Reply to: Inspired by Legacy Systems

[NickFitz]

I've got a ZX Spectrum (broken) too..

Plus a ZX Spectrum with an add on teletext receiver thingie that did work when I tried it 16 years ago... and now has a limited use up to August 12th, when the analogue tv gets switched off...

Come to think of it, I disassembled the eprom to find out how it worked...

My first job after University was writing embedded real time software for Teletext transmission systems in Forth and assembler

It's been a long time since I read the Teletext spec, complete with explanation of the Hamming codes used for error correction in the magazine number and row address, and additionally for various bits in the page header

[scotspine]

pascal, punched cards. then moved up to fortran 77 on a dec pdp-11. spent some time on the 6502 platform (if you could call it that) then all of a sudden, was working with com, dcom & mts. wouldn't go back there either

[RSoles]

...late on parade as usual.
Here's the first micro I 'programmed' (flipped switches on).

http://www.virtualaltair.com/virtual..._mainframe.asp

RS.

[Zippy]

Oh, my God, you're from the Sixties! Out! Back to the Sixties! Get back! There's no place for you here in the future!

Beehive hair dos, mini skirts and blokes in white lab coats with clipboards.

Ee them were the days ..

[Nexxy]

Oh, my God, you're from the Sixties! Out! Back to the Sixties! Get back! There's no place for you here in the future!

[ace00]

They've been there 10 years this december...

Are you planning a party? Can I come with my ZX Spectrum (broken)?

[Coalman]

They were... I've got a Dragon 32 in here that I connect to the line out of a pc to attempt to load a game wot I found on a website...

Has it ever worked?

Er.

No.

It doesn't even get to 90%

I've still got a Dragon 32 (and BBC B) both worked last time I checked (10 years ago!).

[ace00]

..... Manic Miner ........

Happy days

[realityhack]

You bunch of old farts.

My first foray into computing involved running basic routines transcribed from a magazine into a Speccy 48k. That, and the endless joy of listening to the tape player loading a game, watching the psychadelic colours on-screen, watching it get to something like 90% loaded, then failing.

The resulting anticipation made games like Trap Door, Ace of Aces and Manic Miner seem like epic triumphs of man over machine.

[NickFitz]

PDP8/e

Ours had a high-speed punch tape reader. You mounted the tape in the reader, turned the key to power up, then entered the bootstrap code using the front panel switches, one 12-bit word at a time, converting it from the octal version in the manual to binary of course.

Then you set the Instruction Pointer back to the start of memory, and hit the "Run" switch. After a brief pause, the tape would start whizzing through the reader and about a minute or so later, the ASR-33 Teletypes (two) would chatter into life

Although we usually terminated whatever was running before powering down, it was possible to just halt it and turn it off; core memory is non-volatile, so when you powered it back up you could just resume execution from where you halted it

One day the high-speed tape reader broke down and we had to load the multi-user BASIC interpreter through the tape reader on one of the Teletypes. It took nearly an hour

[Drewster]

Oh yes good old Cnversational Monitoting System - I was a VM sysprog for many happy moons - REXX was quite amazing .

what was it - CP, CMS IPCS,RSCS,REXX (after r5) GCS.VTAM,NCP ad infinitum ..

HPO was the high performance option.

Killer Apps as EMAIL ! Profs and later Office Vision.

Thats when the IT industry called the shots and we used to strike terror into the hearts of 'users' who were at our mercy.

RSCS - Remote Spooling Communication System or somesuch - I remember our Sysprog did stuff with that (he was a Diamond!)
I loved REXX - I did fiddle with Exec (and/or Exec 2) and in a later life CLIST but REXX was the real deal......

[Drewster]

Let's see now. University summer job, wrote a timesheet system on MVS. ISPF for the screens to enter the data. SAS for analysis - and I got a 3279 because I had to check the graphing worked correctly.

First proper job. Systems management/programming VM. Exec 2, and Rexx. Directory adminstration through the DIRADMIN account - with user passwords in plain text. Wrote a defragger to free up space for large virtual disks. Again - 3279 terminal because I had to support the finance peeps using System W to draw graphs.

My ISPF was much later.....
MVS box (3090 I think)
(Would it be) TPX or IPX - "Menu" system....
Lots of CICS systems - that I never accessed
TSO option - for ISPF and Tulip
Infoman - V4 ish.... Actually ASIM but it ran on base Info
Pretty chunky VSAM files scattered around
ENDEVOR (My baby!)
CA7 - followed by OPC I think
SAR & "Express Delivery"
JCL
Oh and lots of the Opsanalysts still accessed lots of stuff via ROSCOE

[AlfredJPruffock]

Oh yes good old Cnversational Monitoting System - I was a VM sysprog for many happy moons - REXX was quite amazing .

what was it - CP, CMS IPCS,RSCS,REXX (after r5) GCS.VTAM,NCP ad infinitum ..

HPO was the high performance option.

Killer Apps as EMAIL ! Profs and later Office Vision.

Thats when the IT industry called the shots and we used to strike terror into the hearts of 'users' who were at our mercy.

[AlfredJPruffock]

I thought it was SP... was along time ago...
It had:
CP (Command Program) for basic stuff and
CMS (Conversation?? Monitoring Sub-System) for actually doing stuff....
(Virtual) Personal Drive was Address 191? in CP
but referenced by a letter in CMS?
Used -
ListFile (old and clunky) or FileList (filel) new and shiney!!
Xedit as a text editor
REXX
Some Geezers were running arcane Fortran stuff... but I think they may have run on a virtual MVS system....
Had FOCUS
Some <sigh> SAS

Oh yes good old Cnversational Monitoting System - I was a VM sysprog for many happy moons - REXX was quite amazing .

what was it - CP, CMS IPCS,RSCS,REXX (after r5) GCS.VTAM,NCP ad infinitum

HPO was the high performance option.

Killer Ap as EMAIL ! Profes and later Office Vision.

Thats when the IT industry called the shots and we used to strike terror into the hearts of 'users' who were at our mercy.





One for the Head of Department (to warm up the room I think - I don't think he actually used it)
One for the "Chief Statistical Analyst" - he used it to display "pretty" Graphs that were generated by other peoples SAS and Fortran Programs....

HPO

[NotAllThere]

Let's see now. University summer job, wrote a timesheet system on MVS. ISPF for the screens to enter the data. SAS for analysis - and I got a 3279 because I had to check the graphing worked correctly.

First proper job. Systems management/programming VM. Exec 2, and Rexx. Directory adminstration through the DIRADMIN account - with user passwords in plain text. Wrote a defragger to free up space for large virtual disks - yes home one was 191.

Again - 3279 terminal because I had to support the finance peeps using System W to draw graphs.

Did it for a couple of years, as they gradually phased it out and bought in shiny new VAXen.