Oh yeah. My first interaction with a computer was at the local JC in
northern Minnesota. We had a teletype that was connected to "something"
at U of M in Minneapolis. We would punch out programs (I think in Basic
or Fortran) onto paper tape, then feed the program through the paper
tape reader attached to the teletype.
The first computer I ever touched was one made by Olivetti. It was a
desktop thing roughly 2'x2', and maybe 6 or 8 inches tall. Programs
could be keyed in through a front keypad, and stored on a magnetic card
about the same size as a Hollerith card. Memory was very limited, I
remember only about 120 or so words, but it had a couple dozen
registers. You could sacrifice some of the registers to hold
instructions, and stretch your program beyond 120 words depending on how
cleverly you could sacrifice registers. The thing had 2 lights above the
keypad, one green and one red. The green light would flash every time an
instruction was executed (about 1 per second, except for floating
point). Floating point instructions took several seconds each. If you
did something illegal (like divide by zero), the red light would come
on, and the program halted.
My bit-banging days were with a little company called EMR
(Electro-Mechanical Research IIRC). Big ass machine maybe 20 or 25 feet
long and almost 7 feet tall. Had core memory measured in KB (way less
than 1 MB). Rather than cooling the core memory, it was kept in an oven
that held it at a constant 50° C (or close to that). It took two "cards"
to make a flip flop; each card was roughly 4x4 inches and would have
either AND, OR, NAND, NOR gates on it. They would cross-couple a couple
of NAND gates to make 1 flip flop. Discrete components; all diodes and
transistors. When we repaired a problem; usually isolated to a single
card, we would take the bad card back to the shop and replace the bad
diode or transistor.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 5/3/2024 10:51 AM, Chuck McCown via AF wrote:
First computer I actually programmed was an altair 8080 programmed
with the front panel switches.
First computer I ever touched and played with was a terminal connected
to a mainframe somewhere in a science museum in Oregon. It had a moon
lander simulator on it.
-----Original Message----- From: Bill Prince
Sent: Friday, May 3, 2024 11:24 AM
To: af@af.afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
I programmed the first computers I worked on in binary. You would
fat-finger instructions in through the front console, one bit at a time.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 5/3/2024 10:12 AM, Larry Smith via AF wrote:
On Fri May 3 2024 11:37, Chuck McCown via AF wrote:
At least I am not older than FORmula TRANslation or Common Business
Oriented Language.
Hmmm, I programmed in both....
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