Did you ever turn a plastic drinking cup into a helicopter to float above the vents?
One for us old farts who have been around computers too long.
- Thread starter Gromett
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- Oct 8, 2014
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I sent my son the link to the YouTube video in the OP, and he promptly ordered a bunch of Z80 chips " just in case they came in useful"! 
He is currently designing and building an installation that includes 64 Arduinos, all interacting with each other.
He is currently designing and building an installation that includes 64 Arduinos, all interacting with each other.
- Dec 15, 2024
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The heat some of the big old units created - even though spaced several feet apart meant you could work in there in a shirt ( and trousers as well...). Everything was powered through a very big rack of lead-acid batteries and chargers, inverters etc, to guard against any power outages, some of the older stuff needed several hours and lots or procedures -including re-running all the previous days backup tapes through them just to perform a re-boot. Not much fun when there's only you there half way through a 12 hour night shift.
and the big IBM's, Amdahl's were water cooled, had chillers the size of a large double wardrobe, peripheral cables the diameter of your forearm
I'm a newbie, I did not get involved until 1984.
We were dealing with Stride Micro 68000 computers, where you could run 4 x VDU's (12" green screens) AND and dot matrix printer all off the same 'server' at the same time !
At the time, it was the fastest computer on the planet, beating anying Bill Gates had to the power of four.
We were dealing with Stride Micro 68000 computers, where you could run 4 x VDU's (12" green screens) AND and dot matrix printer all off the same 'server' at the same time !
At the time, it was the fastest computer on the planet, beating anying Bill Gates had to the power of four.
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We had a VAX system in our college that I started messing around with as an undergrad. I do remember a cute post grade leaving the table in the dining hall and as she was halfway across the room turned around and shouted to me asking could I "finger" her later. It took a few seconds for it to sink in.....for everyone in the room. That's what got me into computers. Been downhill ever since.
I think you may need to explain the finger command so the few who have read this who haven't been around computers for so long know what you meant
not really, there were IBM mainframes with 10's of thousands of green screen users
Yeah, but there is a hell of a difference between a mini and a micro computer in cost and size. The 68000 was a game changer for the home computer market and for small businesses. Must have been at least 10 times the cost at a bare minimum?
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IBM had introduced 32 bit registers in the late 70's/early 80's but continued to use 24 bit addressing until they announced the XA OS's. MVS/XA and VM/XA (extended architechture). These used 31 bit addressing with the high order bit as a "MODE" indicator, allowing older subsystems, ISV products, user code to run as 24 bit programs, whilst allowing the subsystems CICS, IMS, DB2 that needed it (and the OS) to use 31. This extended the memory range from 16 Megabytes to 2 Gigabytes for those subsystems
True, but in the mid 1980's they could not match the speed of the 68000 and the later 68020.
By the early 1990's we had 128 port 68030 systems running green screens, printers, telex modems and fax modems.
We were running maritime databases of the global ship fleet:
Typically 100,000 records with about 500 alphanumeric fields per record as well as upto 10,000 characters of dated notes text.
There were 19 fast search fields, 40 semi fast.
The slow search had a limit of about 40 fields in a single search, but all 500 fields were searchable.
The fast search fields could display the first 99 entries in under a second and the remaining 899 in under 5 seconds.
Even the slow multi field search could produce the first 99 results in under a minute.
I was involved as a BA on the replacement of the last of the systems in the 2010's, where I put the mantra to the dev team that the "new system has to do everything the old system did at least as fast and at least as easily"
They struggled to get modern servers to operate at the same speed as the 20 year old 68020 systems, mostly due to bloatware add ons.
Now a days the same databases that I designed in the early 1980's, the records are in the low millions, the fields are in the thousands and the notes attachments now have 40 years of text, and also multi-page reports, photos, plans, etc etc.
Search times for all of it is under one second.
I think you are thinking the IBM PC, not a mainframe:
Point noted about the VAX. Of course bit-count relates more to memory addressability than performance.
When I worked for DEC, colleagues were talking, only somewhat in jest, about a “Wrist VAX”. This was in the mid 1980s. It took until 2015, thirty years later, for the Apple Watch to appear.
When I worked for DEC, colleagues were talking, only somewhat in jest, about a “Wrist VAX”. This was in the mid 1980s. It took until 2015, thirty years later, for the Apple Watch to appear.
A bit like PING but more personalI think you may need to explain the finger command so the few who have read this who haven't been around computers for so long know what you meant
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man finger (1): user information lookup program
man finger (1): The finger displays information about the system users. Options are:
manpages.org
Edit: It tells you WHAT???? TMI!!
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