Monday Links from the Bench vol. CDXCIII

[DoctorStrangelove]

Mine was a thing called the Modular One computer, replete with paper tape reader for loading stuff, paper tape punch for punching out stuff, ASR33 for programming the thing via the FORTRAN compiler loaded from paper tape, and a VDU for drawing stuff, said VDU having a bistable screen for drawing graphs and the like.

That was when I discovered the difference between '' and ".

Dear dead days beyond recall.

It had no magnetic storage so compiling and linking stuff was tedious: load the compiler, read the source, correct the errors, read the source, punch the intermediate tape, load the linker, read the intermediate tape, punch the exe.

Except I don't think they were called exe back then.

You can tell NF went to a Posh Skool with a PDP.

My skool had a ting ting ting mechanical calculator thing for doing statistics.

Feck me, it's a loooooooooooooooong loooooooooooong time ago.

[Scruff]

ahh, - old It Can't Last, eh?

mind you, the second machine i worked on was a Univac 1108.

<the first was a Deuce, - analogue thing, programmed by patchboard>

My first was a Univac at UCT...Pascal / Assembler never tasted that good!

[Yorkie62]

[*]A People Map of the UK - ”…where city names are replaced by their most Wikipedia’ed resident: people born in, lived in, or connected to a place.” Fun mapping thing; David Attenborough edges out Richard III round here


:

Its not even complete. Why is Bernie Taupin not listed as living in the North Lincolnshire village of Owmby-By Spital

Wikipedia link and quote here

Bernie Taupin - Wikipedia

Taupin's father decided to try his hand at independent farming, and the family moved to the run-down Maltkiln Farm [8] in the north-Lincolnshire village of Owmby-by-Spital. Taupin's 11-year younger brother, Kit, was born there.

[DoctorStrangelove]

ahh, - old It Can't Last, eh?

mind you, the second machine i worked on was a Univac 1108.

<the first was a Deuce, - analogue thing, programmed by patchboard>

Wot? One of these:

English Electric DEUCE - Wikipedia

Good set of links, I'm reading them on my time so they must be good.

Liked the aircraft one, and the Uranium one (says he looking at the vaseline glass jug to his left as it gently glows), and the core store one.

The General Automation SPC16 used core store.

[BR14]

I was more of an "Estriel" kinda guy!

ahh, - old It Can't Last, eh?

mind you, the second machine i worked on was a Univac 1108.

<the first was a Deuce, - analogue thing, programmed by patchboard>

[Zigenare]

yeh, and lots of knobs and switches and flashing lights!

360/65 was my favourite

I was more of an "Estriel" kinda guy!

[BR14]

Those were the days... When every computer came with two groovy chicks!

yeh, and lots of knobs and switches and flashing lights!

360/65 was my favourite

[Zigenare]

It's the 119th anniversary of the first Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race today, but if the jubilant celebrations get to be too much for you, you could always read this lot instead

• A look at IBM S/360 core memory: In the 1960s, 128 kilobytes weighed 610 pounds - ”I recently received a vintage core memory array, part of an IBM System/360 mainframe computer. These arrays were used in a 128-kilobyte core memory system that filled a large cabinet weighing 610 pounds.1 This article explains how core memory worked, how this core array was used in mainframes, and why core memory was so bulky.” Ken Shirriff with some proper memory. (Incidentally, one advantage of core was that it was non-volatile, retaining its contents even when powered down. At school, we would stop the PDP-8/e using the toggle switches on the front then turn it off, so that the next day it could be turned on and set running again, and it wasn't necessary to waste a minute or two reloading the multiuser BASIC interpreter from paper tape.)

Happy invoicing!

Those were the days... When every computer came with two groovy chicks!

[darmstadt]

• A look at IBM S/360 core memory: In the 1960s, 128 kilobytes weighed 610 pounds - ”I recently received a vintage core memory array, part of an IBM System/360 mainframe computer. These arrays were used in a 128-kilobyte core memory system that filled a large cabinet weighing 610 pounds.1 This article explains how core memory worked, how this core array was used in mainframes, and why core memory was so bulky.” Ken Shirriff with some proper memory. (Incidentally, one advantage of core was that it was non-volatile, retaining its contents even when powered down. At school, we would stop the PDP-8/e using the toggle switches on the front then turn it off, so that the next day it could be turned on and set running again, and it wasn't necessary to waste a minute or two reloading the multiuser BASIC interpreter from paper tape.)

Cheers, a follow up of some interest: IBM 360 Model 20 Rescue and Restoration – Documenting the recovery and restoration of an IBM System 360 Model 20 and potentially an IBM System 370 Model 125

[NickFitz]

It's the 119th anniversary of the first Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race today, but if the jubilant celebrations get to be too much for you, you could always read this lot instead

• The True, Twisted Story of Amityville Horror - Michelle Dean on the Great (or at least Well-Known) American Ghost Story: ”One would like to believe that journalists have enough common sense not to believe in ghosts. But in the 1970s, American culture was awash in superstition… What was unusual about The Amityville Horror, though, was that in a way, the story-about-the-story was more interesting than the alleged haunting itself. It hovered on a strange, tricky edge of fact and fiction. Some players, from the start, were up front about admitting it was a hoax. Others insisted, to their graves, that the story was true, that the Lutz family had been haunted by something. It’s just that the something may not have been paranormal at all.”
  
  
• A tale of lost WW2 uranium cubes shows why Germany’s nuclear program failed - ”When University of Maryland physicist Timothy Koeth received a mysterious heavy metal cube from a friend as a birthday gift several years ago, he instantly recognized it as one of the uranium cubes used by German scientists during World War II in their unsuccessful attempt to build a working nuclear reactor.” Tracking down the cubes reveals just how close Heisenberg's group came to achieving a controlled nuclear reaction.
  
  
• Military Geologists Played A Big Role In The D-Day Invasion - Scientists get everywhere, even those ones who always look muddy: ”In January 1944, British divers risked their lives to collect soil samples from selected sites. Geologists created top secret geological maps of the coast and beaches, showing the different sediments deposited there by waves and marine currents… Between Le Havre and Cherbourg the geologists found beaches with just the right sediments.”
  
  
• A People Map of the UK - ”…where city names are replaced by their most Wikipedia’ed resident: people born in, lived in, or connected to a place.” Fun mapping thing; David Attenborough edges out Richard III round here
  
  
• Dirty Car Art - Scott Wade gets cars dirty, then draws stuff in the dirt: ”I lived on a long, dirt road in Central Texas for over 20 years. Since our cars were always dirty, I would often “doodle” in the dust on the rear windows of our cars… I started experimenting with ways to get shading. At first I would use the pads of my fingers and brush very lightly to get “grey” tones. One time I was chewing on a popsicle stick, and I tried using the chewed up end as a brush. I liked the effect, so I started trying paintbrushes, and eventually developed the techniques I use today. Nowadays, I use a rubber “paint-shaper” tool and assorted brushes (and of course my fingers).” This time-lapse video shows him recreating M. C. Escher's Relativity on the back window of a Nissan Versa.
  
  
  
  
  
• Canada’s saddest grow-op: My humiliating adventures in growing marijuana - Dope may be legal in Canada now and there are machines to provide optimum growing conditions, but that doesn't make it any easier to nurture quality bud, especially in a newspaper office: ”It was at this point I discovered that The Globe and Mail’s ferocious firewall was throwing the Grobo offline, because it was an unauthorized user. I spent four hours with the clever folks in IT, who set up a dedicated WiFi network on a nearby modem.”
  
  
• How Many Bones Would You Break to Get Laid? - Those idiots who call themselves "incels" are subjecting themselves to plastic surgery, having apparently not realised that not being horrible people would be more likely to improve their chances with MOTAS: ”More than pudgy flesh or pocked skin, it was their bones that made incels un****able, they believed. Their quarrel was with the very collagen that had ossified in their mother’s womb, the calcium phosphate with the potential to outlast civilizations… To transform skull and skeleton could be done only with great expense and pain. It would take surgery.”
  
  
• The Lessons of ValuJet 592 - In 1996, a ValuJet DC-9 crashed into the Florida Everglades. This 1998 article exploring the systemic failures that led to the tragedy seems to have some relevance to the recent matter of the 737-Max: ”The questioning was motivated not by an immediate fear of unsafe skies… but rather by a more nuanced suspicion that competition in the open sky had gone too far, and that the FAA, the agency charged with protecting the flying public, had fallen into the hands of industry insiders.”
  
  
• A look at IBM S/360 core memory: In the 1960s, 128 kilobytes weighed 610 pounds - ”I recently received a vintage core memory array, part of an IBM System/360 mainframe computer. These arrays were used in a 128-kilobyte core memory system that filled a large cabinet weighing 610 pounds.1 This article explains how core memory worked, how this core array was used in mainframes, and why core memory was so bulky.” Ken Shirriff with some proper memory. (Incidentally, one advantage of core was that it was non-volatile, retaining its contents even when powered down. At school, we would stop the PDP-8/e using the toggle switches on the front then turn it off, so that the next day it could be turned on and set running again, and it wasn't necessary to waste a minute or two reloading the multiuser BASIC interpreter from paper tape.)
  
  
• The Weather Channel Classics - ”Classic Weather Channel fans, you're not alone! TWC Classics is the oldest and largest website devoted to The Weather Channel. Created during the summer of 1997, TWC Classics has amassed a large collection of audio, video, images, and information.” A twenty-two year old website about TV about the weather, which is seen here being controlled by the Illuminati in 1986
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!