The I Miss the Old Days Complaint Thread
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I can punch cards if I had a hole puncher and index cards. Extra bonus if the hole puncher gives fun shapes! Don't know what to do with the index card full of random shaped holes?
You drop them on the floor and watch helplessly as they scatter across the linoleum, now completely scrambled and out of order. Then you curse the sky and sweep the cards into a pile of sorts, to be "dealt with later."
Lends a new meaning (or perhaps the original meaning) to spaghetti code!
Dana
indeed it does.. I never really got to program a borad, working in that area I was basically a card jockey.. I'd pick up the trays of input cards and their job sheet, set up the 403 with a pre-programmed boad (as per the job sheet), load the cards into the reader, load up the punch with blank cards, and let it run. At job end the imput cards went back into their trays with the job sheet signed ioff, and the output loaded inot a new set of tray with their job sheet and then trundled over to the data input guys who would read the cards into the mainfram ewhen required...
...y'all making me feel old again.
One of the scariest screams I heard was when someone dropped a box full of cards in the hallway on the way to the reader which scattered like leaves on the slick floor..
ONly scream that's worse is the noise a high speed card sorter makes when a card jams and it decides to shred instead of sort..
Ah, but the punches from the cards made great confetti for parades and partys
I spilled my coffee on the bus. One of the passengers gave me some napkins. Apparently they were to dry my boots.
The "prank" at our place was, if you could get into their car, to dump a pile of card chad into the dash air vents.. when they turned on ventilation,. Poof! clouds of joy!
from my work photos from back in the day..
Ah yes, the square cornered, stiff paper, computer chad, confetti. Sure, let's throw a million of them into the air and see where they go. Just the right size to enter under your eyelid and wreak havoc.
(Personal experience. Karma. Even I was young and stupid once.)
and the some of the bits of a datacentre, that you usually never see or think about..
My nose is dry. My eyes are dry. What am I supposed to do about it?
So in my computer science experience, there have pretty much always been keyboards and usually a mouse. And the operating system would either be built in or load from a disk. I often wondered what it was like with the punch cards. Like, were they actually punching holes to represent 1 and leaving them unpunched to represent zero, or something like that? And then these series of ones and zeros on the punch card were feeding machine language instructions directly to a computer the size of a JCPenney? It sounds kind of fun.
And I can't wait to tell the kids of the future about when music players had moving parts, and there were screens that just didn't do anything at all when you touched them.
It's your party, you can cry if you want to.
@ hacsart Nice power room!
Here's what I was working with in 1978. These four photos are of one end of my research lab at the Launch Control Center, at the Kennedy Space Center. This end supported a Raytheon RDS-500 minicomputer, with 16K "words" of 16-bit core memory. The other end of my lab (not visible) supported an older machine, a Raytheon 706 minicomputer with 8K "words" of 16-bit core memory. My desk and manuals cabinet, and 026 keypunch were also in the other end of the lab. Neither machine had any sort of networking. Programming was written in Raytheon Assembler, or FORTRAN. After we got the new RDS-500 I soldered-in a two wire serial cable to transfer data (albeit slowly) between the two computers. Had to write my own data line drivers & protocol.
But sometimes it was faster to punch cards on one computer, and read them in the other to transfer data.
Or just run to the other end of the room and push a button, flip a switch, or type in the information.
OS input was via the teletype. Programming input was via punched cards or punched paper tape. Graphic output was on the Tektronix storage tube display. And each machine had it's own printer, teletype, Tektronix display, and card reader. The machine in the photo also had three tape drives and two hard drives. Daily use, resident programs were loaded via punched cards. Every morning I'd turn on all the computer equipment, toss in the half-inch thick pile of job control cards identifying which programs to pull from disk, load into memory, and start running. I wrote all the applications, it used. I established the daily routines, I had the whole thing set up and documented, so that for the daily standard stuff, an idiot could run it. Which was fortunate, because my opinion was that the guy who took over from me was.
2nd photo is of the LCC(Launch Control Center, low building in foreground) & VAB(Vehicle Assembly Building, block building in background)
I got this text today. I haven't done anything other than take a screenshot of it. Apparently my non-existant account is on h0ld due to recent billing? WTF does that mean?
Thanks.. I don't have pics of the battery backup room, or the diesel generator room (that was something else) for backup power.. In the late 70's we had moved on to ibm 370/168's, with 8Mb memory..
...ah the good old days, definbtely recognise the Tektronix display. . Their campuus is in Cedar Hills west of Portland..
Love how everything in the second image is dwarfed by the Saturn V and VAB. Didn't realise Launch Control was right next to it. Still would lave loved to see a Saturn launch.
Are you thinking of "Mission Control Center" in Huntsville, Alabama? They take over as the rocket approaches orbit. Yeah, like the giant redwoods and sequoia trees, the size isn't appreciated until you have something familiar to compare it with, like your body. When you stand next to a redwood root and can't see over the top of it, that's big! When you see the workers move the huge external fuel tank for the Shuttle into the VAB, then during lunch you wander into the VAB to take a closer look at the fuel tank and can't find it until you get up to the 16th floor and see that they've shoved it into a cubby hole for safe keeping until the rest of the Shuttle is ready for it, that's big, and illustrates how much smaller the Shuttle was than the Saturn-V
I was there between '74 and '79. I call it the Skylab era. It was the transition phase between the Apollo moon shot era, and the Shuttle era. Security was lax during this period, and I was able to wander the VAB without restriction. I loved going up and down inside the building in the glass elevators facing the open assembly bays. Wheee..., it was like that scene of the Great Krell Machine from "Forbidden Planet"
I've been on the roof of the VAB a couple of times and gingerly stepped out on a metal framework overhanging one of the great tall doors, looking down about 43 stories (~500 feet), down to the ground. I've stood inside on the 42nd floor and looked down onto a full size 4-engine airplane parked on the VAB floor. It looked like a toy surrounded by little dots moving hither & yon. At the time, there were no guardrails on the completely empty 42nd floor, straight drop to the floor.
Yes, I've even seen it rain inside the VAB. Condensation on the open metalwork beams drops in a light mist, puddles of water on the floor, and even misty clouds hanging near the ceiling.
I have stood under the nozzles of the Saturn-1B, walked under the crawler, and, for safety reasons, delayed a launch for a couple minutes.
I stood outside the LCC during the launch of the last of the Saturn-V rockets lifting the Skylab space station into orbit.
And the three launches of the Saturn-1B rockets to carry men to Skylab. I was also there for the Apollo/Soyuz (American/Russian joint orbiting test) launch.
It was one of the best times of my life. (*ah, memories*). And like the soliloquy from "Blade Runner", I lament that all I can do is tell you of them.
The Great Krell Machine:
Tears In Rain:
That's some pretty amazing career experiences.. My railroad experiences pale in comparison..
Perhaps I'm just being a bit melodramatic.
I wasn't involved with the real work at the Space Center, just side research.
On the otherhand, I love railroad tales. Big engines, complex switchyards. I've recently been following the construction of the Brightline from Miami to Orlando.
And this guy's videos have followed the construction for years.
one of the best railroad tales was when I was at one of the major diesel shops installing a new CBT system.. of course one was given and had to wear full safety gear. Was watching as an overhead gantry crane lifted a 200 ton loco.. Shop foreman said - 'that's why the hardhat son, if that ever fell on you there might be enough left in the hat to figure out who you were" all followed by a slap on the back and a hearty chuckle...
Sometimes the easiest way to get to where you were needed to do some network or other stuff was simply to hitch a ride on a local freight.. was in that situation, and somewhere near Jackfish Bay (I tthink) we came across a bull moose a fair ways ahead of us on the track. This was in one of the low nose SD-40 locos.. the engineer, an old timer, laid on the horn and bell.. and then said - time to get down on the floor as close as you can to the front cab wall .. 'cause if that moose doen;t move, there's a good chance that when we hit him, he'll get flipped up over the hood and into the windshield, and then its all hooves and antlers in here,and that aint a good thing... the moose did move, though...
Smart moose! Apparently not Bullwinkle.
Complaint: When watching TV, and a chart or diagram or something comes onto the screen, and you're interested, and you grab the remote to pause the image so that you can peruse the frozen information for a moment, but one of Murphy's Laws apparently applies, because one quarter second before you press the pause button, the image goes back to the talking head and then you end up rewinding or backspacing or otherwise jockying around, fumbling & grumbling at the air in the room.
It seems like time is never on your side.
Non-complaint: Finally, good music has returned to this area. Or rather will be returning to this area next fall, during the '23 - '24 season of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra (CSO), playing at their home stage, Severance Hall.
(Recently renamed "Severance Music Center") It's a long way to go, and I have to rent a car or convince somebody with a car, to go with me. And it makes for an overnight stay 200 miles from home unless they offer an afternoon performance. But I'm starving for good live classical music. The last time I went to a live symphony was back before Covid.
Next season's CSO offerings include Lang Lang playing the Saint-Saëns 2nd piano concerto.
The Berlioz "Symphonie Fantastique"
Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto.
The Sibelius 2nd Symphony.
Tchaikovsky's "Romeo & Juliet".
The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.
Tchaikovsky's 2nd Symphony.
And Danil Trivanov playing the Brahms 1st Piano Concerto.
Wheee... music that makes my head happy.
Now I just have to make a choice, save my pennies, and wait.
I haven't checked on the programs at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, but I've been turned off to driving in downtown PIttsburgh.
And it's 200 miles away too.
Closer to home would be 70 miles away for seeing the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra (BSO) playing at Kleinhan's Music Hall, but their offerings for the last couple of seasons were blah also. Fingers crossed.
I've commented about Kleinhans Music Hall previously, and yeah, it's not gaudily beautiful like the Severance and Heinz, it's more Art Deco style, but it is beautifully acousticly functional. A parabolic theater with the orchestra at the focus. You feel the energy, and the music comes right at you. It makes you think you are standing right behind the conductor.
Violins clearly on the left, bass on the right, everything where it should be, clean and pure.
I'm also kind of hoping that the Chautauqua Institution will have a better offering of music this summer too. Last summer they were finally open again, but the programs were decidedly blah, and I didn't go. The institution only makes money nine weeks in the summer. They're still recovering from Covid financial losses for the last couple of years. But at least concerts at Chautauqua are within my local sphere(25 miles), and I can arrange for an Uber if necessary and sleep in my own bed afterwards.
But so far, I haven't seen any enticing schedule details. And the architecture of the Amphitheater, is sort of open-air Victorian Barn.
"You never know what lonesome is, 'til you get to herdin' moose"
I'm at the dentist office for my 2 pm appointment. I just got called back. Nervous about X-rays.
well I think today is the day I finally stop buying 3D content
Don't get too excited, Carrara exists I can model my own
I have Zbrush and other apps too
so will be hanging around the forum, not getting rid of me that easily
hell there is also Hexagon and Bryce,
and so so much stuff to render I have never loaded
12345...270
then there is Rendo... and
(it was actually an event at Rendo that finally pushed me as hard as DAZ has tried with NFTs and crap)
Um, hello? WendyLuvsCatz, hello? Did we lose you? Have you gone down a rabbit hole of musing?
And besides, leaving this place is hard. I tried to get rid of myself from here once. Didn't work. I could hear empty echos in my head and had to come back to fill it up with complainish nonsense again.