I use an abacus.

Slide rule, too, if I'm feeling nerdy.

This is what we used in the days of "Wooden Ships and Iron Men"

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1321671576.jpg

Not long after the slide rule days, I remember attracting a crowd in the lab one day with my HP-35 calculator. I was Hot stuff !

What size batteries does one of those take?

Ha. Good one Flieger ! Those were Iron Man powered. :D

I use a round slide rule today. :)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1321685948.jpg

I wonder if I could figure out how to use the straight one?

Nice to see someone else actually using an E6B! Those things are a MARVEL of design. Whoever devised it was channeling Leonardi da Vinci!

(I'm an E6B/"whiz-wheel" guy too - yes there are a million electronic flight calculators out there now but mine works day or night, with or without batteries, even if dropped in a puddle).

Using one is pretty easy. The hard part is interpolating between the lines.

Let me google that for you

I know how to use Google, but thanks for playing anyway.

When I began my Computer Science degree back in the late 70s, the second "weeder" course was 370 Assembler (IBM mainframe at RTP, NC) and the professor was "Wayne smart"...usually only 1 or 2 people passed...the rest changed majors :). I was a microcode developer (M6800) and communications systems programmer for years before I ever saw a PC. The good 'ole daze...

I remember when you could get a big fat chip with FOUR NAND gates on it! Thems were the days.

BTW - I think Wayne means html (world wide web) as the internet started a looong time before 1993.

I also traded in one of those for an hp35, but I think that one is made of Al. Otherwise it must be bamboo (higher quality).

So... it was really the days of "Bamboo Ships and Aluminum Men"

And why ANYONE would EVER need more than 64K of memory is beyond me :)

Great thread! Brings me back to the early days of {)(*__)()*(*@(*&#(*&#(((*&*&(*&(*&(*&(*&*&( ( (*&(* NO CARRIER

I was looking at a Trash-80 one time and the sales kid told me that exact thing - or maybe it was 16k, I forget.

Back in the day I was upgrading my old AST 286 and bought 4mb of ram for something like $400 I think this is even it? Just could not ever toss it out!

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...1/3dd5fd51.jpg

Yeah Craig, you never know when you might need some more memory!

So Wayne, while you're looking back down memory lane would you share with us some of what you think are key moments/decisions/factors that went into making Pelican Parts a successful business?

Speaking of early days on the internet, I worked at the USGS in 1984 and transferred data from a satelite, to Reston VA, then to Menlo Park, through the arpanet. I didn't know at the time how cool that was.

I don't recall exactly what year but thinking it was around 1985 when I started to use the PCNA Porsche network. Funny now to think, others avoided it and would call a zone manager or another dealer for whatever info they needed. Scott

My Dad was data processing manager in the 1960's at a company called Unitcast in Toledo.

They upgraded RAM from 2MB to 5MB in their mainframe and he had to prepare an economic proposal because of the cost.