[DUG] You say potatoe I say....

[Matthew Comb]

Geek :)

> My first tech device was a Sharp programmable scientific calculator,
> EL5101
> it had 48 yes 48 steps of program storage, and 5 memories.  It also had a
> wonderful LCD display and algebraic logic, eg you could enter expressions
> like
>
> (1+2)* sin 45
>
> in that order, no more RPN, and that's how it displayed on the screen, and
> you could recall and edit the command line.  It was such a good one that
> they still make a similar model today, now with more than 1k of memory and
> just a bit faster.  This was before the ZX81 and TRS80's.
> I used it to program a 2D moon landing game with the real orbital speeds
> and
> burn figures, all within 48 steps, calculating horizontal and vertical
> speeds....
>
> And PDP-11's and VMS, fond memories.  Guess where the DIR command came
> from?
> My favourite memory is of a PDP-11 that crashed running RT11 which was
> real
> fast....the console was on a separate power supply and it had this message
> on it:
>
> ?MON-F-Trap to 4: Power Failure
>
> When one of the office fuses blew.  How many modern operating systems can
> diagnose a sudden power cut as they crash?
>
> John
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz]
> On
> Behalf Of Laurence Bevan
> Sent: Thursday, 23 March 2006 1:27 p.m.
> To: 'NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List'
> Subject: RE: [DUG] You say potatoe I say....
>
>
> Seeing we're all reminescing...
>
> My introduction was on NCR 499's in 1981, 4 cassette drives and a mag card
> reader. Wrote the Council's first word processor on a machine without a
> screen, even did mail merge! The highlight was when they upgraded the
> memory
> to a whopping 32Kb of RAM. You had to write some pretty efficient code to
> fit in that.
>
> Later, in 1985, we upgraded to a NCR 9300 with screens and 10Mb hard
> drive.
> In 1988 they added 4 x 20Mb (NOT Gb) removeable hard drives at a cost of
> $80,000. I had one of the first PC's with dual 8 inch floppies. Remember
> trying out Windows version 1 from a floppy, took about 3 minutes to load
> up
> calculator.
>
> My first home computer was a Commodore VIC 20, 3K of RAM and a cassette
> drive. I won a Commodore software competition by writing a game in
> assembler
> (never want to do that again!) and bought my first 5.25" floppy drive for
> $1000.
>
> And you try telling the young people of today that ... and they won't
> believe you!!
>
>
> Cheers,
> Laurence Bevan
> Master Business Systems Ltd
> P O Box 467
> Feilding
>
>
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