Computers, the Bane of mankind, the evils of Microsoft

[swampdaddy41]

Well, when I first started in computers no one had heard of monitors yet, you got your out put via IBM Electric Typewriters, or large bulky IBM drum printers. The unit I started on was the IBM 610, a bulky and primitive machine. it had a large box like a refrigerator turned on it side which contained a paper tape reader and paper tape punch, magnetic memory drum, and other circuit boards. A small desk had an IBM electric typewriter (for entering the program code) and a console with a lot of "sense" switches to tell the machine how to operate. We had an oscilloscope (about 3.5" in diameter) which you could by straining your eyeballs read what was in a memory location. It had 84 memory locations of 31 digits each (quite a high precision). In the morning you had to turn it on and wait 20 minutes for the memory drum to spin up to speed and stabilize so you could use it. You typed your program in via the typewriter and punched on the oily paper tape which would then advance to the read head. Then you backed up the paper tape until it was at the read head, flipped a switch on the console to run and checked out your results. If your program was working correctly you once again backed up the tape to be ready for the read head and threw another switch which would have the punch head duplicate what the read head was doing -- you normally had to do this to make a second run of the program without manually having to type in the instructions again or to keep backing up the tape. This would let the machine run "automatically" until you got the needed results. Particularly handy when using iteration type programs -- in the main one I did tracking rockets down range and predicting where they would be at certain times. All program operations would put the answer in an "accumulator" location in memory; and, you then had to save the accumulator memory to somewhere else as the next operation would wipe it out. You were constantly shiftitng things around to save them or printing them out on the typewriter (which would handle 17" wide green and white computer type output paper via tractor feed via the holes punched on either side of the paper). Rental of this high powered machine was around 1,150 a month or 55 thousand for outright purchase.

More another time, have fun modeling, Swamp Daddy

 

[Gandolf50]

Well, when I first started in computers no one had heard of monitors yet, you got your out put via IBM Electric Typewriters, or large bulky IBM drum printers. The unit I started on was the IBM 610, a bulky and primitive machine. it had a large box like a refrigerator turned on it side which contained a paper tape reader and paper tape punch, magnetic memory drum, and other circuit boards. A small desk had an IBM electric typewriter (for entering the program code) and a console with a lot of "sense" switches to tell the machine how to operate. We had an oscilloscope (about 3.5" in diameter) which you could by straining your eyeballs read what was in a memory location. It had 84 memory locations of 31 digits each (quite a high precision). In the morning you had to turn it on and wait 20 minutes for the memory drum to spin up to speed and stabilize so you could use it. You typed your program in via the typewriter and punched on the oily paper tape which would then advance to the read head. Then you backed up the paper tape until it was at the read head, flipped a switch on the console to run and checked out your results. If your program was working correctly you once again backed up the tape to be ready for the read head and threw another switch which would have the punch head duplicate what the read head was doing -- you normally had to do this to make a second run of the program without manually having to type in the instructions again or to keep backing up the tape. This would let the machine run "automatically" until you got the needed results. Particularly handy when using iteration type programs -- in the main one I did tracking rockets down range and predicting where they would be at certain times. All program operations would put the answer in an "accumulator" location in memory; and, you then had to save the accumulator memory to somewhere else as the next operation would wipe it out. You were constantly shiftitng things around to save them or printing them out on the typewriter (which would handle 17" wide green and white computer type output paper via tractor feed via the holes punched on either side of the paper). Rental of this high powered machine was around 1,150 a month or 55 thousand for outright purchase.
View attachment 168692
More another time, have fun modeling, Swamp Daddy

Ok OK, you definitely win with that one... you get the internet for the day!

 

[t.l.williamsjr]

Way back when in spring 1965, I took my first class in programming. We use one of 3 IBM-1620's on campus at University of Missouri. Actually we had access to two of the computers, one in the geology department which had hard disk pak (I think that it was a 5Mb pak) and one in the engineering building which had 10 o 20 tapedrives. both only had something like 16 kB of core memory and used punched card for loading programs. We were supposed to learn BML (Basic Machine Language) which was pure octal code, no alphanumeric characters or assembler. The last two weeks of the semester we got introduced to Fortran. I still remember the the initial octal code of an add instruction was 41 base 8. Things have really changed since those days.

 

[swampdaddy41]

Thanks Gandolf50 that made me laugh; but, mainly it just made me feel old which is what I am. Installment two of the early days: Being low man on the totem pole I was transferred out of EDP (Electronic Data Processing) unit to another building to become the night shift operator of the mainframe IBM 7090 computer there. So, I sat around looked at blinking lights and mostly fed others programs via punched cards to the machine and collected the printer comments and the output tape to be returned to the programmer. The IBM 7090 was a transistor machine that replaced an IBM 709 mainframe which was a tube computer. The computer room had enough air conditioning for 20 or 30 houses in that building to cool all those tubes. Freezing air came out of floor vents everywhere and they had yet to tame the air down for the transistor machine. It had 20k bits of memory and had about 20 of those huge tape drives which were in constant motion as backup for temporary memory or output. It was freezing in there. Fortran was all that was used as it was basically the only high level language out there at that time though the machine would handle FAP (Fortran Assembly (language) Programs too). In the movie Dr. Strangelove (first 10 minutes or so) you can see a similar, huge computer room with a 709 or 7090 in it. This room was as big as a normal midsize house. I spent 6 months there freezing while wearing my winter coat. I was glad to get transferred back out at the end of my stint.

have fun modeling, Swamp Daddy

 

[swampdaddy41]

Installment three of the early days: After leaving the 7090 mainframe building I went back to the EDP unit and found the IBM 610 had been replaced by the ever so much better IBM 1620 (as mentioned by T.L.williamsjr in his post). The 1620 was an oddball machine (and maybe a one of a kind type) in that it was a decimal computer rather than a binary one. Nice machine and we used a 3-address language called TASSIT which was easy to program and quite flexible. The company had purchased the optional arithmetic unit which did addition, subtraction, multiplication and division via hard ware circuit boards rather than by software in the program itself. This saved a lot of internal memory too and several of us added error code printouts to the operating system in that saved space. Leaving the company to return to school in ’64, I found they had a 1620 in the engineering department and had the hard disk pack too and Fortran was the language in use. I sure was ahead of the others having already been a programmer for a couple of years and got A’s in those courses. . Note, the 1620 has no monitor but the ever present IBM electric typewriter as input/output.

Have fun modeling, Swamp Daddy

 

[swampdaddy41]

Fourth, and last, installment of the early days: Years, and jobs, later I was out of the computer field but got my first PC, and IBM Aptiva that looked something like the photo attached. It worked OK but was limited by a very small, 3.4 Gb hard drive. You had to erase most of the silly games installed by the IBM disk with Win95 on it in order to install any productive software of your own. But it would connect to the internet and had a 15” monitor. I was in 7th heaven with this one.

I next started buying cases and components and building my own machines as you can get exactly what you want this way and have room to add components and storage at will. You can keep up with developments faster this way and do it for about ½ the price of similar commercial units.
Have fun modeling, Swamp Daddy

 

[zathros]

I've never purchased a computer, I prefer to buy the parts and put them together myself. i can pick and choose the best components that way, and up grading is easy with a machine you built. I still have that 8 core water cooled machine calling out for me to build, but those Tornadoes have taken the light out of me.

 

[zathros]

This data recovery stuff is extremely tedious, but I am finding a sh*tload of stuff. Getting there. I purchased a 4 Terabyte Home cloud and a Blue Ray player that has M-Disc capability, to store my treasures. This pic of my Mom when she was 17, holding my oldest brother, is one of those treasures. She just turned 90.

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

I wish you the best of luck with your recovery process. That is a very beautiful picture of your mum. I am happy for you that you were able to recover it.

 

[Revell-Fan]

INDEED!

 

[Jadriancz]

Sorry to hear this.
This is exactly why I keep my OS on it's own SSD and all my programs and apps on seperate HDD's.

 

[zathros]

I did too, it was the way Micro$oft does the hard drive renaming, they do q quick format, they offer not opt out, (SATA) and it happens so fast, it blinks on the screen, and your hard drive has lost it's directory. Google it, you will see how many people

were caught unaware. Misery loves company!! I have a 4 Terabyte cloud now, that cannot by formatted because of the way it connects (USB3) unless I give that command, and it is password protected. These were 2, 2 Terabyte Hard drives, for backup. I got screwed by becoming complacent. :Computer:

 

[Gandolf50]

Yep! I think that be exactly what happened to my 4tb back up drive Saturday...one minute I was saving a back-up and the next the drive is gone..never saw nuten!! Drive can't even be recognized.. though USB3 knows it is there... just lost about the last year of work! Drive is on the way to a recovery site as I type.. since it is only the directory gone recovery should be close to 100% but I exhausted resources to do it myself. Should know the prognoses by the 4th or 5th! The walls in my hose turned blue for several hours after this happened, and didn't see the cats for hours!

 

[zathros]

Rather frustrating, especially for those of us who have been working with for computers for many decades. We were undermined, on purpose, I believe. I have since purchased a Blu Ray drive with "M" drive technology and will be backing up my disc to this predicted to last 300 to 500 year discs. The discs (the big ones can hold up to 128 Gig's of whatever, it is more economic to by multiple smaller ones though. I am sure the price will be coming down on the "M" discs themselves. This is hard core storage. I have multiple hard drives with much of this data, but I have to get (I have 3 but can't find them) an PCI IDE board so I can mount these drives. I am tempted to get an external case and make them USB drives, to transfer data, and keep Windows out of the loop as much as possible.

 

[Gandolf50]

I think it was your basic...drive went belly up... as the USB ports NEVER change labels... the heads just got out of alignment and can't find sector zero anymore. Had a truckload of 31/4 Air drives back in the early '80s do the same thing, as well as I, went through several of the first cd-rom drives in an external scsii case do the same giving up on that after the 3rd one...I finally found a reliable 31/4 and stuck it in its own case and just left 2 dead ones in their slots, disconnected! Listening to the drive, I can hear the heads going back and forth looking, so my money will be on them out of alignment, or rather on the recovery charge... which for a tad less than 200$ for at least a years worth of work...IS WORTH IT!!! Seagate wanted 50 just to look at it ( its a Seagate) then the minimum charge was close to 700$$$ OUCH... I ain't going there!! 200 +100 for a 4TB air drive ... 1/2 the price... but don't know if I'll go with Seagate as they are mostly scsii drives and switch to Western... need to check the specs... I have two old ( over ten years old) Maxtor 500mb run just like the first day They are just too small for today's workload...

 

[zathros]

Maxtor made a good drive. I've had too many Western drives go bad, very frustrating. Better luck with Seagate. If you can hear a drive, it's days are numbered. IMHO

 

[Cybergrinder]

Very true Zathros. I've still got a 40GB (yes 40) Maxtor drive some where...

 

[swampdaddy41]

My experiences have been the opposite. I've had 6 or 7 Maxtors bite the dust over the years; and, when they lowered their warranty from 3 years to one year I switched to Western Digital and have 6 WD drives running now ranging from 600 Gb to 2 TB each. I have a WD 3 TB waiting for something to fail so I have a slot to put it in. I haven't used a floppy drive in years since I got this large case and I may take that drive out to install one more hard drive. Use an old Maxtor controller card to keep some old IDE components hooked up (CD-ROM burners, etc.). I have yet to have a WD drive fail but I suspect the 7 year old one is getting close. Best Buy and others quit carrying Maxtor years ago and now have WD and Seagate only around here.

Have fun modeling, Swamp Daddy

 

[zathros]

Right now, I have Western's and Seagate's. I cannot tell if either is better than the other, they have the same specs, and all are holding up fine. The 4 Terabyte Cloud I purchased is a USB3 Western. Fingers crossed!!