Every so often my fingers will type "config.sys" or "Autoconfig.bat."

There was a big slide rule like that hanging in the front of my high school algebra classroom. Calculators were coming out by then, so we never used it. I have a few regular slide rules that I picked up at estate sales. I don't claim to be proficient with a slide rule, but I can do some basic functions.

I used to be quite into the Weird Al- I lost track of him around Polka Party.

But I still have my autographed Dare To Be Stupid jersey:

AlFront by Dave The Golden Boy, on Flickr

There's an abacus app for the iPhone. good training - I plan to be an accountant post-apocalypse.

SGI Indigo's were the hot graphics box in the animation world. I also loved their keyboards.

Gladly, i never opened that can of worms, but anyone who wanted to dig around in my basement for an elongated period (good luck! and bring old clothing) may find a very brownish, but operational C64 plus Floppy, power supply and a box of pirated games on floppies. Other than that, i have a dual-CPU Pentium board with on-board SCSI interface that served in my desktop some 20 years ago, it is too beautifully ridiculous oddball to throw away.

I do still have and honour the HP 28S who passed the intermediate math diploma for me, though.

I think I went the other direction... started with Pascal as an introductory computer language, then had to take a 1 credit Fortran class (with 3 hours worth of homework) so we could see how clunky a higher order language could be, and many years later, spent a handful of years doing assembler on the 6811 microcontroller in engine control modules (the electronics that makes internal combustion engines work without generating lots of pollution).
For stuff where the processor has to read inputs from the world and respond quickly, assembler isn't too bad. I imagine C is preferred now, although that can be made to be nearly as cryptic.

Steve in Peoria

The first computer I worked with was in 1979. It was an IBM 370. I wrote Fortran code, punched my own cards, and left the deck in a mail slot. The operator ran my job and gave me back the output.



One of the earlier PC's I worked with was an Otrona Attache. It had a five inch monitor, ran CP/M, and had two 5.25 floppy disks.



I still have a complete desktop publishing system from 1989. Everything still works.

way OT but I was a WRPI DJ over the summer of 1972 or 73. Can't remember which right now. Small world.

"Sometimes the light's all shinning on me, other times I can barely see. Lately, it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it's been."

The received wisdom these days is that for anything that isn't trivial you can't hand code assembly that's faster than what a good compiler will produce. I used to think that was because compiler developers were super geniuses. Then I became a compiler developer and I found out that it's really because compiler developers can spend insane amounts of time optimizing specific patterns. If most developers spent all day trying to eliminate a single instruction from a single function they be told to stop wasting time, but if I do it in the compiler and it makes 500 programs just a little bit faster it's a good bargain.

I like C because you can read it and (usually) know exactly what is going to happen at the processor level. C++ is just as efficient these days and lets you create your own abstractions to write code that says what it means instead of saying what it does. There's a certain beauty to that too.

Have I mentioned that I'm a huge nerd?

Love the trackball! Palo Alto approved! I used to have one just like that and liked it so much better than a mouse. Then computers stopped having serial ports.

and there is a pointer laughing at you somewhere.

me I am still a nerd but non practicing I am on the darkside......head of change and release......no you can't put that failed code into production, yes you have to docment that you are upgrading the network and bringing the whole company down for a weekend

Well, if you played Europe '72, I recorded it off the air :-)
My coding buddy was Jim Nagy whose nom d'air was Freddy Garbo. I got my Class II license in 76-77 and had a Sunday show. My best friend was chief engineer back then.

Oh they're still out there and even better. Wireless of course. I've got Carpal tunnel and it helps a lot.

A bunch of Dell Optiplexes I picked out of a dumpster behind a hospital pre-HIPPA, they had all the info and operating systems on them. eventually I got about 45 of them.

A pair of Tandy 2000's that I still have somewhere.

My old Compaq Portable III, it spend the last 25 years in the attic.
Last night took it down, it is still working, although the keyboard cable is rotting.

That's awesome!

I mean, not awesome that your cable is rotting, but awesome that it still works!!!

My 1st computer 1970s. RCA 1802 VIP. Enter programs in hex and store to a cassette. Hand wired a 2K static memory board. Built a ccd light pen and wrote a program to play tic-tac-toe by pointing to TV.
Next computer was S100 bus with 8inch floppy and CP/M OS. Wrote real business programs on this. Created a database for big truck camper top dealer to manage inventory. Turned a GMC truck dealers huge parts cross reference files into a easy database. Moved an insurance company from typing policies on type writer to computers.

I used to work for Kensington, if anybody wants a "custom trackball-ball" (I think I have at least a couple that mimic billiard 8-balls) hit me up. But be prepared to wait a bit as I'll have to dig for them.

AND if any early-ish Mac fans need a Mac Powerbook 180 (all gray WITH a built-in mini trackball!) to add to their collection...sort of almost works...hit me up, too. The custom ball will be "Free for shipping" and the Powerbook 180 "rock bottom pricing".

"We be DEALin'"

I used these at work around 1990, along with IBM PS/2-P70 portables running OS/2 and Comm Manager. Liked the Compaq better.

I remember, as a kid, going to see my uncle at UC Berkeley and being shown the computer room. They were pretty excited to show me that you could play tic tac toe, lol. My first was a Vic 20 and I think there is a box somewhere with a 64 and piles of floppy disk.

I am a relative noob in my first FTE Microsoft job in 93 I was using Word 6.0 for DOS on a 486. And our email was some unix based system way before they had Exchange. I dreamed about being one of the cool kids who was issued a Pentium lol