Old engineering & mathmatics stuff...

[jyl]

I actually think there'd be a (small, incel) market for that!

[Jim2]

My fathers:

Slide rule graft item which I'm guessing came from the 60's (fits in a shirt pocket behind a pocket protector!)

Eshbach handbook of engineering fundamentals ~1951

My brother had stacks of USB sticks, er, I mean punch cards in my parents basement that somehow dwindled down to one card which remains in my possession. I took a scavenger hunt prize with it.

[fanaudical]

Originally Posted by NY65912

Dr. Clayton T. Crowe was my Fluid Mechanics prof at WSU. Interesting guy.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Jim2

My fathers:

Slide rule graft item which I'm guessing came from the 60's (fits in a shirt pocket behind a pocket protector!)

Eshbach handbook of engineering fundamentals ~1951

My brother had stacks of USB sticks, er, I mean punch cards in my parents basement that somehow dwindled down to one card which remains in my possession. I took a scavenger hunt prize with it.

Very cool stuff!

[KC911]

^^^ Punch cards ... there's nothing like a huge 370 Assembler program in a deck of cards ... just don't drop them .

I was very adept at doing hexadecimal arithmetic in my head .... for a byte or two. The best calculators ever .... those that did hex conversions/math!

And Boolean Algebra .... the basis of any "logic class"... my prof wanted me to tutor others ... sorry... you either get "it" or you don't imo.

[flatbutt]

Originally Posted by Jim2

I did my first programming in Fortran. I learned the HARD way that one should number their cards in sequence.

[red-beard]

I learned BASIC at 11 and FORTRAN by the time I was 12 or 13. I primarily programmed in FORTRAN 77. But I picked up PASCAL and a few others (C,C++, Prolog, Lisp, etc.).

I never had to program with cards, I started on an interactive timesharing system (PR1ME 300, PR1ME 550/750 System Manager). I did have to work with a "Batch" style system at Texas A&M. Later I worked with DEC PDP-11 and VAX/Micro-VAX systems.

At the end of High School, when the other System Managers were going into CS (Which was a fairly new Degree Program), I went into Engineering. I took all of my computer knowledge and applied it to engineering.

[jyl]

Originally Posted by KC911

^^^ Punch cards ... there's nothing like a huge 370 Assembler program in a deck of cards ... just don't drop them .

Yeah. TWO rubber bands. Life lesson.

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by KC911

And Boolean Algebra .... the basis of any "logic class"... my prof wanted me to tutor others ... sorry... you either get "it" or you don't imo.

When I was 13, I was asked to work with 8 year olds and see if we could teach them to program. It was a failure. I suggested (This is 1978), that we work with the kids to familiarize them with how to use the computer and run programs. Later, with more "logic", they could start to program. And again, this would probably occur in Middle-school, 7th grade or so.

[dad911]

Originally Posted by Jim2

......
My brother had stacks of USB sticks, er, I mean punch cards in my parents basement that somehow dwindled down to one card which remains in my possession. I took a scavenger hunt prize with it.

First year EE at Rutgers we were still using punch cards. Then went to 8" floppies, but the programs were still run in batch overnight. Lines at the terminals were a few hours long, so I would type in the program on a CP/M machine, then just print it on the engineering printer so the output would match.

I may have some 8" floppies, but no more bookmarks (punchcards)

My first home printer was a modified teletype. 110 characters a minute, all caps. I'd start a printout, and come pack a few hours later.

[doug_porsche]

Originally Posted by Jim2

My fathers:

Ok, as a convenient storage device, the Hollerith punch card was/is a disaster, BUT

From a mechanical engineering standpoint, the punch card sorter was a hypnotic machine that I loved to watch do its magic!

[KC911]

When I entered college ('78), I had never seen a computer, and the student computer room was full of card punches ... and one "interactive terminal" in the corner that three upper class geeks used. Behind the window (to hand in punch cards) were a Burroughs 6800, Vax, and PDP-11s ... but we had a link to an IBM 370 at Research Triangle Park. By '80, the Comp. Science dept went from less than 100, to 1000 and the cards had virtually disappeared. Gimme access to the machines .... that's all I needed .

[doug_porsche]

Originally Posted by KC911

When I entered college ('78), I had never seen a computer, and the student computer room was full of card punches ... and one "interactive terminal" in the corner that three upper class geeks used. Behind the window (to hand in punch cards) were a Burroughs 6800, Vax, and PDP-11s ... but we had a link to an IBM 370 at Research Triangle Park. By '80, the Comp. Science dept went from less than 100, to 1000 and the cards had virtually disappeared. Gimme access to the machines .... that's all I needed .

Great demonstration of how far technology has come.
IBM and VAX (the ugly red headed step child of the computing world) machines of that era only had 1 card reader, 1 Console, multiple tape drives, 1 or more printers.


For reference....

That cell phone that is so seductively in the back pocket of the cute girl in front of you in line, has at minimum 3,000,000,000 (yep with a B) transistors in it. I have read, but never counted, that 8,000,000,000 transistors is a more likely number.

If you built a cell phone out of discreet components, it would be larger than the Empire State building.

[3rd_gear_Ted]

Originally Posted by doug_porsche

Ok, as a convenient storage device, the Hollerith punch card was/is a disaster, BUT

From a mechanical engineering standpoint, the punch card sorter was a hypnotic machine that I loved to watch do its magic!

EBDIC was the card format?
Hexadecimal?

Extended Binary Digital Interface Code

[KC911]

You disspeeeeeled EBCDIC .... yep, I can still read it, ASCII ... not so much . I was a systems progrmmer later on .... reading/analyizing dumps & traces ... I thrived on those .

C1 = A (alpha)

Of course it's all binary in the machine, but

1100 0001 = C1

which leads us to Hexadecimal math .

I had the "gift of geek"

HAD....

my speeeeling and tuping here are proof ....

and I don't pwoofread

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by doug_porsche

VAX (the ugly red headed step child of the computing world)

you sound like an anti-VAXer

[masraum]

Originally Posted by KC911

You disspeeeeeled EBCDIC .... yep, I can still read it, ASCII ... not so much . I was a systems progrmmer later on .... reading/analyizing dumps & traces ... I thrived on those .

C1 = A (alpha)

Of course it's all binary in the machine, but

1100 0001 = C1

which leads us to Hexadecimal math .

I had the "gift of geek"

HAD....

my speeeeling and tuping here are proof ....

and I don't pwoofread

I can convert back and forth between binary and decimal in my head all day long and subnet IPs and come up with the least number of "subnets" to create a range of addresses. I get hex, and can do the conversions, but it's much slower. I wrote a research paper on number systems (binary, base 4, octal, hex, decimal) when I was 13, but I've never really had to use hex other than looking at MAC addresses.