Topic: Fixing Computers

[James]

Would you believe that I am servicing a Packard Bell computer running Windows 95? 

I also have to install Windows 98 on a Dell that came with XP Home.

Good old DOS!

It's the only way a customer of mine can do her medical transcription work at home.

James. 

[meandean]

  I spent more than a few years servicing many types of equipment to include some OLD vacuum tube gear from the late 50's (still in use today in some steel mills)... Tell me about it!

[meandean]

  Does anybody remember computer punch cards, magnetic core memory, washing machine sized hard drives, reel-to-reel tape drives, and two-man lift power supplies???

[BlinkenLights]

  Does anybody remember computer punch cards, magnetic core memory, washing machine sized hard drives, reel-to-reel tape drives, and two-man lift power supplies???

yes...
but i was 8

[James]

It's now safe to turn off your computer.

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

The most antique thing I ever had to use was a teletype.  It had a big roll of paper instead of a screen.  It had a big roll of paper "ticker" tape for storing program.  It had a super fast 110 baud modem for connecting with the mainframe.  I really liked using that thing.  I remember using a ticker tape program to make a love letter on the ticker tape for this girl at my school and printing out ASCII Snoopy pictures to hang on my wall.

[James]

See. Now I'm totally jealous! 

I've seen pictures and read a lot about them. I saw some real ones when I was a little kid and we visited our weather bureau. My sister's friends gave me ASCII Snoopy calendars.

But I never got to use one! 

James. 

[BlinkenLights]

i had full access to a PDP 11 when i was 12, mom worked for DEC

[Fanny Pack]

Did you ever access it fully?

[meandean]

  PDP-11... There's plenty of that gear still out there in industry. I used to work on
computerized X-ray non-contact thickness gauging equipment that could dynamically measure
(and control) thickness of flat rolled steel as it flew through the mill at speeds up to
50mph. They were octal based and used an OS called RT-11 (if the unit was fitted with a
floppy drive, otherwise you used a suitcase sized casette loader with battery back CPU RAM
to hold the program), I remember tinkering with a few assembler routines for memory and I/O
diagnostics.

  I think that one of the biggest steps forward in recent years is flash memory. You can
walk into Staples and smash-and-grab an 8GB stick for about $18 and carry the Library of
Congress on your keychain! I suspect the next big thing will be flash memory that's faster
than a HD, making them obsolete as vacuum tubes...

  I heard a year or two back that Intel was planning to dump silicon and replace it with
hafnium to push the envelope much further, and that IBM was working on an optical based
bus structure... Anybody heard anything further on that?

[BlinkenLights]

next step is holographic storage..
 

[James]

Hey! I just had an awesome idea that could make lasers super popular!

First, we need to make a giant, Mylar, helium balloon that looks like a flying saucer.....

James. 

[Lazerjock]

Now thats funny.

[James]

I'd love to have one of those paper tape punch reader/writers. I've seen 8 bit and 12 bit versions. Heck I'd be happy with just some of the paper tape reels. I absolutely love patterns! That stuff looks so cool! I can think of lots of neat things I could make with it. I would really like to use it as a stencil for my paintings.

It's such a perfect visual representation of a stream of binary data. You just can't get any more accurate and to the point than that!

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

Yea, it was pretty cool to load a big long piece of paper tape into the reader, turn it on, and then watch the teletype start typing things.  It was kind of like watching one of those player pianos, I guess.