View Single Post
Old 14th August 2008
DrJ DrJ is offline
ISO Quartermaster
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Gold Country, CA
Posts: 507
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by drhowarddrfine View Post
My first sight of a real one was in 1970 when I went to college...
Congrats! You are officially an old f*rt!
Quote:
...the geologists next door had an IBM something with punch cards. I just didn't get it
I had the same response when I first started using computers/punch cards. The use for a computer became apparent only later when the calculation became much more complex.
Quote:
...mini-computer from some new company called Sun Microsystems. They ran up against Apollo Computers, which I favored.
I remember those days well. I personally preferred the Sun (I had a 3/60) because it used standard Unix (BSD, in this case). Apollo ran their own Unix-like system, which was just enough different to be irritating. I forget all the details.
Quote:
Things get pretty boring after that, computer-wise.
I know you meant that you did not use computers in as interesting a manner, but I'll take the quote out-of-context and agree with you literally. The early days were wild and wooly, and interesting new things were coming out all the time. These days the computer scene is very uniform, and while the progress is still rapid, the software models and bundles are pretty well fixed. The real hardware innovation these days seems more to be in portable devices, like iPods and cell phones.
Reply With Quote