just thinking...

[Azbear]

Wow, the times we live in............we can think of something, only in our minds, explain in great detail what we want, tell a computer to calculate it, then tell another machine to do just that what we want to create..... and WOW, it does! The end result is in a substance we now can reproduce at will, and there it is.

Wonder what it was like when we had to find a rock and plants crushed to draw what we thought of.............

Great times we live in.

I can remember when it took a great amount of time to tell a computer to calculate 2 + 2 = 4. Also a ton of punch cards to take to a college computer science dept, room filled up with a ton of electrical stuff in a bunch of great big metal boxes, and these reels of very fast moving film stuff.



Simply amazing.

(had a hard day it am just winding down and today this is a part of it. trying to just breathe deeply.)

I like the folks involved in this forum. A bit of the - side at times, but a lot of the + side.

Thank you,

Bear

[jcorder]

And I can remember the time when I would get up from the dinner table and my wife wouldn't say......I guess if I want you, you will be downstairs with that machine and talking on that forum!! AHHH..the good ole days!

[geekviking]

<Snicker> :-D

[Ike]

I remember bragging I have 16 megs of ram in Compaq pentium -1 ! Better yet I remember going to my friends house to play pong on the Atari! Then shooting tin cans with a rifle that used light to fling them in the air!

Then I remember getting our first 19" color TV and the only thing that was in color was the commercials and my family can't waiting to see the commercial!

Now I sit in my recliner using my laptop with dual processors and 1024 megs of ram on the internet via wireless, watching my 72" high definition TV !

Shoot Bear I remember it was cheating to use a calculator!

Ike

[want2b]

Ike:
What's even more scary is remembering my first laptop(big deal) and it had a 40 meg hard drive with 8 meg of ram(wow). Seemed like magic and it also had that new program called windows 3.1!! What's really scary is I still have multiple versions on 3.5 disks for DOS, a set for Windows 3.1 and a complete set of Win95 on disk along with an upgrade CD.(guess who's a packrat)
Rick H.

[Ike]

Win 95 was the best!!!

Ike

[jcorder]

Ok OK...how about a radio shack, coco color computer, saved the programs that I would spend a half hour to type, so it would make a few color bars change color on the screen, to a cassette recorder.

[geekviking]

Tandy TRS-80 or "Trash 80" as we used to call them! Had a Timex Sinclar as well, it was about 7 inch by 7 inch, talk about carpal tunnel syndrome! How about the Commodore 64, anyone have (had) one of those? Ahh, "Bard's Tale", my first RPG on a computer.
(Sorry, you guys let the Geek out! :) )

[LollyWood]

Man Bear,
Is there a mind meld in this sofeware or what? True story:

Cleaning up the office yesterday. Found a sliderule from HS Geometry. Wow..I remember it took me a whole year to learn just the most basic calculations w/ that thing. In walks my 8 year old. "cool ruler dad." :rolleyes: Son this isn't a ruler, this is what we had for doing math. So I tried to show him how to do very simple fractions calculations. He smiled, left the room. Came back and handed me his calculus calculator. "here dad, this is what we use in modern times." If it wasn't mine I would have killed it.

[oldfogey]

My first business computer was an Ohio Scientific 47k with 2 big floppy drives. No software available so all my business programs, even accounting, were built by me in Basic. Anybody remember the Adam? Loved that little minitape computer. Sold at Krogers for about $200.

My earlliest computer experience was programing artillery computer by punching the proper holes in paper tape which was then fed into the machine.

Computers have gone the way of the light switch. You turn them on or off and they do all the rest.

[Pratyeka]

I used to do my homework with a stone abacus:D

[jcorder]

Man Bear,
Is there a mind meld in this sofeware or what? True story:

Cleaning up the office yesterday. Found a sliderule from HS Geometry. Wow..I remember it took me a whole year to learn just the most basic calculations w/ that thing. In walks my 8 year old. "cool ruler dad." :rolleyes: Son this isn't a ruler, this is what we had for doing math. So I tried to show him how to do very simple fractions calculations. He smiled, left the room. Came back and handed me his calculus calculator. "here dad, this is what we use in modern times." If it wasn't mine I would have killed it.

LOL ya just gotta hate it when they do that, get that smirk on their face and saunter out the door!

[ChrisAlb]

Tandy TRS-80 or "Trash 80" as we used to call them! Had a Timex Sinclar as well, it was about 7 inch by 7 inch, talk about carpal tunnel syndrome! How about the Commodore 64, anyone have (had) one of those? Ahh, "Bard's Tale", my first RPG on a computer.
(Sorry, you guys let the Geek out! :) )

Ah yes! I remember the commodore 64 well. It was my first experience with computers. I think I was about 13 or so at the the time.

Learning how to "peek" and "poke" Sprits on the screen to produce images in basic. At the end of my first year with it I had made a little tank game with walls to navigate around and hide behind. The tanks could shoot little "square" balls that would die when they hit something. THEN, hehe, I learned how to make them bounce off the barriers until they hit the other tank....LOL...what FUN!

[tackytim]

Anyone use one of those? I'm a child of the 80's and that's what we had. It had a whopping 16k (K not megs) of ram. But with the optional RS-232 interface you could expand to 32K!!!!

You could only use it for about 30 - 40 minutes because it would overheat and freeze on you. So i used my capsula set and built a cooling fan to blow into the vent holes to extend my time.

I also remember my father and a friend of his wrote a program in basic and had to go back through and delete periods and spaces, etc because they went over the 16k limit of the machine.....

I do still miss the games that we had with it.

[TerryT]

The TRS80 color computer spawned a business venture for me. Sold software (on audio tape) and memory upgrades I made myself. Soldered sockets piggyback to double the memory. Built a "Lie detector" project with software that was printed in a magazine. That was cool. Then a couple of hippies started taking everything over. I think one was named jobs or something like that. Wazniack was the other one.

[jpeter14]

I had a TI-99/4A.. Also had the Peripheral Expansion Box or "PEB", speech synthesis, 2 5¼" floppy disk drive, expansion cards, and cartridge, think I had a cartridge I could store a program on. I got the manuals on programing and wrote several programs, one was a NFL handicapping program, it compared the win/lose for each team for 16 years,( took a long time to put data in), worked better than the "dart" system.
If I remember right I think I could even go online, very slow, big phone bill, tried only a couple of times.
My company was giving them as a promotion and we had $50.00 coupons, think we got the for $99.00 minus $50. $49.00 computer ( all extras were not included)!!
Had a dot matrix printer and a a color monitor.
I had the names and mailing address for all of the customers for I small company I worked for in the early 80s. Used it to mail out flyers etc.
For it's time it was a great computer, I think if Texas Instruments had let other companies have its operating system so they could write programs for it they would big the biggie in the PC business today.
I replaced it with a Mac and have had Macs since, using imac, have 24" 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, cool!
Google TI-99 for cool info on it.

[Amonaug]

Ah, 16K of memory. When you had to know how to program to save every bit so you could to get the most out of the memory. Now programs are so bloated with no memory optimization they need gigabytes of RAM just to run!

[STEAM]

I have had a hand in the computer/electronics industries since the late 70's. I always knew there would be a way to record video and audio into a solid state device. I never thought it would happen in my lifetime. Now I own an Ipod Touch which does just that with no moving parts. MY,my my! And there is still so much more to come.

[jspringertx]

I remember when the first electronic calculators came on the market. 8 digits, the size of a basketball, and a cost of $800.00. Some of the people refused to use them and stayed with the old Monroe calcuators that made a bunch of noise and jumped all over your desk.

Of course there were the people that knew how to use the Comptometer and could calculate faster than the electronic calcuators at that time. I have one, never could figure it out and still am facinated with my CompuCarve and all it can do.

[wasacop75]

It is really bad when i can run a slide rule at times faster than some of my guys can run a calculator.

Tandy 1000. can remember building my first computer with a 14.4 modem and then the next week the 28.8's came out...

oh the good old days...

[Ike]

LOl what a bunch of geeks!! Just funning you! My first computer was in the 86 I think, maybe it was 16 K? Was there such a thing as 16 mb then? I also remember in HS playing the radio shack hand held football game it used slashes to play and same with the baseball!

Matter of fact I have those games today!

Ike

[mifflinlake]

One of my first jobs was at the local newspaper. I would go in and wind the ticker tape into the individual stories. When stories were selected I would pull the correct roll out and run it through the machine to set the type. At one time the machine made lead slugs which you would assemble into the pages. It changed during the seventies to run them onto photogrphic paper and you could then just cut them up and paste them together using wax backing. With today's technology it goes directly from a computer straight to a printing plate. My grandmother was a school teacher and in the early seventies my father came home with a calculator. I thought my grandmother would have a stroke just the thought of kids using those new fangled things, they would never learn the proper way. The calculator was pretty large in size and it could only do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Thinks of the things I can do today just with my phone that is small enough to fit into my pocket.

[geekviking]

is AWESOME! :cool:

[whr1900]

wow didn't think I was as old as some of you geezers out there but when you are talking about the 99 4A that was my first computer also, The first game that i got was parzac, I uased to take programs for others like the TRS 80 and convert them to work on the TI. Doesn't sound like much now compared to what kids are doing with computers today but back then at 16 it was doing something.
William

[wasacop75]

Why you young whipper snappers... all this talk of them new computer type things...

and it was Bill Gates who said no one will ever need more than 64K RAM....:confused:

[Ike]

wow didn't think I was as old as some of you geezers out there but when you are talking about the 99 4A that was my first computer also, The first game that i got was parzac, I uased to take programs for others like the TRS 80 and convert them to work on the TI. Doesn't sound like much now compared to what kids are doing with computers today but back then at 16 it was doing something.
William

hey I resemble that remark!! I am 45 and I didn't get my first computer until I was ....30! Wow I thought it was earlier then that, but it was around 1993! All you rich kids in the 80tys! I couldn't afford one until 93!

Ike

[jcorder]

hey I resemble that remark!! I am 45 and I didn't get my first computer until I was ....30! Wow I thought it was earlier then that, but it was around 1993! All you rich kids in the 80tys! I couldn't afford one until 93!

Ike

I remember when I was 45 LOL

[Ike]

I remember when I was 45 LOL

Hmmm you write so young! Checked out your web site very nice!

Ike

[jcorder]

Hmmm you write so young! Checked out your web site very nice!

Ike

Young at heart LOL that only thing that feels young! Thanks for looking and the compliment.

[wasacop75]

I can remember 45... no.. i cant..

must be the drugs.. or is it the wine?? or is it the whine??

either way..

[SeaCapt97]

I've never felt older than the day I saw the actual rail coach cars I washed as a kid, in a railroad museum in Union IL. Yikes! Though at the tender age of 54 I can't imagine how amazing the CarveWright is to some of you guys that remember carving your projects with stone axes. :)

[Digitalwoodshop]

My first Computer (1977) was part of the MK 68 Gun Fire Control System, a analog computer called the MK 47.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_37_Gun_Fire_Control_System

Gears, Servos, Ball Integrators and a big gun printer... Well it printed on a large scale.... to the tune of about 12 miles.... Vacuum Tubes in the amplifiers, later Transistors, then in the 80's I worked on the Digital Upgrade version that I ended up teaching at Great Lakes.

AL

[cnsranch]

Man, you were good lookin', Al...

What happened?

[Digitalwoodshop]

Not Really, It was all UGLY after that..... Snicker....

AL

For some reason my web page is giving me a "0" on the main site page. In Maintenance mode I can see it.... Re published it, hopefully that takes care of it.

[MikeMcCoy]

Al
That looks like the old UNIVAC we had in the early 70's to conduct automated carrier aircraft landings. At least that was the stated purpose since none of the pilots were silly enough to let us fly their aircraft for them. :) That thing took up an entire equipment room. The original name of the system was All Weather Carrier Landing System but since it only worked in clear weather, they changed the All Weather to Automatic. :)

[cnsranch]

Al -

Website's looking pretty good!

Those hitch covers are awesome!!

I know a few guys that would love a carvaholic cover - my buggy included!!

[rfoster]

Hi, I started working for Northwestern Bell Telephone Company in 1962 (read as Mother Bell, or AT&T) as a computer operator on IBM 1401 computers on the night shift, this involved feeding cards through a reader and running update programs that would take up to 24 hours to finish. At the end of my Bell job life, I was running the long distance up-date programs at the Honeywell office in South Minneapolis using their new optical computer. I left the computer field for many years and worked in the cable tv industry. The ideas of Orwell's "1984" really goes against my beliefs. I am now retired and enjoying using my CarveWright.

[wasacop75]

:confused:
Now i see where some of these post come from, its all that sea water between the ears. But if it wasnt for those of us there wouldn't be a US.

[Digitalwoodshop]

Just found the problem viewing my site is a AOL Proxy Server problem and anyone not using AOL can see it just fine. They are working on it.

On my site I have more computer pictures.

In the early 80's I went to Great Lakes and to school on the Digital Upgrade Version of the old Analog system. They basically wrote a program to emulate what the gears did. Added a Reel to Reel Magnetic Tape Drive to load the program and record gun shoots. The replaced the spinning gyro that stabilized the gun director I am seen sitting in as the ship rolled to aid in tracking a target with a Digital Ring Laser Gyro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_laser_gyroscope

I was so excited when I found this Australian web page as this was the model of Ring Laser Gyro our system used. 3 of them on different axises along with matching accelerometers. http://edu.nightlase.com.au/lasergyro

It was SO accurate..... Now they have SMALLER Fiber Optic Versions.

In school when I was teaching the Ring Laser Theory to the Sailors I used a Pool Table Triangle rack. I would hold it up to the class and tell them this is what a ring laser is doing.

A laser beam is shot out of the bottom of the triangle in each direction and hitting a mirror bouncing the beam up to the pointy end of the triangle and hitting another mirror at the point as both beams cross going in different directions. They meet at the receiver at the bottom. If no motion was experienced then the beams reach each receiver at the same time or as we called it they arrived in "Phase".

Now the second time I did it for the class in slow motion after the beam was fired I would JUMP to the left about a foot. Now one beam would hit the mirror to the left earlier than the beam on the right as the beam on the right just found that the mirror is a foot further away since I jumped left. The beams would arrive at the receiver first the left one then the right one or OUT OF PHASE. Coupled with the Accelerometers it was a very accurate motion measuring system.

In fact it measured the rotation of the earth after being turned on and in seconds would display the Latitude on EARTH where you were located.

Pretty COOL stuff from 1983...... The pictures from the Australian site were the ones we used.

So now to ACLS or Aircraft Landing Systems or the Aircraft Carrier Meat Ball.... Remember Top Gun, Call the Ball.... A light lens gyro stabilized to point up the glide scope of the Carrier. If the pilot was good he saw a Green light, High a yellow light and low he saw a RED light or Meat Ball. In the 80's the Analog Gyros on the Carriers were replaced with the Ring Laser Gyro and our repair manuals had the ACLS info in the as they got the same school as we did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FS_CdG_Optics.jpg

I bet that automatic Landing System was a Univac system... The Early Fire Control Computers were made by FORD..... FORD Instrument Company.

Small World....

As I watch it snow tonight.... I remember my days on the high seas as a young Sailor..... I missed my chance.... When I retired from the Navy in 95 I went to Sony.... I should have gone to the Australian Navy as I had been to the same schools that they used for Fire Control Equipment.... Could have been a Australian Ship MATE........

AL

Yes, Salt Water between the ears.....

I am working on an illuminated Trailer Hitch version using strips of white LED's. The hitches are available with the standard 1156 12 volt bulb or with LED's... But the LED version is RED LED's so my White Lettering comes out PINK.... No respecting Firemen would want a PINK Trailer Hitch Cover..... Even the EMS versions would be Pink and Blue....
The White LED's will fix that problem. I am using the Harbor Freight Hitch Covers for blanks.


Since I have bounced this topic all over the place..... Speaking of AT&T...... I am located about 15 miles from ground ZERO of a Cold War Target, the AT&T Long Lines Earth Station. http://long-lines.net/places-routes/Hawley_PA/index.html Back in the 70's there was a Earth Station here, in Illinois and California. The 3 main stations linked long distance Telephone through the USA. I toured the place in 77 after finishing my first NAVY Radar School and knew I wanted to work there someday. AT&T Broke up in the 80's and Loral bought it. http://investor.loral.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=189764 They had expansion plans in the past few years but it never happened and I could never get a job there.... Bummer.....

The latest is that is has sold to a company from ISREAL..... Not owned by a US company anymore..... Progress....

[DocWheeler]

Al,

That is a good lookin' web site, and a very nice bunch of "toys"!
And, I might add that the products look to be first-class as well!

I might add that I lived that close to a target for years also, the "Voice of America" (now closed).