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kem_teknospam1

External


Since: Jul 30, 2003
Posts: 293



(Msg. 1) Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 4:08 am
Post subject: Those were the days (long)
Archived from groups: alt>books>m-lackey (more info?)
From an email I received, The Good Old Days:
Aaron 8 )
________________________________________________

For you guys that don't frequent Usenet you are really missing what the
Internet is really all about.

Here is what started out as a vulgar flame war that *as only usenet can
do* turned totally into something funny and has absolutely *nothing* to
do with the original subject or thread. Thought you may get a kick out
of a couple old timer computer geeks battling it out.

(copied and pasted from a newgroup I frequent)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

afg669 RemoveThis @yahoo.com says... ...and it took all night to download a floppy
disk of information. Now those were the days!! Anna

I ran a BBS and dreamed of the day I could afford a 2400 baud modem.

(smiles, rocking in rocking chair, tapping cane) Why you young
whippersnappers! I remember the days of my 300 baud modem the size of a
Los Angeles phone book, wired to a dial phone. And those damn tiny
switches, trying to get them right. And the contest to imitate the sound
of making the connection.

You had 300 baud? We would have killed for 300 baud! We had 110 baud,
half-duplex, and WE LIKED IT! Yellow-paper chattering teletypes and all!

Bah. We had to use punched cards and paper tape. I can remember how
amazed and awed I was by my first teletype machine, chunking along at
something like 4 or 5 characters per second. Then, one day, someone
invented one that saved time by typing while the head was moving from
both left to right AND right to left.

Luxury! We used to use semaphore flags to move data from one server to
another in the same office.

Flags! We would have given our right arms for flags! It was so smoky in
our offices (back in the day, of course) that you could not see flags
from across the room. We had to relay data in envelopes hand- carried by
midgets. I believe these were the first "packets". Occasionally the
midgets fell over (hard to see in the smoke) and produced what we called
"compressed headers". I think there's an RFC on that.

Midgets! We DREAMED of having midgets! We had to get up at 5 in the
morning, go out to the woods, cut some sticks, sharpen the sticks, and
punch the cards by hand!

Cards?! We had to chip flint into pieces with sharp edges, then use the
edges to peel the bark off the trees and then use the sticks to punch
pieces of bark.

Bark... ah, how we dreamed of bark! We had to chew wood fibers with our
own teeth, spit them out and roll them flat with stones and leave them
to dry in the sun!

You had stones? We had to mix water and dirt and let it dry in the sun
for centuries!

How we used to dream of the sun! We had to wait for eons in the formless
void, waiting for The Word to separate the light from the darkness!

Word? HA! All we had was an amino acid soup!

Amino acid soup! How we dreamed of amino acids! We had big piles of
hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen and had to assemble our own
organic molecules. FROM SCRATCH!

You had elements?! All we had were protons and electrons. We had to mine
our own subatomic particles to make neutrons and then in a single
precarious step, combine the neutrons with protons and send electrons
into precise orbits. And you think your system crashes were hard to deal
with? Imagine the fallout *we* handled every day...And we didn't have
any of that wussy lead shielding, either, back in the good old days, and
we *liked* it that way.

Electrons?!?!? God, how we DREAMED of electrons, sitting there, all
alone in our probability fields.

Matter? They had MATTER? Man, you guys are lucky! Back in my day we had
to create the molecules out of quantum vibrations. BY HAND. And you had
to be lucky enough to find someone to do it for you--it's not like we
could go to www.outoftheformlessvoid.com and read the FAQ, you know?

Quantum vibrations!? A formless void!? We could only dream of a formless
void... we were all packed into a singularity of spacetime having no
dimension, and we liked it!

ROTFL Now THOSE were the days.

--

I'm glad my Mom named me Aaron,
That's what everybody calls me.

Hemidemisemideity of Anonymous Eponymity
Patron Saint of Hair Color Changing
Currently: Dark Mahogany on top
Blue-black nape
Plus, Malaysian Cherry
Holder of a provisional pedant licens/ce
(limited to the area of physical sciens/ce)
Member of ABMLNCSC - Base singer, very base
"Mommy, make daddy stop singing"

There are 10 kinds of people in this world,
Those who understand Binary, and those who don't.

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talashar1

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Since: Dec 31, 2003
Posts: 7



(Msg. 2) Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 10:16 am
Post subject: Re: Those were the days (long) [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
"Aaron" wrote...
> From an email I received, The Good Old Days:
> Aaron 8 )

this sounds like a modern interpretation of a monthy python sketch by the same name.
but most excellently done Smile
--
Ron

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mindy

External


Since: Sep 12, 2003
Posts: 80



(Msg. 3) Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 10:16 am
Post subject: Re: Those were the days (long) [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
"Talashar" <Talashar.RemoveThis@walla.co.il> wrote in message news:<btb6dq$55l3j$1@ID-120535.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> "Aaron" wrote...
> > From an email I received, The Good Old Days:
> > Aaron 8 )
>
> this sounds like a modern interpretation of a monthy python sketch by the same name.
> but most excellently done Smile

heh....

...."Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half
an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work
twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission
to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would
kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah!"

Here's a link of the entire skit for those that like to reminesce
(sp?)....or for those *gasp* that may not have had the 'luxury' of
hearing it in the first place.

Super Grover
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jcmorris

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Since: Jun 28, 2003
Posts: 475



(Msg. 4) Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 1:31 pm
Post subject: Re: Those were the days (long) [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
Aaron <kem_tekNOSPAM.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> writes:

>afg669@yahoo.com says... ...and it took all night to download a floppy
>disk of information. Now those were the days!! Anna

>I ran a BBS and dreamed of the day I could afford a 2400 baud modem.

[remainder snipped]

ROFL ... and the first few paragraphs really *do* remind me of the
early days of the industry. (The first "data communications" device
I worked with (and repaired) was a TeleType model 19...at the blazing
speed of 60 wpm, and you damnwell better not even *think* of
attaching anything to your telephone line unless it came from
Ma Bell...)

Joe Morris
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user489

External


Since: Jan 01, 2004
Posts: 21



(Msg. 5) Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 1:31 pm
Post subject: Re: Those were the days (long) [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 13:31:42 +0000 (UTC), Joe Morris
<jcmorris.DeleteThis@mitre.org> wrote:

>ROFL ... and the first few paragraphs really *do* remind me of the
>early days of the industry. (The first "data communications" device
>I worked with (and repaired) was a TeleType model 19...at the blazing
>speed of 60 wpm, and you damnwell better not even *think* of
>attaching anything to your telephone line unless it came from
>Ma Bell...)

Hmmm, I remember using a Teletype in the mid-70s. They predated using
serial ports to communicate with the modem. I think the interface was
referred to as 20 ma current loop, and the modem was really an
acoustic coupler.

I vaguely remember something about a teletype model 40, but I think
that might have been the "cheap" $ 4000.00 line printer we had.

We also got one of those 1200 baud silent 700 terminals that printed
on the thermal paper which always turned gray soon after you printed
something. That was very high tech in those days.

IIRC, if you connected an actual modem to the phone line, you had to
put a box between it and the phone line that made sure you didn't put
any significant voltage into the phone line. The box was a couple
hundred dollars.

Just to compare the technology in the mid 70s to now. You can buy an
eMachines T2642 for $ 399 with 256 MB ram, a 40 GB hard drive, a 56K
ITU V.92 fax/modem, built-in Ethernet, a Celeron 2.6Ghz cpu, WinXP,
and various bits of software. In the mid to late 70s, $ 399 would buy
you a 4k (4096 bytes) S-100 memory board as a kit that you had to put
together yourself. You had to soldier in 32 sockets to hold the memory
chips (1024 bits each).

If you could get that eMachine back to the 70s, you could probably
sell it to the government as a supercomputer for at least 15 million
dollars.

Oops, you got me started Smile

-- David
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jdoliver

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Since: Jun 30, 2003
Posts: 170



(Msg. 6) Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 3:28 pm
Post subject: Re: Those were the days (long) [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 04:08:34 GMT, Aaron <kem_tekNOSPAM DeleteThis @hotmail.com>
wrote:

> From an email I received, The Good Old Days:
>Aaron 8 )

>Quantum vibrations!? A formless void!? We could only dream of a formless
>void... we were all packed into a singularity of spacetime having no
>dimension, and we liked it!
>
>ROTFL Now THOSE were the days.

POINT!
John
ICQ 15071293
AIM jdoliver98
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jcmorris

External


Since: Jun 28, 2003
Posts: 475



(Msg. 7) Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2004 1:45 pm
Post subject: Re: Those were the days (long) [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
David Ball <davidbemail-1q04.TakeThisOut@yahoo.com.nospam> writes:

>Hmmm, I remember using a Teletype in the mid-70s. They predated using
>serial ports to communicate with the modem. I think the interface was
>referred to as 20 ma current loop, and the modem was really an
>acoustic coupler.

Probably a model 33; those were the most common TeleType machines
in the ASCII world. 110 baud (not just "110 bits per second;" in
those days the two were synonymous) and 10 characters/second. Much
faster than the old 5-bit Baudot machines like the model 19.

(The model 19 is the one -- in its RO, or "Receive-Only" configuration,
meaning "no keyboard" -- that you see in newsrooms depicted in Hollywood
films up through maybe the '60s.)

Current-loop connectivity -- typically 20 ma in the model 33 and 35;
60 ma in the older boxes -- was the native interface of the mechanical
guts, but the -33 and -35 machines that were used for computer
communications usually had a built-in converter that delivered
RS-232C connections (with the exception of boxes leased from Ma Bell,
which could be obtained with a built-in DataPhone 109 modem).

>I vaguely remember something about a teletype model 40, but I think
>that might have been the "cheap" $ 4000.00 line printer we had.

The model 40 was a dot matrix printer terminal, vs. the typedrum on a
model 33 and the font box on a model 35. It supported 1200 bps traffic,
plus an odd speed (1050 bps?) the reason for which I never discovered.
It's not a line printer.

>We also got one of those 1200 baud silent 700 terminals that printed
>on the thermal paper which always turned gray soon after you printed
>something. That was very high tech in those days.

These printers came from Texas Instruments, and were usually referred
to as "T-I Silent 700s". I'm not sure why common usage frequently
included the vendor name for it.

>IIRC, if you connected an actual modem to the phone line, you had to
>put a box between it and the phone line that made sure you didn't put
>any significant voltage into the phone line. The box was a couple
>hundred dollars.

That was the <delete numerous extremely vulgar adjectives> "Data Access
Arrangement", or DAA. Ma Bell somehow convinced (or paid off) the FCC
to decide that connecting ANY device not supplied by Ma Bell to the phone
system would damage it, so the rules were that you had to rent (not buy)
a DAA to attach any third-party device. The device could only connect
to the DAA, which in most versions restricted what you could do. The
whole idea was Ma Bell's attempt to do an end run around the Carterphone
decision, by making it impossible for non-Bell devices to compete on a
level playing field.

Users detested the DAAs.

>Just to compare the technology in the mid 70s to now. You can buy an
>eMachines T2642 for $ 399 with 256 MB ram, a 40 GB hard drive, a 56K
>ITU V.92 fax/modem, built-in Ethernet, a Celeron 2.6Ghz cpu, WinXP,
>and various bits of software. In the mid to late 70s, $ 399 would buy
>you a 4k (4096 bytes) S-100 memory board as a kit that you had to put
>together yourself. You had to soldier in 32 sockets to hold the memory
>chips (1024 bits each).

One of my standard lecture war stories is from 1969, when I needed to
buy a quarter-meg of 600 nsec memory. As an educational institution
I got a 60% discount from list price, and was ecstatic at being able
to get the box for "only" ~US$300,000. The memory itself was a cube
~9" on an edge, and to support that cube there was a dedicated box
about 6' high, 7' long, and 30" wide, which required 3-phase power.
There was one such box for each quarter meg of memory.

>If you could get that eMachine back to the 70s, you could probably
>sell it to the government as a supercomputer for at least 15 million
>dollars.

Consider that today you can buy for a few bucks from second-hand computer
stores systems which only a decade ago would have been banned from
nondomestic sales because their speed placed them in the supercomputer
performance range.

Joe Morris
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kem_teknospam1

External


Since: Jul 30, 2003
Posts: 293



(Msg. 8) Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2004 1:47 pm
Post subject: Re: Those were the days (long) [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
>>From an email I received, The Good Old Days:
>>Aaron 8 )
>
>>Quantum vibrations!? A formless void!? We could only dream of a formless
>>void... we were all packed into a singularity of spacetime having no
>>dimension, and we liked it!
>>
>>ROTFL Now THOSE were the days.
>
> POINT!
> John
> ICQ 15071293
> AIM jdoliver98

Thank you.

--

I'm glad my Mom named me Aaron,
That's what everybody calls me.

Hemidemisemideity of Anonymous Eponymity
Patron Saint of Hair Color Changing
Currently: Dark Mahogany on top
Blue-black nape
With Malaysian Cherry on top of all.
Holder of a provisional pedant licens/ce
(limited to the area of physical sciens/ce)
Member of ABMLNCSC - Base singer, very base
"Mommy, make daddy stop singing"

There are 10 kinds of people in this world,
Those who understand Binary, and those who don't.
 >> Stay informed about: Those were the days (long) 
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kem_teknospam1

External


Since: Jul 30, 2003
Posts: 293



(Msg. 9) Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 12:52 am
Post subject: Re: Those were the days (long) [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
Joe Morris wrote:
> David Ball <davidbemail-1q04 DeleteThis @yahoo.com.nospam> writes:
>
>
>>Hmmm, I remember using a Teletype in the mid-70s. They predated using
>>serial ports to communicate with the modem. I think the interface was
>>referred to as 20 ma current loop, and the modem was really an
>>acoustic coupler.
>
>
> Probably a model 33; those were the most common TeleType machines
> in the ASCII world. 110 baud (not just "110 bits per second;" in
> those days the two were synonymous) and 10 characters/second. Much
> faster than the old 5-bit Baudot machines like the model 19.
>
> (The model 19 is the one -- in its RO, or "Receive-Only" configuration,
> meaning "no keyboard" -- that you see in newsrooms depicted in Hollywood
> films up through maybe the '60s.)
>
> Current-loop connectivity -- typically 20 ma in the model 33 and 35;
> 60 ma in the older boxes -- was the native interface of the mechanical
> guts, but the -33 and -35 machines that were used for computer
> communications usually had a built-in converter that delivered
> RS-232C connections (with the exception of boxes leased from Ma Bell,
> which could be obtained with a built-in DataPhone 109 modem).
>
>
>>I vaguely remember something about a teletype model 40, but I think
>>that might have been the "cheap" $ 4000.00 line printer we had.
>
>
> The model 40 was a dot matrix printer terminal, vs. the typedrum on a
> model 33 and the font box on a model 35. It supported 1200 bps traffic,
> plus an odd speed (1050 bps?) the reason for which I never discovered.
> It's not a line printer.
>
>
>>We also got one of those 1200 baud silent 700 terminals that printed
>>on the thermal paper which always turned gray soon after you printed
>>something. That was very high tech in those days.
>
>
> These printers came from Texas Instruments, and were usually referred
> to as "T-I Silent 700s". I'm not sure why common usage frequently
> included the vendor name for it.
>
>
>>IIRC, if you connected an actual modem to the phone line, you had to
>>put a box between it and the phone line that made sure you didn't put
>>any significant voltage into the phone line. The box was a couple
>>hundred dollars.
>
>
> That was the <delete numerous extremely vulgar adjectives> "Data Access
> Arrangement", or DAA. Ma Bell somehow convinced (or paid off) the FCC
> to decide that connecting ANY device not supplied by Ma Bell to the phone
> system would damage it, so the rules were that you had to rent (not buy)
> a DAA to attach any third-party device. The device could only connect
> to the DAA, which in most versions restricted what you could do. The
> whole idea was Ma Bell's attempt to do an end run around the Carterphone
> decision, by making it impossible for non-Bell devices to compete on a
> level playing field.
>
> Users detested the DAAs.
>
>
>>Just to compare the technology in the mid 70s to now. You can buy an
>>eMachines T2642 for $ 399 with 256 MB ram, a 40 GB hard drive, a 56K
>>ITU V.92 fax/modem, built-in Ethernet, a Celeron 2.6Ghz cpu, WinXP,
>>and various bits of software. In the mid to late 70s, $ 399 would buy
>>you a 4k (4096 bytes) S-100 memory board as a kit that you had to put
>>together yourself. You had to soldier in 32 sockets to hold the memory
>>chips (1024 bits each).
>
>
> One of my standard lecture war stories is from 1969, when I needed to
> buy a quarter-meg of 600 nsec memory. As an educational institution
> I got a 60% discount from list price, and was ecstatic at being able
> to get the box for "only" ~US$300,000. The memory itself was a cube
> ~9" on an edge, and to support that cube there was a dedicated box
> about 6' high, 7' long, and 30" wide, which required 3-phase power.
> There was one such box for each quarter meg of memory.
>
>
>>If you could get that eMachine back to the 70s, you could probably
>>sell it to the government as a supercomputer for at least 15 million
>>dollars.
>
>
> Consider that today you can buy for a few bucks from second-hand computer
> stores systems which only a decade ago would have been banned from
> nondomestic sales because their speed placed them in the supercomputer
> performance range.
>
> Joe Morris

When I first arrived at the nuke plant where I work they still were
using hard drives the size of a half filling cabinet, with stacked
platters, to keep the public safe from 'us'; actually to record what
happened if we didn't. I'm not sure we have really stepped up. 8 }

All of the actual shutdown logic is done by arrays of redundantly
redundant redundancies of mechanical relays. *Very* hard to infect that
computer with a virus. OS = 120VDC. 8 )

--

I'm glad my Mom named me Aaron,
That's what everybody calls me.

Hemidemisemideity of Anonymous Eponymity
Patron Saint of Hair Color Changing
Currently: Dark Mahogany on top
Blue-black on the nape
Malaysian Cherry on top of it all.
Holder of a provisional pedant licens/ce
(limited to the area of physical sciens/ce)
Member of ABMLNCSC - Base singer, very base
"Mommy, make daddy stop singing".

There are 10 kinds of people in this world,
Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
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jcmorris

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Since: Jun 28, 2003
Posts: 475



(Msg. 10) Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 1:54 pm
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Aaron <kem_tekNOSPAM.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> writes:

>All of the actual shutdown logic is done by arrays of redundantly
>redundant redundancies of mechanical relays. *Very* hard to infect that
>computer with a virus. OS = 120VDC. 8 )

You're saying that the design of the OS is based on Maxwell's equations
and not the work of Babbage.

Joe Morris
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kem_teknospam1

External


Since: Jul 30, 2003
Posts: 293



(Msg. 11) Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 3:01 am
Post subject: Re: Those were the days (long) [Login to view extended thread Info.]
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>>All of the actual shutdown logic is done by arrays of redundantly
>>redundant redundancies of mechanical relays. *Very* hard to infect that
>>computer with a virus. OS = 120VDC. 8 )
>
> You're saying that the design of the OS is based on Maxwell's equations
> and not the work of Babbage.
>
> Joe Morris

Would it suffice to say it would Not pass a Turing Test?

--

I'm glad my Mom named me Aaron,
That's what everybody calls me.

Hemidemisemideity of Anonymous Eponymity
Patron Saint of Hair Color Changing
Currently: Dark Mahogany on top
Blue-black on the nape
Malaysian Cherry on top of it all.
Holder of a provisional pedant licens/ce
(limited to the area of physical sciens/ce)
Member of ABMLNCSC - Base singer, very base
"Mommy, make daddy stop singing".

There are 10 kinds of people in this world,
Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
 >> Stay informed about: Those were the days (long) 
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