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My first experience was with an IBM 360/40. The "40" referred to the system's memory: 40K of ferrite rings strung on a wire grid. Input was COBOL programs coded on trays full of 80-column cards punched out at a model 029 keypunch machine and fed into a card-reader. Output was usually syntax-error messages printed on stacks of continuous-form paper with green stripes. Turnaround, from input to error listing, was a day or two. Followed by the production of corrected cards, then again from the top. Lather, rinse, repeat. When the number of lines in the error listing was small enough, you could begin testing. My flow-chart template was my best friend. The most important computer makers were IBM and the BUNCH: Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell. RCA had recently dropped out.
When I got into micros, the most important brands were Apple, Atari, Commodore, Osborne, Kaypro, Tandy, and Texas Instruments. CP/M was still an important operating system, and Bill Gates hadn't yet re-named Seattle Computer's QDOS and sold it to IBM as his own. My first PC, as opposed to dumb terminal, was an Apple III with 128K of RAM; the computer I use now has a thousand times as much RAM. I've programmed in COBOL, MOBOL, BASIC, and HyperTalk -- and forgotten all but the last. I've used VM, VAX VMS, UNIX, CP/M, Apple DOS, ProDOS, MacOS 1 through 8.6, MS-DOS, and Windows 3.1 through NT. I can grep, gawk, vi, and html -- but I'm still just a liberal-arts type who got lucky. |
Links Glossary of Computer Related Terms University of Utah Obsolete Computer Museum Triumph of the Nerds Robert X. Cringely Hackers Hall of Fame Discovery Online The Revolutionaries San José Mercury-News Computer Museum of America (La Mesa CA) and Hall of Fame
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