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My old SAGE Computer!

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Some back up.

Some occifers override red tags and flood crew members outta their bunks on patrol, and get an "award".
Some 0-4's, who have the deck and the Conn, decide to lay back on the sail and take a snooze while coming out of Charleston Harbour, with an 0-1 "under instruction", who promptly hangs a hard to port one buoy too soon and plants us in a sandbar...and nothing ever said.

But YOU have a tear in your freaking work uniform 1500 miles at sea, ohmygawd.
 
Basil said:
I was both! 10 years as enlisted, 14 as an officer.
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I know.

Basil said:
I think it all depends on who the leader is. Some lead, some don't.
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You're right. I was ambitious, impatient... no time fer th' "some don't" guys. I left. Probably prematurely.
 
They had zero-zero seats in SUBMARINES?!?!?!

...who knew! :devilgrin: :jester:
 
DrEntropy said:
Basil said:
I was both! 10 years as enlisted, 14 as an officer.
Click to expand...

I know.

Basil said:
I think it all depends on who the leader is. Some lead, some don't.
Click to expand...

You're right. I was ambitious, impatient... no time fer th' "some don't" guys. I left. Probably prematurely.
Click to expand...

Me thinks things got better in future years. Not perfect, but better. But let's get back to the topic what was it? Oh yeah, old computers!
 
That ol' Osborne!!

My pal upstairs sold IBM mainframes, "#^)" comes to th' fore... we'd telnet in with an Osborne an' play "StarTrek"... similar to Pong.

He was th' F-A DeTomato guy.
 
mehheh.... "Itty-Bitty-Machine" seems to piddle off th' warez! IBM 360 wuz th' entry.
 
Basil said:
aeronca65t said:
We had a female Navy admiral speak at our place one time. An older gal, she worked on the ENIAC. She claimed the word "de-bug" came about (with reference to computers) because a bug had gotten stuck in the make-break, mechanical contacts of the ENIAC.
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Yes, that would be Rear Adm. Grace Hopper! It was a moth as I recall. She is also one of the people responsible for developing the COBAL programming language. A very smart woman she was.

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Basil,

Thanks for posting that - our oldest Son was on the
USS Hopper in Hawaii.I never knew what an amazing woman she
was until I saw the video.Why aren't there more people like
that?

- Doug
 
Ever wored with Core Memory?
Hand-wound torroidal coils....we had the first "core" stack, oh, 8X6X4", or something like that......4K.
Not 4 MEG, but 4K.

Nixie Tudes.
BCD.
Aux Registers.
Index Registers.

I always thought it was to impress the military....you couldn't follow them stupid lights fast enough to see what was going on.......

But them danged Nixie Tubes were neat.
 
We also had the first SINS with chips.
5 IC's to a flat pack, which plugged 10 to a mother board, which plugged into the rack.....we had a tester.....you suspected a problem (based upon expert diagnosis in state 4 seas at persiscope depth with a round keel), you pulled the mother....errr..board, prised out the flat pack, read tyhe number off the flat pack, dug out the tester, and the manual, found out which knobs and wheels to set to what, plug in the flat pack, turn it on, cycle 3-5 times, and it would tell you what was wrong........maybe.

But, half that HUGE computer (cast.forged case, 3/4" thick on gimballed bearings.....to prevent damage from an attack from above? who knows) was potted boxes full of transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc., etc., etc.

Those you couldn't test, per se, you replaced as necessary.
THEY were almost indestructible......the stupid IC's, tho......

I oughtta tell you about PIPAs and Gyros (not the food kind).

And Gyro bearings....air.
 
AngliaGT said:
Basil,

Thanks for posting that - our oldest Son was on the
USS Hopper in Hawaii.I never knew what an amazing woman she
was until I saw the video.Why aren't there more people like
that?

- Doug
Click to expand...

Being in the Computer field from way back when, we all knew of her - she was legend.
 
When I rebuilt my Osborne last year, it was quite a hoot to crank it up and load cp/m on the A drive, then start WordStar on the B drive. I found my original 5.25" disk collection, and opened up the chapters of my doctoral dissertation.

When you wanted to move the cursor to the right one character, you press CTRL-D. Left was CTRL-S. Up a line was CTRL-E, down a line was CTRL-X. No mouse or cursor keys. I think that key pattern was the origin of the name WordStar, as the cursor movement keys formed a "star" on the keyboard.

wordstar.jpg


There were 132 vertical columns on the Osborne display ... but you could only see 55 of them at once. You had to use a key combination to "slide" the display from side to side.

And using the built-in 300 baud modem to connect to the University library - talk about state of the art! I could do ERIC searches while sitting in my living room.

Jeez, next thing you know they'll start putting adhesive on postage stamps, and we won't have dials on our telephones any more. What's next?

T.
 
OK, if we want to talk about the <span style="font-style: italic">core</span> of computing.............my elderly office-mate ("Dom": a wonderful guy) worked in the Murray Hills Bell Labs facility and was a junior engineer working with Bardeen, Shockley and Brattain back in the day.
He knew Shockley pretty well. Not a nice man.

Dom helped build some of the first solid-state circuits anywhere.

He collected lots of souvenirs during his time at The Labs: I have one of the first manufactured transistors (made in a Bell plant in PA) sitting on my desk.
 
DrEntropy said:
That ol' Osborne!!

My pal upstairs sold IBM mainframes, "#^)" comes to th' fore... we'd telnet in with an Osborne an' play "StarTrek"... similar to Pong.
Click to expand...

Leather Goddesses of Phobos :whistle:
 
My first home computer was a Wang with an IBM mother board and had 32 mgb's. I thought I was smoking. Worked out of dos and used Compuserve as my search engine. Had a dot matrix printer and what - no speakers?, didn't play the latest music, no e-mails. And I thought this was progress? I'm so old I dreamed about the wrist radio/communicator that Dick Tracy had and was sure it would be mine someday. Ain't progress great! Now I'm thrilled to own wind-up watches with my prize being a Hopalong Cassidy watch complete with saddle box. Does that mean I'm going backwards?
 
Another thought. Picture this. Driving my Healey on Route 66, plugged into my Blackberry listening to Graceland with Paul Simon and carrying my super deluxe Cannon digital camera with me. Oh yes and wearing my Elgin wind-up watch. To my mind that's being cool.
 
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