Chuckle in Your Day

[Stonekeeper]

I'm this old

 

[MikeTheThinker]

59 minutes ago, Gaz said:

Isn't it PETA who think it's better to euthanise than have cats and dogs as pets?

Yes, but if you euthanise all the owners who will feed the now abandoned pet dogs and cats?

[J.R.]

MSDos for me!

 

Sounds like a fast food resto!

[MikeTheThinker]

7 minutes ago, Stonekeeper said:

I'm this old

 

I'll see your Win 3.1 and raise you:

[Stonekeeper]

I'll see you for

 

😉

[MikeTheThinker]

See you and raise:

 

 

CP/M 8080.

[Stonekeeper]

Well you win on Computer but i do still have a calculator in my loft, not this exact model it only has one handle

 

Edited 23 March by Stonekeeper

[mac11irl]

alright, i get it, yer all old gits

 

but i too learned on dos, and 3.11, 95.. 

and basic on an amiga a500.

[MikeTheThinker]

1 minute ago, Stonekeeper said:

Well you win on Computer but i do still have a calculator in my loft

 

Not a creature I was ever able to master; think more 'abject failure'.  I remember in the early days of being involved with micros (HP85, TRS-80) in business and being shown by a prospective client the "snake pit" (where they kept the adders) a room full of several dozen all-female Comptometer operators, all banging away on the keys at astonishing speed.  I only saw faster key input when viewing the punch card operators at Liverpool Dock Board's installation - IBM360/158 - where they were doing punch and verify on 80 column cards.  I used to know their punch rate - memory is suggesting 14,000 key depressions per hour - but I can't be certain of that.

[skomaz]

Sinclair ZX 81 anyone else???

 

I remember when one first arrived in school.

 

When I started work we had three IBMs (think they were ATs) and a mainframe all of which you had to book in advance to use.

Edited 23 March by skomaz

[@Lee]

My first computer was an Atari 800. Learnt BASIC on it in the early 80s.

Best thing about it was that it also played cartridge games. 

I was hooked on Star Raiders 😄 

 

 

Next was an Apple Mackintosh in 92

 

 

 

[MikeTheThinker]

2 minutes ago, skomaz said:

Sinclair ZX 81 anyone else???

Never got into the ZX81 but my first computing device was one of these, which I built from a kit:

 

[@Lee]

3 minutes ago, skomaz said:

Sinclair ZX 81 anyone else???

Oops. I totally forgot about owning one of them. Terrible experience so maybe I erased it from my memory

 

[skomaz]

35 minutes ago, @Lee said:

Oops. I totally forgot about owning one of them. Terrible experience so maybe I erased it from my memory

 

 

Yep rubbish!

 

When I started working, I was fortunate to have a programmable graphing calculator I'd bought for college, so I was in demand as I could programme it to do loads of stuff the others were taking ages to do with an ordinary one.  It still works and I still use it.  It's an FX-7000G.

 

The first proper computer I owned was a Sharp MZ-80K.  It had a black and white screen so I stuck some green film on it to make it look better and like a coloured one.

 

 

Edited 23 March by skomaz

[Gaz]

51 minutes ago, mac11irl said:

alright, i get it, yer all old gits

 

I started when my School got its first computer, which was in 1979 and it was in a small office at the back of the ROSLA Physics lab.  We were typing syntax in laboriously and onto memory stored on C90 cassettes.

 

Yer young whippersnapper 😛

 

Old Gaz 🙄

[skomaz]

30 minutes ago, Gaz said:

 

I started when my School got its first computer, which was in 1979 and it was in a small office at the back of the ROSLA Physics lab.  We were typing syntax in laboriously and onto memory stored on C90 cassettes.

 

Yer young whippersnapper 😛

 

Old Gaz 🙄

 

The first one I encountered was at school...   It was a dumb printer terminal with a dial up link to the local university mainframe and a paper tape puncher / reader.  I guess it was a telex type thing.

 

Trying to do anything on it was a waste of time but we did have fun with the paper tape and the holes it punched out.

Edited 23 March by skomaz

[MikeTheThinker]

19 minutes ago, skomaz said:

 

The first one I encountered was at school...   It was a dumb printer terminal with a dial up link to the local university mainframe and a paper tape puncher / reader.  Trying to do anything on it was a waste of time but we did have fun with the paper tape and the holes it punched out.

TeleType 43 perchance?

 

 

Edited 23 March by MikeTheThinker

[skomaz]

2 minutes ago, MikeTheThinker said:

TeleType 43 perchance?

 

 

If it wasn't it was very very similar.  On a stand with the paper tape thing one side and the modem bit the other from memory.

[MikeTheThinker]

10 minutes ago, skomaz said:

 

If it wasn't it was very very similar.  On a stand with the paper tape thing one side and the modem bit the other from memory.

If it was _old_ it would have likely been a TeleType 33:

 

[@Lee]

 

 

[J.R.]

2 hours ago, MikeTheThinker said:

I remember in the early days of being involved with micros (HP85, TRS-80) in business and being shown by a prospective client the "snake pit" (where they kept the adders) a room full of several dozen all-female Comptometer operators, all banging away on the keys at astonishing speed.

 

My sister was a Comptometer operator for B-Cal, a room full of them all massively underworked and all working a scam under the instruction of the female boss, the illusion was that they were worked off their feet and everyone took the machines home to (not) do several hours overtime a day, they kept recruiting because they were "so short staffed" that they ended up with more operators than machines so worked a rota where they all took at least one day a week off.

 

Whenever senior management questioned someone absence they would be told they had "womens problems" which was always the end of the matter 🤣

 

Your comment about all banging away at astonishing speed made me recall when she told me all about it many years later, they would take it in turns to randomly hammer away at the keys, always in pairs, whenever the door opened the others would stop chatting/bitching and all join in.

 

The work they actually did, what little of it there was was fuel loading calculations, currency conversions, payroll calculations etc.

 

They were all eventually made redundant by desk and pocket calculators and computers, ironic that she bought me my Casio Scientific calculator for college which was a weeks wages for me, the scam they were running was never found out but the computers that took over must have had a really easy task!

Edited 23 March by J.R.

[Paws4Thot]

An acoustic coupler and a teletype to a minicomputer in a teacher training college.

[mac11irl]

my dad was a financial controller for an internaional company who produce products related to J.R.'s sister's colleagues absentee excuse.. many many yrs ago. he managed to the factory a budget for an IBM pc, which arrived and a tech was sent from the states to programme it for the factory. he arrived with 3 suitcases of punchcards... and no where to put them

 

[@Lee]

😳🤦 

Surprised it didn't have 'Welding's' for a full house.

 

[Lady Elanore]