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Re: [OT] First computer (was Re: LVM)



On 06/18/2010 11:05 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
High school, Junior & Senior year (1969-71) - DG Nova, single user
configuration, had to toggle in a bootstrap loader, then read in a
2nd-stage off paper tape, final stage read in off of a hard drive (as I
remember, but hard drives were pretty rare in those days, so I could be
wrong).

1st year programming course at MIT: IBM 360 (punch cards), 360 TSO (time
sharing), Multics (time sharing). Also played a lot with the AI Lab's
PDP-10 (anybody remember ITS? :-)

Right after that, started hacking on MIT's PDP-1 (of Tech Model Railroad
Club and Spacewar fame, but at that point free-standing). The really
neat thing about the machine was that hackers were allowed, even
encouraged, to make HARDWARE changes (e.g., wire-wrapping new
instruction codes into the thing). Lots of fun.


That sure plays hell on binary compatibility...

Somewhere in there, set up a couple of TRS-80s to handle the books for
my dad's business.

Miles Fidelman



--
Seek truth from facts.


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