Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London

[Rod Speed]

jmfbahciv wrote

Charlie Gibbs wrote
tonyt92@bigpond.com (T.T.) writes

In the punch-card era you always had something in your shirt pocket to write on.

Those cards were my nerd badge, which I wore proudly.

Apart from that, the whole concept was an abomination.

On the other hand, it was there and it worked - which put it
miles ahead of anything which sounded nice but which either
didn't exist yet or was prohibitively expensive.

More importantly, it could be fixed. Looking at magtape
took a bit god who didn't mind going blind. ;-)

Anyone with even half a clue has backups.

 

[Rod Speed]

jmfbahciv wrote

Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Roland Hutchinson wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

WordPervert was never gunna survive, it always had a completely fucked user interface.

Surprising then that it was so popular right up until Windows
became ubiquitous. I quite liked WordPerfect's interface.

I have head many laments about WordPerfect's demise.

I heard many laments about the demise of punched cards too.

I had to physically remove the last of the card punches
to stop the dinosaurs continuing to use them.

Why in the world would you want to do that?

Opens us a niche or two for the mammals, innit.

But removes hard-copy data and code backup which is human-readable.

You can always print that crap out if you are that much of a dinosaur.

You cannot transform the line printer paper into machine-readable format.

You can however punch that data up again if a card gets mangled etc.

This kid confirmed my hypothesis about his attitude with today's posts. PHB in the making.

I'm older than you, thanks.

No, you are not. You started in this biz long after I did.

Wrong, as always.

 

[Rod Speed]

Some gutless fuckwit desperately cowering behind jmfbahciv
wrote just the puerile silly shit any 2 year old could leave for dead.

 

[Rod Speed]

jmfbahciv wrote

Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Bill Leary wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

There are still quite a few of them around, mostly used for
more obscure stuff like PLCs and hardware controllers etc.

Mostly legacy machine control or financial applications these days.

Nope, quite a few apps used to program hardware.

And that was the problem. Apps should be asking the
monitor to do the hardware tweaks, not doiing it themselves.

Yes, but with that sort of app, if they dont do it that way, there is fuck all you can do about that.

You dont normally even have a choice of app to do the programming of unusual hardware.

That's the source of most of the bugs and non-features in MS' software.

Yes, but when you need to run that software, the last thing you need is an OS that wont let it run.

Thats why OS/2 never did get used much by those that need to do that sort of thing.

Quite a bit of it would only run on DOS.

You really don't seem to know what you're talking about.

You have never had a fucking clue.

 

[Rod Speed]

jmfbahciv wrote

Bill Leary wrote
terryc <newsninespam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote
Rod Speed wrote

But it didnt run better than it did on Win or DOS.

Yes, it did.

Pigs arse it did.

We have a winner.
Congratulations Bill.

Sure. And thank you. But it's a victory not unlike winning a quick
draw duel with a comatose garden slug. Looks like Barb's come in
for round two. This should be entertaining. And perhaps even
informative, if you just read her replies and ignore his.

GRIN> I got to talk about DECtapes again.

What I used didnt have anything like that. Just an ASR33 for all input and output.

 

[Rod Speed]

Charlie Gibbs wrote:

In article <8lghpjF64cU1@mid.individual.net>, rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com
(Rod Speed) writes:

Charlie Gibbs wrote

(If the cards didn't contain fields on which you could do whatever
sorting was necessary, it was time for a talk with whoever designed
the layout.)

You quite sure you aint one of those rocket scientist fellas ?

Nah, that was too simple. I worked with the really hard stuff:
payroll systems.

Pathetic.

 

[Frank Slootweg]

Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:

On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:54:01 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 13:13:11 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:10:19 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

WordPervert was never gunna survive, it always had a completely
fucked user interface.

Surprising then that it was so popular right up until Windows
became ubiquitous. I quite liked WordPerfect's interface.

I have head many laments about WordPerfect's demise.

I heard many laments about the demise of punched cards too.

I had to physically remove the last of the card punches to stop the
dinosaurs continuing to use them.

Why in the world would you want to do that?

Opens us a niche or two for the mammals, innit.

But removes hard-copy data and code backup which is human-readable.

That's what the line printer is for!

Line printer output wasn't that great and couldn't be used as input.

Sure it can. It's compatible with the ten-finger interface.

Scanning it with OCR sofware is much easier and has remarkably
good/reliable results.

 

[Roland Hutchinson]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:54:01 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 13:13:11 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:10:19 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

WordPervert was never gunna survive, it always had a completely
fucked user interface.

Surprising then that it was so popular right up until Windows
became ubiquitous. I quite liked WordPerfect's interface.

I have head many laments about WordPerfect's demise.

I heard many laments about the demise of punched cards too.

I had to physically remove the last of the card punches to stop the
dinosaurs continuing to use them.

Why in the world would you want to do that?

Opens us a niche or two for the mammals, innit.

But removes hard-copy data and code backup which is human-readable.

That's what the line printer is for!

Line printer output wasn't that great and couldn't be used as input.

Sure it can. It's compatible with the ten-finger interface.

--
Roland Hutchinson

He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
.... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )

 

[Roland Hutchinson]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 23:02:11 +0000, Frank Slootweg wrote:

Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:
On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:54:01 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 13:13:11 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:10:19 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

WordPervert was never gunna survive, it always had a
completely fucked user interface.

Surprising then that it was so popular right up until Windows
became ubiquitous. I quite liked WordPerfect's interface.

I have head many laments about WordPerfect's demise.

I heard many laments about the demise of punched cards too.

I had to physically remove the last of the card punches to stop
the
dinosaurs continuing to use them.

Why in the world would you want to do that?

Opens us a niche or two for the mammals, innit.

But removes hard-copy data and code backup which is human-readable.

That's what the line printer is for!

Line printer output wasn't that great and couldn't be used as input.

Sure it can. It's compatible with the ten-finger interface.

Scanning it with OCR sofware is much easier and has remarkably
good/reliable results.

Depending somewhat critically on the state of the printer ribbon!

(Also on the date--especially the year.)

(Phase of the moon is in there somewhere, too.)

--
Roland Hutchinson

He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
.... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )

 

[Charles Richmond]

On 11/28/10 7:25 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

In article<UXxIo.3627$gM3.3198@viwinnwfe01.internal.bigpond.com>,
tonyt92@bigpond.com (T.T.) writes:

In the punch-card era you always had something in your shirt pocket
to write on.

Those cards were my nerd badge, which I wore proudly.

Apart from that, the whole concept was an abomination.

On the other hand, it was there and it worked - which put it
miles ahead of anything which sounded nice but which either
didn't exist yet or was prohibitively expensive.

The "covered wagon" helped settle the American west. Just because
the "covered wagon" was *not* a steam train or an airplane, that
is *no* reason that one should curse the "covered wagon".

Those computer cards are a big part of what got us where we are
today. It seems mighty ungrateful for anyone to curse or revile
them... If it's part of one's "right of passage" to throw the past
into the trash bin, one might consider these things.

--
+----------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond |
| |
| plano dot net at aquaporin4 dot com |
+----------------------------------------+

 

[terryc]

Rod Speed wrote:

Anyone with even half a clue has backups.

which is why people used the label fields on the cards.

 

On Tue, 30 Nov 2010 03:16:45 +0000 (UTC), Roland Hutchinson
<my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:

On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 23:02:11 +0000, Frank Slootweg wrote:

Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:
On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:54:01 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 13:13:11 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:10:19 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

WordPervert was never gunna survive, it always had a
completely fucked user interface.

Surprising then that it was so popular right up until Windows
became ubiquitous. I quite liked WordPerfect's interface.

I have head many laments about WordPerfect's demise.

I heard many laments about the demise of punched cards too.

I had to physically remove the last of the card punches to stop
the
dinosaurs continuing to use them.

Why in the world would you want to do that?

Opens us a niche or two for the mammals, innit.

But removes hard-copy data and code backup which is human-readable.

That's what the line printer is for!

Line printer output wasn't that great and couldn't be used as input.

Sure it can. It's compatible with the ten-finger interface.

Scanning it with OCR sofware is much easier and has remarkably
good/reliable results.

Depending somewhat critically on the state of the printer ribbon!

(Also on the date--especially the year.)

(Phase of the moon is in there somewhere, too.)

I have never found any OCR software that does a decent job on line
printer listings. I have quite a few hundred pages of listings that
I would love to process.

I have had the best luck with a very lame brute force program that I
wrote, and it's not all that good.
--
ArarghMail011 at [drop the 'http://www.' from ->] http://www.arargh.com
BCET Basic Compiler Page: http://www.arargh.com/basic/index.html

To reply by email, remove the extra stuff from the reply address.

 

[Walter Bushell]

In article <669.20T2431T5135872@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

In article <8lghpjF64cU1@mid.individual.net>, rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com
(Rod Speed) writes:

Charlie Gibbs wrote

(If the cards didn't contain fields on which you could do whatever
sorting was necessary, it was time for a talk with whoever designed
the layout.)

You quite sure you aint one of those rocket scientist fellas ?

Nah, that was too simple. I worked with the really hard stuff:
payroll systems.

Payroll systems could be argued to be the hardest part of rocket
science. Shooting rockets off only need deal with physical reality, but
payroll needs deal with physical reality and acts of Congress and state
legislatures not to mention all sorts of government regulations.

--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?

 

[jmfbahciv]

Frank Slootweg wrote:

Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:
On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:54:01 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 13:13:11 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:10:19 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

WordPervert was never gunna survive, it always had a completely
fucked user interface.

Surprising then that it was so popular right up until Windows
became ubiquitous. I quite liked WordPerfect's interface.

I have head many laments about WordPerfect's demise.

I heard many laments about the demise of punched cards too.

I had to physically remove the last of the card punches to stop the
dinosaurs continuing to use them.

Why in the world would you want to do that?

Opens us a niche or two for the mammals, innit.

But removes hard-copy data and code backup which is human-readable.

That's what the line printer is for!

Line printer output wasn't that great and couldn't be used as input.

Sure it can. It's compatible with the ten-finger interface.

Scanning it with OCR sofware is much easier and has remarkably
good/reliable results.

Sometimes. Think about the listings generated by ribbon ink.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Roland Hutchinson wrote:

On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:54:01 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 13:13:11 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:10:19 +0000, jmfbahciv wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

WordPervert was never gunna survive, it always had a completely
fucked user interface.

Surprising then that it was so popular right up until Windows
became ubiquitous. I quite liked WordPerfect's interface.

I have head many laments about WordPerfect's demise.

I heard many laments about the demise of punched cards too.

I had to physically remove the last of the card punches to stop the
dinosaurs continuing to use them.

Why in the world would you want to do that?

Opens us a niche or two for the mammals, innit.

But removes hard-copy data and code backup which is human-readable.

That's what the line printer is for!

Line printer output wasn't that great and couldn't be used as input.

Sure it can. It's compatible with the ten-finger interface.

Have you forgotten how bad the print quality was? It was useful
to read the holes when you had to decide which character the flyprint
smudge was.

/BAH

>

 

[jmfbahciv]

Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
I liked handling cards. I hated handling papertape. I would rather
have my data in cards than on magtape.

Cards were great; DECtapes were the best.

I got summer job at the univ. doing port of 1401 MPIO to 360
assembler. The univ. had 709 with 1401 front-end for doing unit-record;
cards were read to tape on 1401 and the tape moved to 709 tape
drive. the 709 did tape-to-tape processing and the resulting output tape
was moved to 1401 tape drive for output to printer/punch (MPIO was 1401
program that handle card-to-tape and tape-to-printer/punch).

As part of eventually replacing the 709/1401 with 360/67, a 360/30 was
brought in to replace the 1401. While 360/30 had 1401 hardware emulation
mode and could run MPIO directly, I got hired to rewrite it in 360
assembler; except for requirement to duplicate MPIO function, i got to
design and implement my own program; dispatcher, interrupt handlers,
device drivers, error recover, storage management, etc.

The datacenter shutdown at 8am sat. and didn't re-open until 8am mon
... so I had the machine room for 48hr period. I also got other
programming jobs ... and in the fall it was little difficult going to
monday morning class after not having slept for 48hrs.

The source assembler program eventaully grew to approx. 2000 cards
(could still fit in card box). The 360 assembler took a minimum 30
minutes to assemble the source and produce "TXT" deck (i.e. deck of hex
cards for execution loading). Since it took so long to assemble ... i
got pretty good at duplicating cards & punching patches. The "TXT" deck
just had hex "holes" ... no printing across the top and the 026 keypunch
was alphanumeric ... to get the correct combination of hex" holes, had
to used "multi-punch" feature ... use keyboard to force combination of
holes to be punched. Put the original card in the duplication slot and
then duplicate out to the columns for the patch ... multi-punch the new
hole combinations and then duplication the remaining columns.

I never got that good. We bought a PDP-10 before I got that proficient
with reading holes. The system spoiled me forever after that.

Got fairly good at being able to interpret the hex holes in "TXT" deck
... having to fan the deck to find the card that had the correct
displacement in the program (for applying the patch). Was typically able
to do patches in much less time than it took to re-assemble.

I think that was a common practice becuase of slow assemblies.

I wonder if that (inserting cards in the deck) influenced how DDT
was written to work?

past post containing format of TXT card (as well as table for hex punch
hole combinations):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#69 IBM System/3 & 3277-1

much, much later I was at SJR in san jose and my brother was regional
apple marketing rep (supposedly had largest physical region in CONUS).
He would come to town periodically and I could go to business dinners
with him. Got to argue with some of the mac developers about design
... before the mac was even announced.

that must have been fun.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Rod Speed wrote:

jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
jmfbahciv wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Bill Leary wrote
Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote

There are still quite a few of them around, mostly used for
more obscure stuff like PLCs and hardware controllers etc.

Mostly legacy machine control or financial applications these days.

Nope, quite a few apps used to program hardware.

And that was the problem. Apps should be asking the
monitor to do the hardware tweaks, not doiing it themselves.

Yes, but with that sort of app, if they dont do it that way, there is fuck
all you can do about that.

You dont normally even have a choice of app to do the programming of
unusual hardware.

That's the source of most of the bugs and non-features in MS' software.

Yes, but when you need to run that software, the last thing you need is an
OS that wont let it run.

Thats why OS/2 never did get used much by those that need to do that sort
of thing.

Quite a bit of it would only run on DOS.

You really don't seem to know what you're talking about.

You have never had a fucking clue.

My job was to generate those clues so people like you could get some
work dones.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Rod Speed wrote:

jmfbahciv wrote
Bill Leary wrote
terryc <newsninespam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote
Rod Speed wrote

But it didnt run better than it did on Win or DOS.

Yes, it did.

Pigs arse it did.

We have a winner.
Congratulations Bill.

Sure. And thank you. But it's a victory not unlike winning a quick
draw duel with a comatose garden slug. Looks like Barb's come in
for round two. This should be entertaining. And perhaps even
informative, if you just read her replies and ignore his.

GRIN> I got to talk about DECtapes again.

What I used didnt have anything like that. Just an ASR33 for all input and
output.

Which explains your bitterness about TTYs, not cards.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Rod Speed wrote:

Some gutless fuckwit desperately cowering behind Ahem A Rivet's Shot
wrote just the peurile silly shit any 2 year old could leave for dead.


[yawning emoticon here] Booring.

Why didn't you just answer the fucking question?

(See? I can spell fuck, too.)

/BAH

 

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:

Payroll systems could be argued to be the hardest part of rocket
science. Shooting rockets off only need deal with physical reality, but
payroll needs deal with physical reality and acts of Congress and state
legislatures not to mention all sorts of government regulations.

i periodically mention the economic conference from a couple years ago
where one of the news stations broadcast a roundtable of economists.
they said the tax code (that was constantly being twiddled) was 65,000+
pages. The proposal was that going to flat tax would reduce the tax code
to 400-500 pages and vastly improve the productivity of the country.

there were statements that lobbying tax code (constant twiddling)
contributes to congress being the most corrupt institution on earth.
that changing to flattax & 400-500 page tax code would gain something
like 6 percent GDP (currently lost dealing with the special
provisions). It would also significantly reduce the enormous high-level
level of corruption. That 6percent would be much larger benefit
offsetting any loss of possible positive benefits buried in those
65,000+ pages.

The roundtable ended with semi-humourous observation that one of those
lobbying against the flat-tax change was Ireland ... supposedly some
number of the companies relocating to Ireland gave as reason the
problems dealing with US tax code.

misc. past posts referencing the (flat tax) roundtable:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#71 Cormpany sponsored insurance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#49 Taxes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#43 Architectural Diversity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#83 Architectural Diversity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#20 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#13 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#31 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#39 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#48 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#49 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#40 F.B.I. Faces New Setback in Computer Overhaul
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#88 taking down the machine - z9 series
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#37 taking down the machine - z9 series
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#58 History--automated payroll processing by other than a computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#69 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#73 Idiotic programming style edicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#59 They always think we don't understand


--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970