In Linux, no one can hear you Wine

Fred puissante at lrc.puissante.com
Sat Mar 25 17:41:01 EST 2006


On Saturday 25 March 2006 09:29, Dan Jenkins wrote:
> Bill Mullen wrote:
...
> >  I hear that, Bayard. Remember when getting that done successfully (a
> >  neat trick in itself) would let you next wrestle with the
> >  "high-speed" paper tape reader/punch/shredder? ;-)
> >
> >  Loved them '8s, though - I guess you never forget your first 'puter.
>
> Back when programs were measured in yards or cards...
> ...and our "bytes" were 12 bits wide, not the puny 8. :-D
>
> I had an '8 and an IBM System 3 as my first hands-on computers.
> Ah, memories...

Gee, you make me feel so young. My first cuts were on Z80s, S-100 busses, and 
the Apple ][ (no-"e"). I did get to do some toggling in of the bootstrap 
loader on a PDP-8, but I think we had found a way to avoid loading the rest 
of the code from the paper tape. We did manage to jury-rig an interface to 
an Alpha-Micro "mainframe" (really, an S-100-based multiuser system with 
banked-switched RAM Banks of 32K. Whoopee!). If you recall what "IMSAI", 
"Poly88", and "Processor Tech" computers were, you're with me. There was 
even this big monster of a machine from Wang, though the name escapes me. 
Completely contained unit -- keyboard and monitor all in one box. So heavy 
it would bore a hole to the opposite side of the planet if you dropped it...

But, hey, I was the *only* kid at my high-school who had an actual *job* 
doing this stuff. Now that was cool. Back in the days where the term 
"hacker" meant something cool and was respected, long before the Media 
managed to trash the word. Back in the days where Bill Gates was just a 
fledgling, before the joke that was the IBM PC hit the market, Back in the 
days where Commodore (remember them?) had a "Pet" with a chicklet keyboard.

Ah, memories, indeed!

Of course, I absolutely refuse to go on about how me and another guy wrote a 
C-compiler and an operating system *from scratch* for the DataGeneral Nova4X 
shortly after I got out of school. Was only 18 then. Debugging that system 
meant octal dumps on sprocket-fed paper spread out across the basement 
floor. I actually got good enough to read the *machine code* directly. No 
need for a stinkin' disassembler or any of that nonsense. :-) The disk drive 
was the size of a washing machine and could only handle a *mere* 190 
Megabytes. The disk pacs were *huge* -- 11 platters or so on a spindle. I 
wrote a driver for that and all the other peripherals. Only 18 years old. 
The operating system was fully preemptive and multitasking -- with memory 
mapping! I had a very hard time understanding why the original MacOS -- 
which ran on the beautiful 68000 especially geared for preemption -- was 
not. Gee, I did it and I was only a friggin kid. What was their excuse? And 
don't even get me started with DOS or Windows......!!!!!

I truly felt like I was back at home when I came to Linux. I can actually 
compile the dang kernel after configuring it the way I want! Imagine that!

Ok, let me cut it out. It's good to reminisce about the "good ole' days"... 
Now I feel so old.

-Fred



More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list