What Is The Most Ancient Primitive Computer You've Ever Worked On?

[davidlynch]

In 1973, I worked on an IBM 360 running OS/MFT at UNM in Albuquerque NM, you had to relate to the thing exclusively with punch cards. Those were the days.

[qnr]

1. We had 360s at UMaine Orono too, but later models.

You beat me by a mile, and I've worked on some old ones.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Same here.

Did some Cobol programming, punch cards. Eww. Also had a Commodore 64 when they first came out, and worked with an IBM DisplayWriter in about 1985. And I used a slide rule in the 60s.

[qnr]

7. Well, my abaccus beats your slide rule. Incidently, saw some

really nice slide rules in a thrift store recently. Hard case, instructions, everything.

[Spiffarino]

55. self-delete

Oops...replied to the wrong post.

[davidlynch]

9. IDENTIFICATION DIVISION

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. TCOBSUB.
ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
LINKAGE SECTION.
01 LINK-PARM PIC X(10).
PROCEDURE DIVISION USING LINK-PARM.
IN-THE-BEGINNING.
MOVE 'TERRY' TO LINK-PARM.
GOBACK.
END PROGRAM TCOBSUB.

COBOL Batch caller:

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. TCOBBTCH.
ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 DFHEIBLK PIC X.
01 DFHCOMMAREA PIC X.
01 WORK-PARM PIC X(10) VALUE 'NAME'.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
IN-THE-BEGINNING.
DISPLAY WORK-PARM.
CALL 'TCOBSUB' USING DFHEIBLK DFHCOMMAREA WORK-PARM.
DISPLAY WORK-PARM.
GOBACK.
END PROGRAM TCOBBTCH.

[tridim]

25. Gawd I'm glad I missed the COBOL era.

[davidlynch]

30. WAIT--THERE'S EVEN BETTER--ASSEMBLER

*********************************************************************** 01120000
* * 01130000
* THE FOLLOWING ARE CONSTANTS USED FOR THE ATTRIBUTE OF THE TSCA * 01140000
* FIELDS. THEY ARE THE ONLY LEGAL SETTINGS FOR THE TSCA ATTR. * 01150000
* * 01160000
*********************************************************************** 01170000
* 01180000
TSCACHAR EQU X'01' ATTRIBUTE IS CHARACTER 01190000
TSCAFIXD EQU X'02' ATTRIBUTE IS FIXED 01200000
TSCABIT EQU X'03' ATTRIBUTE IS BUT TSCAPOIN 01210000
TSCAPOIN EQU X'04' ATTRIBUTE IS POINTER 01220000
TSCAACRY EQU C'TSCA' TSCA ACRONYM 01230000
* 01180000
IHAPSA PSA LAYOUT
*
***********************************************************************
*
ICMEXDIE START 0 ORIGIN
SAVE (14,12),,* SAVE REGISTERS
LR R12,R15 LOAD ORIGIN
LA R8,2048(R12) ADD HALF OF IT
LA R8,2048(R8) ADD HALF OF IT
USING ICMEXDIE,R12,R8 ESTABLISH ADDRESSABILITY TO PROGRAM
ST R13,MAISAVE+4 STORE ADDRESS OF CALLER'S SAVE AREA
LR R2,R13 GET ADDRESS OF CALLER'S SAVE AREA
LA R13,MAISAVE GET ADDRESS OF OUR SAVE AREA
ST R13,8(R2) STORE OUR SAVE AREA ADDRESS IN CALLER
*
***********************************************************************
*
* ESTABLISH TSCA ADDRESSABILITY:
*
MAIN L R3,0(R1) LOAD ADDRESS OF PARAMETER 1 (TSCA)
USING TSCA,R3 MAP DSECT TO TSCA
*
* ENSURE COMMUNICATIONS AREA IS INITIALIZED:
*
B MEM010 ENSURE COMM REGION INITIALIZED
*
* BRANCH ON FUNCTION CODE:
*
MAI002 CLC TSCAVNAM,=C'IDCMMOVE'
BE MOV010 GENERAL PURPOSE MOVE ROUTINE
CLC =C'IDCMMVC',TSCAVNAM
BE MVC010 DELUXE MOVE ROUTINE
CLC =C'IDCMCLC',TSCAVNAM
BE MVC010 DELUXE COMPARE ROUTINE
CLC =C'IDCMADD',TSCAVNAM
BE MVC010 DELUXE ADD ROUTINE
CLC =C'IDCMSUB',TSCAVNAM
BE MVC010 DELUXE SUBTRACT ROUTINE
CLC =C'IDCMMBEL',TSCAVNAM
BE MVC010 MOVE BINARY/EBCDIC
CLC =C'IDCMMEBL',TSCAVNAM

[Obviousman]

50. What does this even tell the computer to do?!

[madinmaryland]

71. someone actually remembers assembly!

:wtf: :argh:

[qnr]

75. I only remember some 6502 assembly, myself.

Used the Atari Macro Assembler.

[hunter]

91. There was this macho 'seventies guy on the cover of that manual.

Cool 'seventies hair, cool 'seventies mustache.

Anyways, here's for you atari guy:

http://www.atariarchives.org

[tridim]

77. I liked assembler

Not the process, but the result. I used it all the time on the c64.

[GAspnes]

79. Ah, mah buddy!

Those were the days, slinging BAL (Basic Assembly Language) on a 360/40 with a whopping 128K of main memory in '70 and '71.

Of course, before that there was FORTRAN on an IBM 1130 w/ 32K main memory, 128K disk the size of a pizza box.

But the best was the CDC G-15 in '65 and '66. 8K drum memory and a 4-bit accumulator. Paper tape, if the reader didn't tear it, otherwise key it in by hand in hex from the console.

[NightTrain]

3. It had a steam-powered modem.

And the memory was stored on 8-track tapes! :P

[qnr]

4. lol - actually I still own two 300 baud accoustically coupled modems

[davidlynch]

10. I Used To Be Able To Whistle And Trick Those Acoustic Modems! n/t

[tridim]

16. I remember the day I got my first 300baud modem

It was teenage nerd heaven. Oh how the "warez" flowed in.

[DieboldMustDie]

38. See what you can get for them on ebay.

;)

[qnr]

44. Nah, I'm a pack rat. For info, one is an Atari 730, the other is the

set that came with my Tandy Model 100

[tridim]

5. An Altair, but I was a bit young..

The Vic 20 was the first computer I really used as a tool.

[davidlynch]

11. I Wrote a Blackjack Program for the VIC-20 n/t

[SKKY]

6. That would be sweet! I unfortunately came to IT a bit too late.

[qnr]

18. It's never too late. Amazing what you can find on eBay :)

Heck, I still own my KIM-1 and my Atari 400 (well, kind of, a friend of mine uses it in his photo lab in Italy --- loves that monopanel keyboard, due to the chemicals)

[SKKY]

27. That's quite true. I lost an auction for a copy of Windows 1.0 recently..

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

63. I have an archival cd with every version of DOS

and Windows (including Win 1.0). It even contains a bunch of computer-specific versions of early windoze and dos (NOT just MS-dos...)

Too bad I got it all on usenet, and can't sell it... :evilgrin:

[jeff30997]

8. Apple II e

[davidlynch]

12. You Won't Believe This--I Had an APPLE 1 (Wood Box)

I had an Apple I actually made by Steve Wozniak by hand. He was providing technical support personally. This was in the days of the BYTE SHOP (1974).

[qnr]

21. oh yeah BYTE SHOP!

[mr_hat]

13. Apple Lisa. I married her! >

Still happily wed.

[davidlynch]

19. I Remember Seeing Lisa When First Announced at INFOWEST

The thing was just STAR-WARS. Unbelievable. I was shocked by how good it was.

[Elidor]

14. I can't touch you guys

A PC jr. circa 1983 was my first computer. A friend of mine had an old Trash-80 that we had a lot of fun with. Next, I worked on a Mac IIci, then a Windows 3.11 system at 33 MHz. All my colleagues were insanely jealous of that one.

[davidlynch]

26. God I'd Almost Forgotten the PC JR. n/t

[GAspnes]

83. with the Chiclet keyboard. Ah, the memories (n/t)

[ladjf]

15. I might win the prize. My first computer was a Radio Shack

TRS-80 with a small tape cassette and the only magnetic storage.
And was rather pricey. When they came out with their first floppy disks, the devices cost about $250 and held a whopping 75K.

[davidlynch]

22. I Remember Those Cassette Tapes (TRASH-80) n/t

[CornField]

43. Yup - another trash-80 owner. nt

[AngryAmish]

61. Learned BASIC on a TRS-80

There was something about space twinkies...

[flaminbats]

78. the noise those old floppy drives made could drive a person insane!

Remember that high pitched scream of those old modems just to send a tiny file. :argh:

[nankerphelge]

17. I was born in 1973

But had computer enthusiast in family. We had the old build-it-yourself Heathkit and Sorceror home computers. The punch cards were gone, but lots of stuff was stored on cassette tape.

[Taxloss]

20. ZX81. nt

[davidlynch]

23. AHH THE ZYLOG PROCESSOR!

[Taxloss]

28. Hey, it had "graphics keys". That's sophisticated. nt

[qnr]

24. Would you believe ... I've never owned an MSDOS/Windows computer?

Well, for 20 minutes, until I formatted the drives and installed another OS.

[henslee]

29. ibm pc jr.

[Lisa]

31. a PDP-11 with a card reader

This was in my high school computer class, when "1984" was still a date of future dread.


The card reader unit would sometimes overheat, so we would take turns fanning it with a clipboard.

[henslee]

32. In 1970's my school had a terminal link to a computer at dartmouth

We used to type on it -- it had the tape roll on the side with the punched out holes. We used to play star trek written in script form. It was pretty cool. We would type OldStartrekXXX and play after hours. I never caught on to computers. What a dummy.

[Deja Q]

33. Apple ][+ Man, the Atari 400 was so much better than that trash...

:puke:

[Deja Q]

34. May I add that I'm the first person to use the correct symbols in "][+"

:evilgrin:

[qnr]

42. yeah, what was with that ][ & /// bit?

[qnr]

36. Yeah, I've always thanked Apple for introducing me to Atari

Bought an Apple ][, detested it, and traded it in for an Atari 400 a week later.

[nytemare]

35. Atari 400!

With a flush keyboard, like the ones on some ATM machines. It had a "Basic" cartridge that you would insert at the top. I remember sitting for an hour punching in a program to get a little orange line to appear across the screen.

10 Goto 20
20 Goto 10
30 Goto get a better computer!

[qnr]

37. Hah! Better computer? Not in those days, short of the 800 n/t

[nytemare]

51. Yes, I suppose in those days there wasn't much choice!

I remember the keyboard freezing up after I spent an hour trying to type a program in. That was infuriating!!

But the Pac-Man and Centipede were cool.

[qnr]

52. Really? My 400 is still going strong after 25 years, working daily

the the photo shop of a friend of mine in Italy.

[nytemare]

54. Dang, pretty durable then!!

[ThoughtCriminal]

39. Back in my day...

We had to program with 1's and 0's. Worse, we had to use capital "O" for zeros and lower case "L' for ones. :P

I don't know what our school had at the other end of the terminal.
I had a KIM-1, , an Ohio Scientific C1-P, a Sinclair ZX-80, and a Vic-20.

[Been Fishing]

40. Don't remember what the computer was called, but

the class instructor's name was Babbage.

[qnr]

41. A Logic Engine

[Been Fishing]

93. For real

IBM 360 at Univ of Calif, Riverside
punch card input, FORTRAN IV running WATFOR compiler 1969

IBM Selectric tty input, APL (A Programming Language) 1970

punch card input, PL/I 1971

[BiggJawn]

45. TS-1000.

Used to be the Sinclair 1000, then Timex got into the game. Bubble button keys, a whole whomping ONE Kilobyte of RAM...

Wish I still had it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

46. A terminal on Yale's mainframe ca. 1979

They had an experimental program to see if it was feasible for graduate students to use the exciting new function of word processing to type their dissertations.

We used a program called WScript, which functioned entirely on dot commands. Each command had to be turned on and off manually, just like formatting in HTML. Even worse, if you made a mistake, you wouldn't know it until you went to the printer window to pick up your printouts. Once I forgot to type ".footend" after a footnote, and the whole rest of the chapter was printed in tiny letters at the bottom of the next twenty pages.

Later (ca. 1982), I took a computer literacy course that used Osbornes.

[Lady Sonelle]

47. Commodore PET, Vic 20 and C=64!

and I MISS the wonderful Graphics keys! Some of My favourite illos were:
Three red blocks, two white dashes and a yellow asterisk made a great firecracker!

2 red blocks, one white block and four white dashes made a used tampon (we were gross in those days!)

We did complicated pictures and simple one line illos. ASCII graphics just don't compare!

Only one or two of those one line illos remain useable:

----<----<---<@ a rose or >-+++<> fishbones![br />
Lady Sonelle
I've been in computing since 1200 baud was *expensive*!

[ironflange]

48. Honeywell GPS-6 running GCOS

A good old-fashioned minicomputer. This was in the mid-80's, and the thing was about ten years old at the time. I learned COBOL on it, and that's why I'm so fabulously wealthy today. I remember that damn dot matrix printer, the size of a deep freeze, could go like a bat out of hell.

[qnr]

49. yeah, those line printers were amazing...

[ironflange]

67. I know

I inherited a wide-carriage Okidata 9-pin from my FIL, built somewhere around 1980. It was a pain to thread, and noisy as hell, but it could do a page in about three seconds. I stupidly got rid of it years ago, and still regret it.

[Arkana]

53. I worked ON someone's computer that was ancient

They brought a white Zenith laptop. It was about 2 1/2 inches thick, and it barely had enough RAM for Windows 95 and a copy of Word 5. I think the size of the HD was somewhere around 100 MB. This thing was pathetic.

[democracyindanger]

56. Abacus

I WIN!

[Name removed]

57. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Spiffarino]

58. The IBM 3270-PC

Around 1987, I think. It was an IBM PC-XT with a built-in 3270 mainframe terminal emulator. You had to perform a series of keystrokes to get it to toggle over into either PC or MF mode and it was so horribly convoluted nobody could ever remember how to do it. It must have weighed 40 lbs., and it constantly broke down.

Our IBM rep at the time tried like hell to sell them to us but - at $10,000 a pop for the gigantic, unreliable, unusable piece of crap - it seemed like a bad idea.

[yellowdogintexas]

59. I used one of those old Zenith all in one things in 1982, doing

data entry for a research project. Thing had 8" floppies that looked like 45 rpm records, except they were ...floppy...

And when I went to work for an insurance company in 1975, we used some kind of all in one thing, that used cassette tapes. Small screens, green on dark green.

The first computer I ever owned was a Kaypro CPM machine that was portable. If you can call a steel case the size of a decent suitcase portable. The keyboard folded up into the screen and it snapped together; build like a tank that one was. And it cost more, in 1984 dollars than our really nice HP cost in 2003 dollars!!! and we had this monster of a daisy wheel printer, too.

[bloodyjack]

60. Our Apple IIe was the first computer I ever ruined.

It's still here, somewhere in our attic.

KARATEKA!

[Magrittes Pipe]

62. ENIAC

It was only a replication, but it was a working replication.

[qnr]

64. As opposed to a contemporary primative computer ???

[HERVEPA]

65. IBM 1620, IBM 1130, in 1967

[kodi]

66. my fingers

updated version included toes

[SmileyBoy]

68. Apple ][, circa 1978.

Of course, it wasn't in 1978, but 1992 or so. I ran a few programs on it.

[Nile]

69. DEC PDP-1103 with TTY input.

Had to toggle in bootstrap.

[davidlynch]

80. Set the Switches, Then "Deposit"

TTY, I was wondering if anyone remembered the old TELETYPE.

[qnr]

84. Um, yeah, but I was a radioman in the military ;)

[EstimatedProphet]

70. My FORTRAN class was on punchcards

I hated it
But even worse: the Timex Sinclair 1000. Anyone remember what a mess that thing was. It's the only inanimate object I've ever felt sorry for.

[Downtown Hound]

72. A Radio Shack Color Computer 2

16k. I eventually upgraded to 64k. It hooked into a TV set. It was all about Pitfall 2 baby.

[TheMightyFavog]

73. Apple IIe at school, Amstrad 1512 at home.

At home we bought an Amstrad 1512 in about 86 or 87



2 5 1/4" floppy drives, no hard drive, CGA graphics.

Used it until it finally died in 1994.

[Spiffarino]

74. The first computer I ever owned...

...was a Spectravideo. I don't remember the exact model, but it looked just like this one...



I had the docking station and the cassette drive. Took forever to load my word processor, which would always fail after a couple of minutes. No monitor...I had it hooked up to a 13" color TV which could only display about half what a real monitor could in text mode. Joy.

[CanuckAmok]

76. An "Ung II" I bought second-hand from Ot the Bone-Sharpener, in 11,000B.C.

It ran ungabunga as the O/S, and had a three coconut modem!

[davidlynch]

82. HAHA!

[msgadget]

81. The Sanyo MBC 1000 CP/M

was the first personal computer I owned but prior to that I used IBM desktop dummies (unknown specs) in the late 70's. I remember when computer programmers were treated like young gods and mainframes took up huge amounts of holy air conditioned space. Our company kept the punch cards around for a little while...just in case.

[Liberty Belle]

85. mid'80s; I got a hand-me-down 286 computer from a friend.

It had a 1mg hard drive, amber-toned monochrome monitor, and Dos-based software so you had to know codes for every command and put a template around your keyboard. I wrote and sold my first book on that thing, which seems like a relic now, but it was light years better than the typewriter I'd had before.

[miss_kitty]

86. I did a punch card thing at Nordstrom in the early 80s

to correct billing errors. We didn't have screens. Our terminals in the office were called Oracles, and they printed strips.

In Jr High, we messed around with punch cards, and I remember typing on a machine that ticker tape came out of and it got fed through another machine connected to a modem, so they told us "...two computers were actually 'talking' to each other!" Imagine that.

[Dying Eagle]

87. Apple IIc

I know, not that bad, but hey, I was born in 1981 so i missed out on the real dinosaur machines

[njdemocrat106]

92. Apple IIc here also

Born in 1980 and my grandma got it as a gift for opening a CD account at her bank (in 1984). Obviously she couldn't be bothered figuring it out, so she gave it to my family. I might have been 4 years old, but I pretty much knew how to run the thing (I knew how to read before entering kindergarten - parents, read to your children!) and play games on it. Later we'd buy books with Basic program listings and type them in and so I learned very elementary Basic that way. I still have it somewhere. Someday I'm going to hook it back up and hope it works (and I hope all those old floppies still work too).

[MrSlayer]

88. I had a Mattell product called the Aquarius.

You could do basic functions on it primitive graphics and whatnot. That was before I moved up to the big leagues and got a Commodore 64 with a 300 baud modem. Q-Link and the BBS boards were a lot of fun.

[NNadir]

89. I have no idea what it was, but when I was in high school we had this

thing that had a cradle for a telephone receiver. You called a university somewhere, waited for like an hour, and then spent hours learning how to get the thing to ask you your name and then respond "Hi .

After a week of playing with the thing, I came to the conclusion that computers would never be useful for anything.

[cestpaspossible]

90. DEC PDP 8/E

also a Wang... 2200? it's so long ago...

[CatholicEdHead]

94. Tandy 8086

4Mhz 5 1/4 Floppy no HD, 512K RAM

[pinniped]

95. Commodore PET at skool.

Apple IIe somethings came later on.