Re: [nznog] OT - Ken Olsen passes away
On 11/02/2011 2:08 p.m., Richard Naylor wrote:
At 10:43 a.m. 11/02/2011, Donald Neal wrote:
This may not seem relevant to InternetNZ members today, but Ken Olsen came from the post-war generation of Engineers that gave us the computer industry and the Internet. As did Richard Naylor (albeit perhaps post a slightly different war). And without talking about snake oil.
A child of the 60's. Over beer (to stay on topic) we can talk about turning 18 and having your birthdate in a "lottery" where the prize was a 2 year holiday in Vietnam courtesy of the NZ Army. Also about core memory machines and using logic analysers to debug DDCMP protocol at 2Mbps - looking at the bits coming out of the de-serialiser, byte at a time. But as I said, needs beer.
Ah, those were the days, and before then! When you started a computer by toggling in the machine code bootstrap into memory from the console, when the computer had a 39-bit word or had machine code in reverse polish notation. Yes, needs beer. Oh, and it was a friend in DEC who took a bottle of snake oil to Ken Olsen in his office after that famous (and I believe) mis-quoted remark; to bring the thread back to where it started
At 01:28 p.m. 12/02/2011, Roger Hicks wrote:
Ah, those were the days, and before then! When you started a computer by toggling in the machine code bootstrap into memory from the console, when the computer had a 39-bit word or had machine code in reverse polish notation. Yes, needs beer.
I used to be able to recite the boostrap loader sequence, but these days can only remember the consol address (177576 - octal). The biggest issue was if you screwed up, you had to toggle thru memory looking for it as core was non-destructive. I have some classic bits left here, like a pdp-11/10 front panel, an old disk pack, a core module (256 words I think) and a diode ROM - all 128 words. I did have a box of blank punched cards but my mother took a shine to them for shopping lists and the paper tape was used for christmas decorations
Oh, and it was a friend in DEC who took a bottle of snake oil to Ken Olsen in his office after that famous (and I believe) mis-quoted remark; to bring the thread back to where it started
yes he was taken out of context. In the context he said it, he was right. The same for his "no one needs a computer in their home" comment; also taken out of context. Thats why later, they put an army of minders around him. wheres the beer ?
On Sun, 2011-02-13 at 18:22 +1300, Richard Naylor wrote:
I did have a box of blank punched cards but my mother took a shine to them for shopping lists and the paper tape was used for christmas decorations
My mum did the same to my school project! Complained when she got down
to the well punched cards. I surely don't miss Fortran 2 though!
Steve
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Steve Holdoway
At 01:28 p.m. 12/02/2011, Roger Hicks wrote:
Ah, those were the days, and before then! When you started a computer by toggling in the machine code bootstrap into memory from the console, when the computer had a 39-bit word or had machine code in reverse polish notation. Yes, needs beer.
I used to be able to recite the boostrap loader sequence, but these days can only remember the consol address (177576 - octal). Likewise, it was a mandatory recitation for loading the fanfold
On 13/02/2011 6:22 p.m., Richard Naylor wrote: papertape diagnostics. The first word was 012737, which is all I remember of it. That plus all the i/o registers being in the top 4k address space. It was FS engineer bread and butter to toggle in little ditty programs to set the Go bit and test for Ready. Dave
participants (4)
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Dave Green -
Richard Naylor -
Roger Hicks -
Steve Holdoway