In My Day... - Page 9

livius drusus · #**201** 05-31-2009, 02:50 PM

Damn, that's some Monty Python shit there. Only a tad more on the deadly side. I love your Butterfield 8 phone number. :aww:

Miisa · #**202** 05-31-2009, 03:16 PM

My dad (now retired) used to be a computer engineer. This he came to via being proficient in the workings of diesel engines on ships back in the 50's and companies wanted to hire people who knew about "machines".

Ymir's blood · #**203** 05-31-2009, 06:15 PM

My brother had a Timex Sinclair.

lisarea · #**204** 05-31-2009, 06:19 PM

I still have two somewhere around here, and one even has the memory upgrade.

naturalist.atheist · #**205** 05-31-2009, 09:58 PM

Arg, I forgot about the Hyundai Sparcstation 2 I had in 1992. Nice little machine running SunOS 4. I can't tell you how many times I was asked what gas mileage I got.

Dingfod · #**206** 06-01-2009, 12:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisarea

I still have two somewhere around here, and one even has the memory upgrade.

Wow, 2MB or RAM!

Ymir's blood · #**207** 06-01-2009, 01:45 AM

That's 2KB not MB with an upgrade up to 16...

Dingfod · #**208** 06-01-2009, 03:29 AM

That's what I meant.

Ymir's blood · #**209** 06-01-2009, 03:32 AM

ok. It was pretty pathetic even back then.

naturalist.atheist · #**210** 06-01-2009, 03:47 AM

Does anyone remember what passed for a sound file back in the days of mainframes?

http://www.ed-thelen.org/1401Project..._godrestye.mp3

Adam · #**211** 06-01-2009, 04:17 AM

The days of mainframes are still with us.

naturalist.atheist · #**212** 06-01-2009, 04:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

The days of mainframes are still with us.

Yep, there are still few places that still run the old OSes but they are going away fast. The B52 is gonna have a longer useful life.

Adam · #**213** 06-01-2009, 03:53 PM

I dunno. Most of the big financial institutions run mainframes of some sort. Given the number of products out there designed to make the mainframe play nice with open systems, I'd be very surprised to see them vanish any time soon. Hell, there are versions of Linux that run on a mainframe now.

Sock Puppet · #**214** 06-01-2009, 07:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ms_ann_thrope

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

W00t! I remember Gemco! There was one in Dublin, not far from the Liberty Bell, which was previously called something like Rhodes (that's not quite it, I can't recall it exactly). Liberty Bell later became Emporium-Capwell's, long before it was (re)shortened to The Emporium.

Gemco indeed became Target, and I believe everything around it morphed into something else, too.

High five! My family shopped at that same Gemco on occasion.

Did you mean Liberty House, not Liberty Bell? Liberty House was originally called Rhodes Western, so your memory is pretty good.

Wow, now I'm thinking of all sorts of stores that have gone the way of the dodo. The Emporium. Bullock's. I. Magnin. Montgomery Ward. Service Merchandise. BEST.

to mah homey. Yes, that was it, Liberty House.

My Mom met my stepdad while working at the Monkey Ward in Dublin. He was there until the bitter end, and works at the Home Depot now. Poor guy. I did a little time at Ward's myself while in college, which was a great motivator to get my degree and never work in retail again for as long as I live.

naturalist.atheist · #**215** 06-02-2009, 02:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

I dunno. Most of the big financial institutions run mainframes of some sort. Given the number of products out there designed to make the mainframe play nice with open systems, I'd be very surprised to see them vanish any time soon. Hell, there are versions of Linux that run on a mainframe now.

A mainframe is not what it used to be. You can get an open source mainframe emulator that runs fine on "PC" hardware. There are mainframe PCI cards that you can pop into your PC and run a "mainframe". IBM sells something they call a mainframe: IBM System z10 Business Class mainframe server overview ,which is just a super parallel computer built out of high end microprocessors.

In this world of hyper virtualization a mainframe is nuthin but an OS and an outdated instruction set.

Dingfod · #**216** 06-02-2009, 03:35 AM

My first on-the-job computer experience involved being a user of one of these, an IBM Series/1, not quite a mainframe, though ours was panel mounted with a gigantic (11"?) floppy disk drive we had to change at 5AM on the night shift:

I'm unsure of the floppy disk size on the Series/1 rack, but it was larger than the one seen in this picture, an 8".

Widget · #**217** 06-02-2009, 04:05 AM

Times have changed, my Dad would bring printing plates home so we could strip the lead from the blocks and burn the wood, we got good money for the lead, I remember getting enough to get 3/4lb of stewing steak to feed 6 of us. I caddied for local golfers carrying 2 bags for 36 holes garnished 14 shillings about $1.50. the gas meter under the stairs also took shillings to feed the stove.

I love my showers in the morning now.

huntress · #**218** 06-02-2009, 04:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

I just had a conversation with a friend the other day about how long it's been since either of us bothered to memorize a phone number or address.

Good point. I only memorize such info for the people I stalk anymore.

d

(Oh fuck. Adam's post falls under the undefined but paradoxically understood statute of limitations.)

Angakuk · #**219** 06-02-2009, 04:24 AM

Not so. Any, and all, of Adam's posts are fair game, at any time.

Adam · #**220** 06-02-2009, 03:26 PM

I still don't understand how that rule came to be. Imma gripe about it at the next town hall and possibly suggest revising the charter so as to eliminate it.

Adam · #**221** 06-02-2009, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by naturalist.atheist

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

I dunno. Most of the big financial institutions run mainframes of some sort. Given the number of products out there designed to make the mainframe play nice with open systems, I'd be very surprised to see them vanish any time soon. Hell, there are versions of Linux that run on a mainframe now.

A mainframe is not what it used to be. You can get an open source mainframe emulator that runs fine on "PC" hardware. There are mainframe PCI cards that you can pop into your PC and run a "mainframe". IBM sells something they call a mainframe: IBM System z10 Business Class mainframe server overview ,which is just a super parallel computer built out of high end microprocessors.

In this world of hyper virtualization a mainframe is nuthin but an OS and an outdated instruction set.

As of 2006:

Quote:

95 percent of the Fortune 500 companies, after all, continue to use mainframes, and about two-thirds of all business transactions for U.S. retail banks run on them. And IBM intends to move big iron further into the enterprise.

Banks and Fortune 500 companies are not running their businesses on emulated mainframes or PCI cards. Mainframes are not, by any measure "going away fast". There was a time in the 90's when it was assumed that mainframes were on their way out, but that never actually happened.

Miisa · #**222** 06-02-2009, 03:39 PM

I used one of these - for a living - until this time last year when I changed jobs:

Leesifer · #**223** 06-02-2009, 08:16 PM

In the early 80's the firm I worked at upgraded us from single line memory golf ball or daisy wheel typewriters to Philips 5001 (I think) word processors. They used 2 8" discs - one for booting up, which had to stay in the disc drive and one for storing data.

There were two of us and we had around 20 data discs each which we had to rotate. No backups at all. And we probably used 4 discs a day.

The next place I worked (which is where I work now, after leaving twice before) were using Wordplex standalone wordprocessors. Again, using floppy discs for booting and extra storage because you could actually store the work on the hard drive.

Widget · #**224** 06-03-2009, 04:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leesifer

In the early 80's the firm I worked at upgraded us from single line memory golf ball or daisy wheel typewriters to Philips 5001 (I think) word processors. They used 2 8" discs - one for booting up, which had to stay in the disc drive and one for storing data.

There were two of us and we had around 20 data discs each which we had to rotate. No backups at all. And we probably used 4 discs a day.

The next place I worked (which is where I work now, after leaving twice before) were using Wordplex standalone wordprocessors. Again, using floppy discs for booting and extra storage because you could actually store the work on the hard drive.

My heart bleeds for you.

Dingfod · #**225** 06-03-2009, 01:47 PM

Back in my day all we had were coal or wood fired steam-powered computers with no floppy disks at all. There was a hard drive, a steel 8" diameter drive shaft. The biggest worry with these computers was proper lubrication of moving parts, for that we had grease monkeys, trained monkeys armed with grease guns and oil cans. We didn't worry about data storage, the clerks with the green shade visors wrote all of the results down on spreadsheets.