Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: rbowman Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.setup,comp.os.linux.advocacy,sci.physics Subject: Re: Linux Crashing Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2021 08:02:35 -0600 Lines: 52 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net qfFxmaCDp59d8HAR6L8ueQuWONJAq5xYkKZG8JajngAlPk7MUK Cancel-Lock: sha1:lciMJAGoRlbUH5j0w9orlQjOmrg= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.6.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.setup:4477 comp.os.linux.advocacy:594814 sci.physics:833249 On 09/29/2021 12:59 AM, Clutterfreak wrote: > On 9/28/2021 11:54 PM, rbowman wrote: >> all the drives, old RAM, and so forth went into the dumpster. > > In late 80s I dug three Commodore 64 computers from our dumpster :) > power supplies included. I was still in school so I didn't need a "home" > computer yet, plus modems that school provided to students to use at > home were I think only 300 baud. Too lethargic to connect those heavy > vt100 terminals to school computers from home. So for me computing was > something always done in school. But some students had purchased Apples > and IBM XTs etc. Two of these three Commodores were fully functional and > I gradually adopted them as my home computer. I never worked with a 64. One of my clients in the early '80s was Sprague Electric at their tantalum capacitor plant in Maine. They had a number of Commodore PETs. They were clunky but they had a IEEE-488 (HPIB) interface for the peripherals. Sprague had Hewlett Packard instrumentation for many of the processes that used the bus. A HP desktop computer went for about $3000. You could buy about five PETs for that. > > Soon I taught myself C on one of them, if you can believe that! In > school they were still referring to C as "the language of the future." In the late '80s? That's about right. Schools tend to be a generation behind what is happening. > So Commodore 64, it looks like, was already "vintage" in 1989. After I > acquired the Commodores I began frequenting a computer assignment store > that sold people's old and new stuff and kept 30% of the money and gave > 70% to owners. It was a heaven for "vintage" parts, systems, manuals, > books, everything. I had found a funky half-finished C manual there in > German coming with two disks for Commodore. That's how I learned C. In > school everybody used Fortran in science depts and PL-1 in business depts. I learned FORTRAN IV on an IBM System/360 Model 30. It had 32K of core, real core, and the programs were submitted on Hollerith cards. A 64 was a real step up. > Anyway, I'm so "vintage" myself that even today in 2021 if I get my > hands on a Commodore 64 I begin immediately to enjoy doing fun stuff > with it. I have at least 50 little programs from those years written in > Commodore's basic and C which are entrapped inside a bad old HD that > crashed and my attempts to revive them only made things worse. Even if I > had kept my cassettes that I used for storing programs I'd have better > chance now to access them. http://www.ccs64.com/