Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
Neil Harris wrote:
Arwel Parry wrote:
In message John Lyden writes
On 6/17/06, Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
Ok, stop... you're making me all nostalgic. I think it all started to go downhill when the modems became capable of transferring text faster than you could read it (aka 2400 baud). :]
By that measure, my downhill was 9600 baud.
Of course, I jumped right from my 1200 baud Multitech to a 14.4K on my 486. Jump to lightspeed!
Some of us started out on 10 c.p.s. teletypes and input our first programs on paper tape....
Paper tape? Luxury. What's wrong with toggling your programs in using the panel switches?
(mutters something about the luxury of switches and having to rely on compass needles twiddling and having to wave magnets, uphill both ways in the snow)
I do remember paper tape and drum memories. The panel switches were an improvement over having to reconfigure patch-cords. (IMSAI?) The needles and magnets appear to have more to do with the Heathkit analog computer that you had to put together. Unfortunately I wasn't old enough to afford one of those. I also do remember a first printing desktop calculator that could automatically multiply; it was a heavy beast that made one hell of a racket for that operation. Still that was an improvement over comptometers that required you to configure your fingers according to the multiplicand and push and shift in accordance with the multiplier. Some early machines would get very confused when students would naturally try to get them to divide by zero.
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