>>> I remember the 11/34 fondly. The whole EE department at Cory > >>>>> Hall was running one one; then when I interned at Livermore my > >>>>> job of porting the "Portable F77 Compiler" was done with vi and > >>>>> the source code that Stu Feldman wrote. I love[d] those bloody > >>>>> old computers, :-) Dunno why. Maybe because they really > >>>>> *were* about computing. Not streaming [[whatever]] or having > >>>>> php running. (Blah^9^9^9) > >>>>> > >>>>> :) > >>>> > >>>> Heck, when I started out, they didn't even have zeros and ones yet. > >>>> We had to settle for "o"s and "l"s ... > >>> > >>> When I started out, we didn't have read/write heads for the hard disks. > >>> We had to copy the data from the screen to the disk by hand using > >>> magnetized sewing needles. In order to read the damn things we had to > >>> pass a compass over the disk and see where the needle deflected. > >> > >> Enough Monty Python Yorkshiremen claims, already. :-) > >> > >> Getting back to reality, although I never did it (fortunately), a > >> friend of mine who was about a decade older than me (I'm mid/late > >> 50s) had the experience of programming microcode on a machine by > >> inserting brass slugs for 0s and ferrite slugs for 1s on a pin > >> board. Anyone got any idea what that was? He was (UK) military so > >> maybe it wasn't a generally known box. > >> > > > > This microcode programming sounds just vagely familiar; seems like > > mid/late-80's or early-90's. Am i right? --Most uses for > > supercomputers are mil/spooks/<<>>; that's the only reason the > > idea might have floated past me. > > No, this was circa 1970. I met him in 1975 and and it was past history > for him then. He was Royal Air Force, if that gives a clue, and > certainly wasn't a super - he talked about it as if it were a fairly > dumb mini. That =had= to have been some kind of fairly specialized, and -very- limited capability, hardware. Probably a crypto translator.
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