Reply to: Agent Feedback - Contract applications

[Joe Bloggs]

I was about to mention IBM DASDS .... ah nostalgia , the days of waiting one day for the compilation of your punch cards, oh dear you left out an asterix in column 80... which generated 890 compilation errors .... youll have to wait another day now to recompile your program !!!!

Alfred, you forgot one of the other joys of those days... whats that?...oh, I've exceeded the 100 milliseconds allocated per program?...umm, ok I'll start again

[zeitghost]

Ah yes. Facetious. Not in the Giant Alien Lizard gene pool I'm afraid...

Yup, IEEE488 printer port.

The one and only so far as I'm aware.

Had to shell out £100 (in uninflated 1978 £ notes) to someone to get a box that converted it to serial for yet another ASR33 teletype (as a printer).

[voron]

Just I was about to mention IBM DASDS .... ah nostalgia , the days of waiting one day for the compilation of your punch cards, oh dear you left out an asterix in column 80... which generated 890 compilation errors .... youll have to wait another day now to recompile your program !!!!

Ah, punch cards. I have seen such things in museums. For me, computers were invented along with Tron.

[AlfredJPruffock]

What are you on Alf?

It had a calculator style keyboard and a tape recorder.

OK for 1977 though...

And it had an IEEE488 interface for some reason... weird.

I was being a tad facetious there old bean , yes the old IEEE488, hmm was that also used as the printer port ?

[AlfredJPruffock]

Next one was a Commodore PET.

First played with this back in 1984ish, was a superb mulitmedia machine and fantastic music potential via the BEEP command.

Honestly.

[zeitghost]

them were the days.......who remembers the 5Gb 5.25" full hight disks, or Seagate ST225, MFM controllers or RLL controllers.

Me.

First computer I played with had 4k of core (yes those little magnetic ring thingies).

An ASR33 teletype to punch paper tape out on.

A papertape reader to read in the FORTRAN compiler, the source tape, the linker tape.

A papertape punch to punch out the object tape and the exe tape.

A printer of sorts (plus the ASR33...).

A VDU.

Not the usual sort of VDU but a thing that drew proper graphs.

It had one of those funny screens that remember traces so you could run the prog and look at the pretty sinewave or whatever.

And it certainly didn't display text.

Next one was a Commodore PET.

Then a General Automation GA16-220 minicomputer.

[AlfredJPruffock]

I think youv'e just explained with its taking my flippin developers so long to fix defects!!!! they must still be doing it this way

Aye

Maybe, I can tell you there was nothing guaranteed to focus the mind in the knowledge that one slipup and you wouldl have to wait another day for your program to compile.

Mind you this was all a dawdle compared to my previous job as a labourer in Stalinesque fish factory in the Shetlands ... ah but thats another story, now its time for a cuppa tea.

[omen666]

Just I was about to mention IBM DASDS .... ah nostalgia , the days of waiting one day for the compilation of your punch cards, oh dear you left out an asterix in column 80... which generated 890 compilation errors .... youll have to wait another day now to recompile your program !!!!

Those were the days my Friend ...

I think youv'e just explained with its taking my flippin developers so long to fix defects!!!! they must still be doing it this way

[AlfredJPruffock]

Fecking hell, just how old are you people???

Just I was about to mention IBM DASDS .... ah nostalgia , the days of waiting one day for the compilation of your punch cards, oh dear you left out an asterix in column 80... which generated 890 compilation errors .... youll have to wait another day now to recompile your program !!!!

Those were the days my Friend ...

[threaded]

How old?

I remember making a boot tape out of some new plastic stuff as it was less likely to rip than the paper ones that needed constantly replacing.

Then on a contract a few years later recomending the use of such "plastic" tape as the firm was so tight they wouldn't shell out for rewinders... (only the oldies would probably remember why plastic was better in such a situation)

Oh, and progamming on Hollerith cards. That was fun.

[WageSlave]

Basically, I "fire and forget"

I have the same problem

[voron]

double floppy drives and no hard disk !

one floppy running the o/s one running the application !

Milan.

Fecking hell, just how old are you people???

[The Late, Great JC]

IBM PC dual 5.25 fully height floppy drives.

Commodore 8032 - Dual Floppy Drive. Pascal Compiler on two disks !!!!

Then we got a PC !!! Just when Philipe Kahn wrote the most beautiful piece of code in the whole wide world - The Turbo Pascal Compiler!!!!!! Oh, YES !

[n5gooner]

double floppy drives and no hard disk !

one floppy running the o/s one running the application !

Milan.

IBM PC dual 5.25 fully height floppy drives.

[Xenophon]

Basically, I "fire and forget" and work on the principle that hearing nothing means there's nothing to hear.

So do I. Scores 0 out of 10 for pro-activeness, but still works for me.