Wayne's history in the early days of the Internet...

[yetibone]

I use an abacus.

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

[Wilhelm]

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



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 !

[Flieger]

What size batteries does one of those take?

[Wilhelm]

Originally Posted by Flieger

What size batteries does one of those take?

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

[slodave]

Originally Posted by Wilhelm

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



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 !

I use a round slide rule today.



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

[Porsche-O-Phile]

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).

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by slodave

I use a round slide rule today.



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

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

Let me google that for you

[slodave]

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

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts

Indeed, I programed by hand in 6502 machine code, using hex codes punched into an editor...

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...

[RWebb]

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.

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by Wilhelm

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



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 !

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"

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by RWebb

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

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

[nocarrier]

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

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by KC911

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

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.

[cgarr]

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!

[jluetjen]

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

[KevinP73]

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?

[ckissick]

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.

[intakexhaust]

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

[Bob Kontak]

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.