[WikiEN-l] newbie culture

[Ray Saintonge]

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.

Ec