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airansun
·When I first sat down at a computer, it was in this prior world.
Hard to believe all the feats accomplished with such primitive tools.
Edited:
“Solid logic technology” delivered by IBM in 1964: announcing the 360
When I first sat down at a computer, it was in this prior world.
Hard to believe all the feats accomplished with such primitive tools.
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marcn
·… then my follow up:
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sheepdoll
·
When I first sat down at a computer, it was in this prior world.
Hard to believe all the feet’s accomplished with such primitive tools.
Back in the day when I was a student, the school was donated a used 360. Was impractical to set it up as some of the support hardware was missing. So we gutted the cabinet and used it for a coat closet. I had the selectric console for years. May still have some screws and other small items.
Sadly the selectric was tossed out by my parents when I moved away. Along with the Typewriter and the adding machine. Was remembering that when I put the Christmas tree away as I had kept them in the garage.
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airansun
·But it is not blue.
Back in the day when I was a student, the school was donated a used 360. Was impractical to set it up as some of the support hardware was missing. So we gutted the cabinet and used it for a coat closet. I had the selectric console for years. May still have some screws and other small items.
Sadly the selectric was tossed out by my parents when I moved away. Along with the Typewriter and the adding machine. Was remembering that when I put the Christmas tree away as I had kept them in the garage.
So sad. What year?
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MRC
·First computer I used as a student was an IBM 1620, introduced 1959. This is about 1/3 of one, there was a card reader and a printer too. Cost equivalent now over half a million Pounds.
First I was paid to use was the CDC 6600 that is now in the London Science Museum, yes the very one! Here is about 10% of it. Cost to the company I worked for was roughly £1 per second -- and if the program crashed you still paid! The application crashed often and I could spend in a day what I made before income tax in a year. And go home with nothing to show for it....
Both of these were programmed on 80-column cards. Joining a project that was being developed on a Prime 300 "minicomputer" (still the size of a rather large filing cabinet) in 1974 was a revelation, I typed directly at it and it replied in, ahem roughly, real time. It could put pictures on a screen too, always handy if you are trying to design stuff to go inside a power station.
First I was paid to use was the CDC 6600 that is now in the London Science Museum, yes the very one! Here is about 10% of it. Cost to the company I worked for was roughly £1 per second -- and if the program crashed you still paid! The application crashed often and I could spend in a day what I made before income tax in a year. And go home with nothing to show for it....
Both of these were programmed on 80-column cards. Joining a project that was being developed on a Prime 300 "minicomputer" (still the size of a rather large filing cabinet) in 1974 was a revelation, I typed directly at it and it replied in, ahem roughly, real time. It could put pictures on a screen too, always handy if you are trying to design stuff to go inside a power station.
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JwRosenthal
·Not directly related to computers but old tech:
About 20 years ago I was told by someone I knew that they were junking the entire electomicrospy lab at a local major hospital as they went all digital. This was not just the electron microscope and console, but the photographic darkroom associated with it. As my interest was the darkroom equipment, I made the arrangements to get what I could.
I took away the sinks, the plumbing (they had already disconnected all the filtration and mixing valves) the enlargers and all developing equipment.
I asked what was happening to the microscope itself and they said that nobody wanted it- not even teaching hospitals, so to the scrap yard it was headed.
I was handed a folder with all the original manuals for everything and tucked in was the invoices for everything in the lab. The Durst enlarger alone was $10k without accessories, the microscope was about $150k
It looked like this one to my recollection
Luckily the Durst came with all the accoutrement to convert it from a point-light source to condenser so it is still doing duty in my lab
About 20 years ago I was told by someone I knew that they were junking the entire electomicrospy lab at a local major hospital as they went all digital. This was not just the electron microscope and console, but the photographic darkroom associated with it. As my interest was the darkroom equipment, I made the arrangements to get what I could.
I took away the sinks, the plumbing (they had already disconnected all the filtration and mixing valves) the enlargers and all developing equipment.
I asked what was happening to the microscope itself and they said that nobody wanted it- not even teaching hospitals, so to the scrap yard it was headed.
I was handed a folder with all the original manuals for everything and tucked in was the invoices for everything in the lab. The Durst enlarger alone was $10k without accessories, the microscope was about $150k
It looked like this one to my recollection
Luckily the Durst came with all the accoutrement to convert it from a point-light source to condenser so it is still doing duty in my lab
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MRC
·May I suggest a couple of web sites about old computers?
First is the Computer Conservation Society: British based but interested in everything. I am a member but their main interest only overlaps slightly with my experience. https://www.computerconservationsociety.org/
Second is a huge private collection of anything from the 1940s to the early 2000s. I am involved with documenting and trying to revive a couple of defunct makes. They have a 1984 machine that was my first home computer and still has my name writ large in felt-tip on the side from when I bought it after pulling it out of my employer's "storage" (aka 2 years old and therefore obsolete for our business but the bean-counters won't let us write them off the books). https://www.computermuseum.org.uk/
First is the Computer Conservation Society: British based but interested in everything. I am a member but their main interest only overlaps slightly with my experience. https://www.computerconservationsociety.org/
Second is a huge private collection of anything from the 1940s to the early 2000s. I am involved with documenting and trying to revive a couple of defunct makes. They have a 1984 machine that was my first home computer and still has my name writ large in felt-tip on the side from when I bought it after pulling it out of my employer's "storage" (aka 2 years old and therefore obsolete for our business but the bean-counters won't let us write them off the books). https://www.computermuseum.org.uk/
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sheepdoll
·So sad. What year?
The problem with the 360 'donation' was it was incorrectly removed and some of the support HW was lost.
The typewriters were lost between 1982 when I moved out of the family home to 2004 when I moved back in. Arguably to care for Elderly parents who are still active in their late 80s/early 90s. Some how I aged out of tech and became a pipe organ tech and part time licened security guard. Funny how the world works.
The pipe organ stuff. (I am currently listening to my friend play live.) Involves my working with the latest micro electronics (currently some STM unobtainium that may come available later this year.) I could claim gender bias. I think it is more age bias and others being told why their brilliant idea will not work. Or their financial plan is a ponzi bet is with no foundation.
Being a fairy godmother is not the most pleasant thing in the universe. No one gives them any respect. We can make others rich and happy, yet can barely make ourselves a cup of tea. Majeck just is not what it used to be. It is all illusion anyway.
My first computer came from the surplus yards in 1979 Processor tech S-100 boards on a Godbout motherboard and a Hazeltine terminal scrapped from the school. I learned early on why companies fail. Up until the pandemic and they closed their doors. I frequented surplus stores monthly daily or weekly. This was the stuff dreams are made of. The hardest thing is learning to say no.
I have quite a collection of vintage laptops, which run the old code better than the emulators.
I also decoded all nearly 8000 Mars mariner-9 images in my spare time. That was all on IBM 360 tape and punched cards. The tapes were dumped to CD, then the nearly unreadable data (magnetic dropouts) was dumped onto the JPL planetary database (in the wrong folders.) No one really cares.
One of my favorites of the Mars south pole. I keep meaning to finish the section that dumps the images to PNG format with the native resolution, which was like 11 bits at 900x800 pixels. Pretty high resolution for 50 years ago. Since these were TV cameras there is a lot of noise in them. Especially when other instruments were turned on.
VICAR is now in the public domain, but I have never been able to locate the source to the RESRED71 calibration data. Started to recreate some of it, but I do not have the pre flight images.
I worked for a month with the guys (and gals) who created this system. The company I worked for Network Pictures system bought Itek, changed the name to Arisys. Then everyone retired. These folk started in the 1960s and worked through the 1990s. First people to photograph the moon, venus, mars etc.
Too bad no one really cares about this history.