[garyhgaryh]

I have (yes HAVE) a TRS-80 Model I which I used to run a BBS in the early 80's. This was in the era before the Apple ][. Anyone have a computer that old (like a commodore PET or Apple I)?

[SoYank]

Originally Posted by ukthunderace

My oldest was a Sperry 1106 mainframe (now in the Smithsonian). All of our programs were in Meta Assembler and on 80 column punchcards. The "memory" was made of boards of small copper wound donuts and didn't even amount to 64k. The whole thing took up a room about 1500 square feet. It was part of the Arpanet (precursor to the Internet).

I think "core" memory (hence "core dump" in computer parlance) was made up of iron donuts (about the size of an "o" in 12 pt font) with three fine copper wires passing through them (as opposed to copper "wound" donuts). Two would magnetise the donut depending upon the direction the current flowed and the third was the reader of the bit. I have a layer of core from an IBM 370 somewhere. Each layer had eight patches of 625 donuts (25x25).

Some of my fondest computer memories (no pun intended, really) are of programming with punchcards.

[ukthunderace]

Originally Posted by SoYank

I think "core" memory (hence "core dump" in computer parlance) was made up of iron donuts (about the size of an "o" in 12 pt font) with three fine copper wires passing through them (as opposed to copper "wound" donuts). Two would magnetise the donut depending upon the direction the current flowed and the third was the reader of the bit. I have a layer of core from an IBM 370 somewhere. Each layer had eight patches of 625 donuts (25x25).

Some of my fondest computer memories (no pun intended, really) are of programming with punchcards.

These were a little bigger than that...slightly bigger than the smilies we have on this site. I wish I had kept some when we decomissioned the computers.

I enjoyed punchcards, but if you dropped them, you were screwed! What I didn't enjoy was busting dump reads after a halt...36-bit Field Data (octal)words...amazing what you can read after a while.

[m0n0x!de]

Fake !!!

[The_Blob]

m0n0x!de, Il n'est pas faux. Je crois que vous ne savez rien au sujet des ordinateurs. Vous êtes jaloux.

[SoYank]

Originally Posted by ukthunderace

I enjoyed punchcards, but if you dropped them, you were screwed!

Been there, done that. On a bloomin' COBOL program of all things!