Who wants a BeagleBone Black and BaconCape?

I would simulate an old computer and build a front panel with switches and blinkenlights and bells and whistles ... Sorry but I am a pdp8 fan. I hope that doesn't disqualify me!

Mike Roach wrote:

 

Sorry but I am a pdp8 fan. I hope that doesn't disqualify me!

Given the number of old timers here, it probably qualifies you for an E14 OAP Community discount.

I so regret having thrown away my old PDP-11 keyswitches on which entering the bootstrap loader manually each morning became totally automatic.  I did at least hold onto various PDP-11 racks, which continue to provide sterling service in the computer room and are quite likely to outlast humanity.

Michael Conners wrote:

 

It was really great to have that experience. I wouldn't trade it for the world. Those of us that came up in that time got an experience I think alot of students are missing these days. They are so far removed from the CPU and allow the OS to dictate so much to them. I'm glad computer systems have evolved to where they are today, but knowing the nuts and bolts of something is a great treat.

I'm glad computer hardware has evolved to where it is now.  Now software, on the other hand...

John Beetem wrote:

 

I'm glad computer hardware has evolved to where it is now.  Now software, on the other hand...

... has devolved into less linguistic power than we had before (LISP was half a century ago, and most languages still haven't caught up), less security than we had before (running downloaded executables used to be only for the clueless, and now we have Javascript), and less availability than we had before (availability is a function of distance and points of failure, and now we have the "cloud" which multiplies them both N-fold).

Software today is not developed by engineers, even when they call themselves "software engineers".  It's developed by followers of "cool", and their god is a Bug and their altar a collapsing bridge.  These are truly sad days.

I used to lecture in Software Engineering.  I would be embarassed to do so now.  The so-called Software Crisis has never been deeper.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

John Beetem wrote:

 

I'm glad computer hardware has evolved to where it is now.  Now software, on the other hand...

...

 

The so-called Software Crisis has never been deeper.

Great comments, Morgaine.

Fortunately, there are still some processors and boards that do let you build your own software from the bare metal on up.  So for those who recognize the problem there is a path to do something about it.  They can expect lots of abuse, though.  Still, we can be encouraged by Margaret Mead's words:

Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

This thread has been an unexpected treat for me!  I love hearing about how it used to be back in the day before all the levels of abstraction got in the way (not that I don't like being able to browse the web wirelessly on my phone).  Maybe one day I'll convince the computer history museum to let into their storage to see the PDP-7 (my domain and handle on freenode and twitter).  At least they do have nice displays of PDP-8 and PDP-11 and a working PDP-1!

PDP-1 demo: https://plus.google.com/photos/117542001281850354871/albums/5876039181137247889

I really can't stay away from the place!

2010: https://plus.google.com/photos/117542001281850354871/albums/5476982068694660017

2012: https://plus.google.com/photos/117542001281850354871/albums/5745030180245599681

2013: https://plus.google.com/photos/117542001281850354871/albums/5876043512327434513

Luxury, when I was a lad I used to dream of having a teletype with tape punch and reader.....   oops sorry slipped into Monty Python mode.

My college experience was Fortran IV on a PDP8e but then I went on to work with many microprocessors in embedded systems using assembler and later C, it was the happiest time of my working career. Later on in life I ended up in senior management and bored. Now retired I have been tinkering with various devices dev boards, FPGAs, etc and loving every minute, maybe one day I will do something useful with them

Drew Fustini wrote:

 

At least they do have nice displays of PDP-8 and PDP-11 and a working PDP-1!

Oooh, that's a lovely little high-speed fan-fold paper tape reader!

In the class I mentioned above, you had to sign up for maybe an hour a day on a shared PDP-11, so you had to enter your programs off-line.  Most students used punched cards, but the punched card reader was quirky so I punched my program onto paper tape using an off-line ASR-38 teletype that nobody used.  You just turned on the paper tape punch and each character you typed was permanently punched into the tape.  If you made a mistake, there's no back-space per se.  Instead, you pushed a button to go back one character at a time and pressed DEL, which as you all know is all ones.  The paper tape reader would ignore DELs, so it was a way to take care of typos if you noticed them immediately.

Once I had the program on paper tape, I tranferred it to DECtape and edited it using the PDP-11.

An advantage to using the ASR-38 was that I had mixed case comments.  Everybody else WAS STILL WRITING ALL THEIR PROGRAMS IN ALL CAPS LIKE HERMAN HOLLERITH INTENDED so writing mixed case comments made me an outcast among nerds -- like Seymour Cray because he used a circular slide rule.  But then Unix arrived and the world went the other way -- to all lower case.  this was almost equally annoying.  why throw away half of your characters?  mumble mumble random nebbish hackers.

Drew Fustini wrote:

 

This thread has been an unexpected treat for me!  I love hearing about how it used to be back in the day before all the levels of abstraction got in the way (not that I don't like being able to browse the web wirelessly on my phone).  Maybe one day I'll convince the computer history museum to let into their storage to see the PDP-7 (my domain and handle on freenode and twitter).  At least they do have nice displays of PDP-8 and PDP-11 and a working PDP-1!

You may find this odd Drew, but I dislike reminiscing about the old days.  I like ever-better technology, ever-stronger engineering, and every more-capable systems which empower people more in their daily lives.  I love the very latest in technology.  The trouble is, not all modern-day systems are better than they were some decades ago.

Some systems, especially in the area of software, have evolved to be easier to apply and to increase productivity and decrease the cost of production, but without a care in the world for engineering quality.  And so, the software bridges of the world collapse, millions of times around the world every day, or possibly every hour.  And this continuous and universal failure is considered OK and normal.

Words really fail me.  This is not professional engineering.  This is irresponsible amateurism.

There's not much one can do about it though.  John's quote from Margaret Mead stirred the heart, but uphill battles against "cool" are hard, and life is short.  Sometimes the personal pain is just not worth the universal gain.

This sure has turned into old timers' night.

Great photo albums Drew. Enjoyed going through the photos. The history of computing is fascinating stuff.

Mike

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

You may find this odd Drew, but I dislike reminiscing about the old days.  I like ever-better technology, ever-stronger engineering, and every more-capable systems which empower people more in their daily lives.  I love the very latest in technology.  The trouble is, not all modern-day systems are better than they were some decades ago.

I like good engineering whether it's from Ancient Rome, Mesoamerica, Ancient Egypt, Gustav Eiffel, Antonio Gaudi, John Roebling, Jules Verne, Steve Wozniak, Monty Denneau, myself, or who/where/whenever.  As you point out, sometimes there are great ideas from a while back, and a good question when Aged P's start reminiscing is "was it really better, and more important why was it better?"  When answers come back like "things were as simple as possible because you couldn't afford to make them more complex than necessary" you get important rediscoveries like RISC.  When people say that in the old days you had complete documentation instead of NDAs, that gives an important clue about why engineering may have been a lot more fun and productive.

Also, old ideas have a way of coming back when technology changes.  Vacuum tubes (valves) begat bipolar transistors which encouraged gate-oriented logic, but when MOSFETs became practical the relay logic Shannon wrote about in his 1937 master's thesis suddenly became important again.  As Arnold Horshack said on Welcome Back, Kotter:  "What is, is.  What was, will be.  What will be was -- but will be again." (Horshack was quoting the leader of a cult he had joined).

There's a working pdp7 (one of five working world wide) at Living Computer Museum; @livingcomputers on Twitter; in Seattle. They were checking out a radiation detector that University of Oregon had interfaced to it decades ago & used up to 2005.

There's a working pdp7 (one of five working world wide) at Living Computer Museum; @livingcomputers on Twitter; in Seattle. They were checking out a radiation detector that University of Oregon had interfaced to it decades ago & used up to 2005.

Oh cool!  I'll have to check that out if I ever get to the northwest.