Search Google, 1960:s-style

[Don McKenzie]

Search Google, 1960:s-style

Found this one on "alt.folklore.computers" newsgroup.

Should bring back memories for the people that worked with punch cards,
and what I call real computers, that at least had flashing lights on the
front panel.

http://www.masswerk.at/google60/

Don...

--
Don McKenzie

$30 for an Olinuxino Linux PC:
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/olinuxino.html

The World's Cheapest Computer:
DuinoMite the PIC32 $25 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Add VGA Monitor/TV, and PS2 Keyboard, or use USB Terminal
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.

 

[Bob Milutinovic]

"Don McKenzie" <5V@2.5A> wrote in message
news:aipa0gFub6fU1@mid.individual.net...

Search Google, 1960:s-style

Found this one on "alt.folklore.computers" newsgroup.

Should bring back memories for the people that worked with punch cards,
and what I call real computers, that at least had flashing lights on the
front panel.

http://www.masswerk.at/google60/

Don...

Bah, nothing beats the sawmill-like sound of a dot matrix printer... First
time I heard one was at the inaugural computer show in Sydney, in the
basement of the Town Hall in 1979; thought they'd amalgamated the computer
show with the woodworking expo!

Now that they've covered punch cards and TTYs though, they should go one
step further and have both input AND output on punched tape ;-)

--
Bob Milutinovic
Cognicom

 

[Don McKenzie]

On 12-Dec-12 5:23 AM, Bob Milutinovic wrote:

Bah, nothing beats the sawmill-like sound of a dot matrix printer...
First time I heard one was at the inaugural computer show in Sydney, in
the basement of the Town Hall in 1979; thought they'd amalgamated the
computer show with the woodworking expo!

My first home printer was a WWII model 15 baudot teletype:
http://www.baudot.net/teletype/M15.htm

Between the shift case (when the whole carriage moved up or down) and
the return mechanism, there was no hope that the family could possibly
watch TV when I was printing.

Don...


--
Don McKenzie

$30 for an Olinuxino Linux PC:
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/olinuxino.html

The World's Cheapest Computer:
DuinoMite the PIC32 $25 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Add VGA Monitor/TV, and PS2 Keyboard, or use USB Terminal
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.

 

[terryc]

On 12/12/12 04:49, Don McKenzie wrote:

Search Google, 1960:s-style

Found this one on "alt.folklore.computers" newsgroup.

Should bring back memories for the people that worked with punch cards,
and what I call real computers, that at least had flashing lights on the
front panel.

Nothing like it. It is a mythical theme from the media for people who
weren't there.

http://www.masswerk.at/google60/

" Google60 - Search Mad Men Style. An art project to explore distances
and heroism in user interfaces."

Don...

Once again don spams usenet with crud.
>

 

[yaputya]

"Don McKenzie" <5V@2.5A> wrote in message news:aipa0gFub6fU1@mid.individual.net...

Search Google, 1960:s-style

Found this one on "alt.folklore.computers" newsgroup.

Should bring back memories for the people that worked with punch cards, and what I call real computers, that at least had flashing
lights on the front panel.

http://www.masswerk.at/google60/

Don...

Good one! Must have taken a lot of work to get it to work so well.

Back in the 70`s at Sydney Uni we had to use those bloody Hollerith cards,
you had to type your program into the puncher, collect the cards and feed 'em
into the card reader. You picked up the printout the next day, if there was a
mistake you had to do it all again. Fortunately for us poor engineering students,
they soon introduced 'dumb terminals', a massive improvement but they were
really just thermal printers with a keyboard. Still, you were actually hooked up
to the Control Data Cyber 70 (I think that was the name) and you could even
play simple games despite such a rudimentary interface, Star Trek was very
popular with us engineers but wasted a lot of thermal paper.....



P.S.
Those interested in the above may also find this amusing...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell

--
Don McKenzie

$30 for an Olinuxino Linux PC:
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/olinuxino.html

The World's Cheapest Computer:
DuinoMite the PIC32 $25 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Add VGA Monitor/TV, and PS2 Keyboard, or use USB Terminal
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.

 

[keithr]

On 12/12/2012 5:56 AM, Don McKenzie wrote:

On 12-Dec-12 5:23 AM, Bob Milutinovic wrote:
Bah, nothing beats the sawmill-like sound of a dot matrix printer...
First time I heard one was at the inaugural computer show in Sydney, in
the basement of the Town Hall in 1979; thought they'd amalgamated the
computer show with the woodworking expo!

My first home printer was a WWII model 15 baudot teletype:
http://www.baudot.net/teletype/M15.htm

Between the shift case (when the whole carriage moved up or down) and
the return mechanism, there was no hope that the family could possibly
watch TV when I was printing.

Don...


My first micro-computer was a National Scamp with an ASR-33 teletype for I/O

The original takes me back to fixing CDC 405 card readers and 415 high
speed card punches. Thanks very much, I was trying to forget all that
stuff

 

[keithr]

On 12/12/2012 11:21 AM, yaputya wrote:

"Don McKenzie" <5V@2.5A> wrote in message news:aipa0gFub6fU1@mid.individual.net...
Search Google, 1960:s-style

Found this one on "alt.folklore.computers" newsgroup.

Should bring back memories for the people that worked with punch cards, and what I call real computers, that at least had flashing
lights on the front panel.

http://www.masswerk.at/google60/

Don...

Good one! Must have taken a lot of work to get it to work so well.

Back in the 70`s at Sydney Uni we had to use those bloody Hollerith cards,
you had to type your program into the puncher, collect the cards and feed 'em
into the card reader. You picked up the printout the next day, if there was a
mistake you had to do it all again. Fortunately for us poor engineering students,
they soon introduced 'dumb terminals', a massive improvement but they were
really just thermal printers with a keyboard. Still, you were actually hooked up
to the Control Data Cyber 70 (I think that was the name) and you could even
play simple games despite such a rudimentary interface, Star Trek was very
popular with us engineers but wasted a lot of thermal paper.....

Just think of us poor sods of CDC customer engineers who had to fix all
that stuff

 

[annily]

On 12.12.12 09:20, terryc wrote:

On 12/12/12 04:49, Don McKenzie wrote:
Search Google, 1960:s-style

Found this one on "alt.folklore.computers" newsgroup.

Should bring back memories for the people that worked with punch cards,
and what I call real computers, that at least had flashing lights on the
front panel.

Nothing like it. It is a mythical theme from the media for people who
weren't there.


http://www.masswerk.at/google60/

" Google60 - Search Mad Men Style. An art project to explore distances
and heroism in user interfaces."

Don...

Once again don spams usenet with crud.


Funny though.

 

[terryc]

On 12/12/12 11:21, yaputya wrote:

Good one! Must have taken a lot of work to get it to work so well.

Didn't work on my PC, total dud.
Shrug, just javascript according to the page source.

Back in the 70`s at Sydney Uni we had to use those bloody Hollerith cards,
you had to type your program into the puncher, collect the cards and feed 'em
into the card reader. You picked up the printout the next day, if there was a
mistake you had to do it all again.

We had the punch cards at Newcastle, except students were not suppsed to
do that. Well outside alloted assignments. Seems a few took to them like
ducks to water and demand/cost was far higher than budgeted. So they
introduced terminals.

Fortunately for us poor engineering students,
they soon introduced 'dumb terminals', a massive improvement but they were
really just thermal printers with a keyboard. Still, you were actually hooked up
to the Control Data Cyber 70 (I think that was the name) and you could even
play simple games despite such a rudimentary interface, Star Trek was very
popular with us engineers but wasted a lot of thermal paper.....

What OS?

There was an old teletype terminal to the ICL(???) mainframe running
George II, then George III in my first and second year, but it was
incredibly hard to use and first/second year students didn't have
storage rights or even running rights. Apparently the few terminals
slowed the old system down incredibly and it could do no other work
other than service the few terminals.

They were however great as a mechanism for "computer art" production on
clean white continuous 80 column paper. It took a while and few edits,
but you once you had the final paper tape, you could produce as many
girls on bar stools or whatever you wanted.

The ICL stayed around as the Fortan programers system and in later
years, we had access to card punches to do our own program punching. It
also ran Algol programs.


The new system was a DEC PDP 11/70 running RSTS(?). The DEC terminals
used 9pin dot matrix printer onto lined 132 column paper. Students had
an account and limited storage and access to basic programming and a
pile of games like startrek and the like.


Science had requirements for doing a couple of programes on it, but it
was generally a facility you could use and for a few of us explore. I
even got as far as having my own tape of programs that I had collected.
"Just don't draw attention to the lack of system security"

It eventually offered this new programming language called C over one
summer break.

Maths unfortunately decided that mark sense cards were the way their
students were going to do programming(Fortran) and you had to purchase
your cards. Yer right, a good eraser and you just collected discards and
scrubbed.

Meanwhile, back in the engineering labs, you wrote your program,
"compiled it" and then loaded it bit by bit(well sixteen at a time) into
the one PDP 11/45 and hopefully when you pressed the run key, it worked.

 

[terryc]

On 12/12/12 12:31, keithr wrote:

Just think of us poor sods of CDC customer engineers who had to fix all
that stuff

but it was built from real components in those days and not a pile of
bland chips like to day. <vbg>

 

[Bob Milutinovic]

"terryc" <newsninespam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote in message
news:ka8rni$a5b$2@dont-email.me...

On 12/12/12 12:31, keithr wrote:

Just think of us poor sods of CDC customer engineers who had to fix all
that stuff

but it was built from real components in those days and not a pile of
bland chips like to day. <vbg

Yes, right down to the ferrite beads and hand-would enamelled copper wire
for the memory... Try explaining that to the kids getting their IT diplomas
these days!

My first computer had a whopping 4Kb of RAM. Yes, it _was_ whopping for that
time. Also featured a 250 baud cassette interface for storage and a 64x16
uppercase-only monochrome video output, fed to a monitor so wobbly that
you'd get motion sickness if you tried too hard to focus on the writing.

--
Bob Milutinovic
Cognicom

 

[terryc]

On 12/12/12 16:15, Bob Milutinovic wrote:

Yes, right down to the ferrite beads and hand-would enamelled copper
wire for the memory... Try explaining that to the kids getting their IT
diplomas these days!

About six years ago, I had a group of local kids tell me they wanted to
learn about computers, Okay, go and grab one of those cases over there
and next you'll need of these motherboards. Suddenly 10 became none.
Problem solved.

My first computer had a whopping 4Kb of RAM. Yes, it _was_ whopping for
that time. Also featured a 250 baud cassette interface for storage and a
64x16 uppercase-only monochrome video output, fed to a monitor so wobbly
that you'd get motion sickness if you tried too hard to focus on the
writing.

One of the magazine projects?

>

 

[Bob Milutinovic]

"terryc" <newsninespam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote in message
news:ka9dv7$op7$1@dont-email.me...

On 12/12/12 16:15, Bob Milutinovic wrote:

Yes, right down to the ferrite beads and hand-would enamelled copper
wire for the memory... Try explaining that to the kids getting their IT
diplomas these days!

About six years ago, I had a group of local kids tell me they wanted to
learn about computers, Okay, go and grab one of those cases over there and
next you'll need of these motherboards. Suddenly 10 became none.
Problem solved.

My first computer had a whopping 4Kb of RAM. Yes, it _was_ whopping for
that time. Also featured a 250 baud cassette interface for storage and a
64x16 uppercase-only monochrome video output, fed to a monitor so wobbly
that you'd get motion sickness if you tried too hard to focus on the
writing.

One of the magazine projects?

No, I was only a kid at the time, barely cutting my teeth in the world of
electronics; it was a ready-made Tandy TRS-80
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80), with a blazing-fast 1.77MHz Z80 CPU
no less.

Winding forward a couple of years, I was considerably more capable with a
soldering iron and was considering a Super-80 kit (with the possibility of a
whole single S-100 expansion slot!)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Smith_Super-80_Computer), but decided
instead to pump my limited funds into an "expansion interface" for my
computer so I could finally expand my RAM to 48Kb and add floppy controller
and printer interface - and later a C.Itoh 80-column, 9-pin dot matrix
printer.

That was back in the days when NLQ was unheard of, and I'm pretty sure the
print speed of mine was around 40cps, as I remember lusting after the
nearly-100cps Epson MX80 when it came out. No idea what the model number of
that printer was (I only had it 3-4 months), but spending the past half-hour
rummaging through both Google search and images failed to find anything
resembling it.

--
Bob Milutinovic
Cognicom

 

[SG1]

"Bob Milutinovic" <cognicom@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ka9gcv$3go$1@dont-email.me...

"terryc" <newsninespam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote in message
news:ka9dv7$op7$1@dont-email.me...
On 12/12/12 16:15, Bob Milutinovic wrote:

Yes, right down to the ferrite beads and hand-would enamelled copper
wire for the memory... Try explaining that to the kids getting their IT
diplomas these days!

About six years ago, I had a group of local kids tell me they wanted to
learn about computers, Okay, go and grab one of those cases over there
and next you'll need of these motherboards. Suddenly 10 became none.
Problem solved.

My first computer had a whopping 4Kb of RAM. Yes, it _was_ whopping for
that time. Also featured a 250 baud cassette interface for storage and a
64x16 uppercase-only monochrome video output, fed to a monitor so wobbly
that you'd get motion sickness if you tried too hard to focus on the
writing.

One of the magazine projects?

No, I was only a kid at the time, barely cutting my teeth in the world of
electronics; it was a ready-made Tandy TRS-80
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80), with a blazing-fast 1.77MHz Z80 CPU
no less.

Winding forward a couple of years, I was considerably more capable with a
soldering iron and was considering a Super-80 kit (with the possibility of
a whole single S-100 expansion slot!)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Smith_Super-80_Computer), but decided
instead to pump my limited funds into an "expansion interface" for my
computer so I could finally expand my RAM to 48Kb and add floppy
controller and printer interface - and later a C.Itoh 80-column, 9-pin dot
matrix printer.

That was back in the days when NLQ was unheard of, and I'm pretty sure the
print speed of mine was around 40cps, as I remember lusting after the
nearly-100cps Epson MX80 when it came out. No idea what the model number
of that printer was (I only had it 3-4 months), but spending the past
half-hour rummaging through both Google search and images failed to find
anything resembling it.

My first printer did uppercase only and serial. Slow as treacle but it
printed...

--
Bob Milutinovic
Cognicom

 

[keithr]

On 12/12/2012 1:55 PM, terryc wrote:

On 12/12/12 12:31, keithr wrote:

Just think of us poor sods of CDC customer engineers who had to fix all
that stuff

but it was built from real components in those days and not a pile of
bland chips like to day. <vbg

Bureau of Stats had a CDC 3600, Seymore Cray's first attempt at a super
computer. It had about 8000 PCBs, the shift network alone had just short
of 500 boards. When it went wrong, it usually failed something like a
double precision floating point multiply. Fixing it usually required a
pack of cigarettes, a pot of coffee, a pile of logic diagrams a foot
thick, the trusty Tektronix, and a whole lot of patience. None of this
99.999% uptime in those days.

The Cyber had a whole lot less modules, but, if it went wrong, the first
symptom was usually the screens going blank. You were then left with the
ability to enter 12 12bit instructions through a panel of toggle
switches, and thats all that you had to work with. Out with the
Tektronix again.

 

[Don McKenzie]

On 12-Dec-12 7:48 PM, Bob Milutinovic wrote:

"terryc" <newsninespam-spam@woa.com.au> wrote in message

One of the magazine projects?

No, I was only a kid at the time, barely cutting my teeth in the world
of electronics; it was a ready-made Tandy TRS-80
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80), with a blazing-fast 1.77MHz Z80
CPU no less.

I spent some time on the TRS-80 also Bob.

Have a look at:
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/is-this-australias-first-pc.html

I did a bit of a writeup there.

Don...


--
Don McKenzie

$30 for an Olinuxino Linux PC:
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/olinuxino.html

The World's Cheapest Computer:
DuinoMite the PIC32 $25 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Add VGA Monitor/TV, and PS2 Keyboard, or use USB Terminal
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.

 

[Uwe Hercksen]

Bob Milutinovic schrieb:

Bah, nothing beats the sawmill-like sound of a dot matrix printer...
First time I heard one was at the inaugural computer show in Sydney, in
the basement of the Town Hall in 1979; thought they'd amalgamated the
computer show with the woodworking expo!

Hello,

but the sound of a chain printer for mainframes in the computing center
beats even that easily....

Bye

 

[terryc]

On 14/12/12 03:56, Uwe Hercksen wrote:

Bob Milutinovic schrieb:

Bah, nothing beats the sawmill-like sound of a dot matrix printer...
First time I heard one was at the inaugural computer show in Sydney,
in the basement of the Town Hall in 1979; thought they'd amalgamated
the computer show with the woodworking expo!

Hello,

but the sound of a chain printer for mainframes in the computing center
beats even that easily....

Good source of industrial deafness.
BTHT for a job and that ws from outside the print room..

 

[Don McKenzie]

On 14-Dec-12 10:05 AM, terryc wrote:

On 14/12/12 03:56, Uwe Hercksen wrote:


Bob Milutinovic schrieb:

Bah, nothing beats the sawmill-like sound of a dot matrix printer...
First time I heard one was at the inaugural computer show in Sydney,
in the basement of the Town Hall in 1979; thought they'd amalgamated
the computer show with the woodworking expo!

Hello,

but the sound of a chain printer for mainframes in the computing center
beats even that easily....

Good source of industrial deafness.
BTHT for a job and that ws from outside the print room..

I was locked in a mobile computer van for many years, with a pair of DEC
LP20B Line Printers driven from a matching pair of DEC PDP 11/40s.

any yes, I am now going for a claim for industrial deafness.

Don...



--
Don McKenzie

$30 for an Olinuxino Linux PC:
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/olinuxino.html

The World's Cheapest Computer:
DuinoMite the PIC32 $25 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Add VGA Monitor/TV, and PS2 Keyboard, or use USB Terminal
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.

 

[Andy Wood]

"Bob Milutinovic" <cognicom@gmail.com> wrote:

.. . .

Bah, nothing beats the sawmill-like sound of a dot matrix printer... First
time I heard one was at the inaugural computer show in Sydney, in the
basement of the Town Hall in 1979; thought they'd amalgamated the computer
show with the woodworking expo!

Humbug. The first dot matrix printer I encountered did not sound
anything like a sawmill. It was in fact in an IBM keypunch machine,
used to print a human-readable version of what was punched along the
top edge of the card.

Introduced in 026 keypunch (over 60 years ago!), it printed 5x7 dot
characters. Unlike later dot matrix printers it contrived to hit all
of the required pins to form a character at the same time, using a
fascinating mechanism called a code plate -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keypunch#IBM_024.2C_026_Card_Punches




Andy Wood
woodag@trap.ozemail.com.au