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Praetorium Honoris

Thursday, September 5, 2019

In Days of Yore

8-inch, 5.25-inch, and 3.5-inch floppy disks
Back in the days before the Internet, back when some military bases still had computers which could (and did) use punch cards. Back when, wait, what? These things...

(Source)
Yup, back in the Pleistocene Epoch, I was a brand new Air Force computer guy. They'd sent me off to college to be edumacated in the ways of the magical thinking box, a long tale, part one of which is here. I got through the tech school (bit of a vacation that) and wound up at Offutt AFB in Nebraska. A place I remember fondly. No, really.

At first they didn't know what to do with me...

"You just finished college and tech school? Why'd you go to the tech school?"

"Uh, I'm in the Air Force, they ordered me to do that."

"Oh."

Off to Configuration Management (CM) I went.
In software engineering, software configuration management (SCM) is the task of tracking and controlling changes in the software, part of the larger cross-disciplinary field of configuration management. SCM practices include revision control and the establishment of baselines. If something goes wrong, SCM can determine what was changed and who changed it. If a configuration is working well, SCM can determine how to replicate it across many hosts. (Source)
As the only software being produced by my little corner of the Strategic Communications Division (STRATCOMDIV. No, really.) was the Military Airspace Management System (MASM), which was done on the second floor (we lower orders dwelled on the first floor), and we first floor types were forbidden to go anywhere near MASM, there wasn't much to do on the first floor.

One thing we had to do was gather some data on something (I forget what), then take it to SAC HQ to load it onto the classified mainframe computer. Our data was not classified, nor was it, I discovered later, very important. It produced a report no one read. Ever.

Our other task was controlling the commercial software we used on our vastly overpriced IBM PC clones. Which you could buy off the government contract for $2000.00 or buy downtown (a better model) for $1000.00. Yeah, we jumped all over that. Not.

Anyhoo, I recall we had 20 PCs floating around for various reasons, mostly for word processing. Every now and then the department would buy new software for the PCs which we in CM would log in, make copies of, and control. As each machine had to have its own software we bought 20 of everything.

Now one day new software arrived, a lovely lady by the name of Gigi (actually her initials), was detailed to show me the whole process of logging in software, making copies, then loading it on the computers.

She brought me to this big closet on the first floor which was packed from floor to ceiling with boxes of software on 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. Hundreds upon hundreds of disks all in boxes, some from the manufacturer, some which were obviously copies which we had made.

I was amazed.

Kinda like this...
(Source)
Then I learned the horrible truth, there were actually only about five different software packages in there, four to five versions of each. As each version, back then, came on 10 to even 20 disks, there were a lot of disks for 20 computers. To make matters worse, for each disk they would make a "master copy" and a "backup copy." For each and every software package for each and every PC. One new software package for one computer could be 60 disks total, times 20 computers, times however many other software packages we had. To include a few compilers for the one or two people on the first floor who actually developed software.

"Uh, why not open one package, make one copy of all the disks, and use those copies to load the software on all 20 machines. I mean we do them one at a time, right?"

Gigi just kind of looked at me, like I was some kind of revolutionary nut job, then said, "The regulations require us to do it that way."

Of course, being a royal pain in the ass, I wanted to actually see that "regulation." Which she got a copy of and showed me. Turns out that it wasn't an actual Air Force regulation, it was a local policy, not even a unit policy but specific to our department, first floor only of course.

"What idiot wrote this? It's stuff and bloody nonsense."

So off we went to see Mitch, a retired Air Force chief and our section manager. Gigi explained things to Mitch, who sighed, gave me an "are you going to be a pain in my ass for the next three years look," then took the policy and read it.

"Where did you get this Gigi?"

"Remember last year when you had Lieutenant Dumas*, write a procedure for software backups? This is it."

"Oh dear, this is pure nonsense, who told you to use this?"

"Uh, Mr Leerdoll** said to use it."

"Okay, Gigi, go make those copies and start installing the software on the machines. Make just one copy. Okay?"

"Okay Mitch." And off she went.

"Not so fast Goodrich. I want you to redo this policy. This one is nonsense."

"Certainly Mitch, I'll get right on it."

I did and the new policy went into effect. It also said that only the latest and the previous versions of the software need to be kept. All others should be destroyed. (Heaven forfend that one of the troops might take an old copy of Word Perfect home!)

While that little episode gave me a rather good impression of Mitch, later that year he had me go to a meeting in his stead and take notes. So I did. My high opinion of him rather sank after this.

"Goodrich, I saw the notes you left on my desk."

"Okay, great. I wrote down what was discussed and the actions we're responsible for and..."

"They're in the wrong format."

"Uh, what?"

"They should be written up as a memo for record with the date, time, and location of the meeting and who was there."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously."

"With all due respect Mitch, no. You asked me to fill in for you, which I did and which the colonel was pretty mad about, yeah, the note on the bottom says call him, ASAP. You have the information you need. I am not your secretary, nor am I the company effing clerk."

"We'll see about this." And off he went.

I could hear the colonel yelling at Mitch from two offices down. The man was most unhappy. Not long after that I got promoted and sent to the second floor. As I was now an E-6 Tech Sergeant and the two E-5 Staff Sergeants were always fighting over who was in charge, it was thought to throw me into the mix.

I had never been so happy to change jobs within the same unit.

And no, I never did put those notes in the "correct" format.

Always the rebel.

Sláinte!








* The "s" is not silent.
** Not his real name, but damned close. Bit of an idiot he was.

66 comments:

  1. Computers arrived during my UK police service. My entire force (3,500 officers plus 1,800 support staff) went on training courses, at various locations, over a period of about 6 months. Then the computers appeared- over a weekend. I arrived at work to find the things on various desks with a user guide booklet. I was on one of the first courses, so I was six months out of whack - not even ‘rusty’ as I never had the chance to get wet! Happy days......er...

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    1. Ah yes, just too early training. I've had that experience.

      We colonials do it too.

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  2. Ah, five and a quarter inch floppies, brings back memories of my first computer, an Apple IIe......good times. Bureaucracy at it's usual, it seems to overwhelm common sense so often eh? Good move Sarge, one glass to take the edge off retelling that tale. Na Zdravie!

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    1. And that was a most excellent porter, first time I've had that one. Delicious!

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  3. When I was transmitter doctor at Telemundo, our chyron had floppies. Didn't they make a bigger size than 8 inch? I remember them being like and LP.

    When I was in the Industrial Engineering department at Marathon-LeTourneau in the late 80's, we were making the change from paper tape NC in our plasma cutters to something else. I was tasked with find the replacement media. I asked a machinist at the skool (studying computer science) and we decided 3.5 inch floppies would be a good replacement. I got to transfer paper tape rolls by the cabinet fulls to floppy. Did you know there was a practical limit on how many files you could put in a directory on MSDOS??? I hit that a couple times, until I found out. It was way down in the weeds in the manual.

    Did you guys ever punch holes in the cover so you could turn the 360K 5.25 floppies over for "double sided" operation??

    Fun stuff.....

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    1. I have heard of a larger floppy, never saw anything bigger than 8-inch though.

      Didn't DOS 5.0 fix that limitation? (That was a LONG time ago.)

      Paper tape, wow, I remember when that was cutting edge technology. (My Dad's day but he brought some fragments home to show us.)

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  4. Ancient Gunner's Mate - Back about 1957 I was in a tour group of my peers (15-17 year age group) at NAVSTANPT. One of the highlights was a tour of the Naval Supply Center computer facility. This was pre-transistor and ran on Vacuum tubes. The discs were magnetic, the size of the old 78 rpm records about 1/4" thick and were handled by a machine manufactured by the Wurlitzer jukebox company. During my first enlistment, 1959-63 the only computers I saw were analog fire control systems with a lot of gears and handwheels. They worked quite satisfactorily.

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    1. The old analog computer systems worked very well.

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    2. That analogue fire control computer was the only computer on our ship and was a holdover from before “modernization.”

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    3. Modernization isn't always a good thing.

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  5. Ah, card decks. As a larval engineer I used to number the cards (so you could reassemble the deck in proper order if you dropped it all over the floor) until one of the guys who'd been around a while told me to take a marker and draw a diagonal line across the side of the deck. Simples.

    And I also remember getting my first Linux OS on 30+ floppy disks. Good times, good times.

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    1. The Air Force tech school recommended numbering the cards, the diagonal line is smart.

      30+, oh yeah.

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    2. My dad taught me the diagonal line trick, which was handy on the one and only cardpunch program I had to turn in because, yes, the ahole computer techs (seniors, usually) would knock or drop your card collection, and say "Oops" or some other asinine comment. Then we got to code directly into Mr. PDP 11-34. Yay. Wooo.

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    3. And, yeah, number, but the diagonal line allows for rapid pre-sorting. More effective on larger stacks of cards, carried conveniently in beer flats. Remember that?

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    4. Beans the 1st - Ooh, ooh, PDP 11!

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    5. Beans the 2nd - Had to do one card deck in USAF tech school, very small one at that. Never had to touch the nasty things again.

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    6. You should try running an Assembly language program on punch cards. Yes, the one course I dropped in College. I had to get approval from my ROTC advisor to drop as I was on scholarship. He asked why. I showed him the card deck which was about a yard long and said, "because I'm flunking it."
      He was a bit of a computer nerdling (understood FORTRAN) took a look at the commands along the top of the card and said "What's this gibberish supposed to do?"

      "Beats the heck out of me Sir"

      I got to drop the course

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    7. Assembly language on punch cards?

      No, just no...

      (FWIW, the gibberish was probably JCL - Job Control Language.)

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    8. No, I actually understood JCL. Got in trouble with the High Priests and Priestesses at TTU once when I changed the JCL and got my program bumped to the top of the processing queue. It was all the abbreviated commands in assembler that floored me. And keeping track of registers and...and....I've pushed that out of my memory, and the scars are healed. Please don't make me remember.

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    9. I bought one of the first versions of MS Office that came on 3.5" disks, I think it was a bazillion of the bastiges. I remember pushing eject and putting in the next disk for what seemed like a month. However, it was pretty cool when finished and it worked.

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    10. juvat the 1st - Ah, probably some abbreviated macro stuff. It's been an awful long time since I did any assembler. Motorola chipset was easy, Intel chipset was a PITA.

      Yes, I have some of those scars. The memories haunt me still...

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    11. juvat the 2nd - Yeah, a fellow can could carpal tunnel from punching all of those disks in and out. Microsoft C++ had as many as MS Office, plus a bazillion printed manuals.

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    12. Yeah, I stayed clean away from the TTU computer dept. I saw a guy drop a box cards and he swelled up and had tears on his cheeks. Thank you, no.

      One of the engineering profs at Let U had a warehouse of those I guess. He had new, unpunched cards in his pocket every day. Kept notes on them....

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    13. I've seen that before, an affectation indeed!

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    14. IIRC, Herman Hollerith was the guy who designed the cards and reader (hence the name "Hollerith cards"). When he died, it's said that they buried him face down, nine edge first.

      ;-)

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    15. Hahaha!

      I'd forgotten that they were called Hollerith cards.

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  6. Ah, stupid computer games.

    No computer at boat place. Decent computer and a decent purchasing program at Battery Place. PD had both regular desk-tops, hooked to the network and an old system of slave terminals on some sort of token ring/daisy ring/lazy ring network system. One piece units with crappy black and amber screens and good old loud keyboards, for their reporting and evidence system. It... worked... kinda, but was getting funky, one couldn't import or export data out of the system except by the monkey method (as I call it. You know, "Hey monkey, we need these 50,000 lines of data input into the system/copied so we can put it in the other system." "Oooo. Ooooo. Yessir, right away sir, ooooo. Ooooo." (yeah, monkey being me.)(Got quite famous for pulling stuff out of the system and dropping it into an Excel spreadsheet so they could take credit for it. Sigh.)

    Finally, a new IT guy, because our (the PD's) IT guy moved over to to the City side to mess their world up, took one look and said he wasn't going to fix the old system any more. He actually found someone who had some sort of emulator program that could read the data and put it in a more modern PC style data format so people could actually access it from PCs and killed the old system. Yay. Dave was cool. Neat guy. One of those guys you never see panic. You know, the type that can saunter through a disaster scene.

    Remember Zip disks?

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    1. I vaguely remember zip disks, as to your new IT guy, worth their weight in gold.

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    2. Beans,
      Did you see this video Linked from PawPaw's House? Should be right up your alley.

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    3. Video? What video?

      A good IT guy is definitely worth their weight in gold. Had one that couldn't get the requisition to replace my monitor, a crappy 21" CRT dying with bad images and shaky screen and off colors (because, apparently, the purchasing twit at the PD hated me...) with a new monitor, so he came over with a new monitor, unplugged my old monitor, and accidentally bumped it off my desk and stepped on it, several times. "Oh, I accidentally (wink, wink) broke your monitor. Here's a nice new 25" flatscreen like everyone at the main building... wait, I have two, can't take them back (wink, wink...) Problem happened when he touched it, not me, so I was safe and got 2 new monitors, which helped immensely in doing spreadsheet stuff.

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    4. http://pawpawshouse.blogspot.com/2019/09/arrow-v-armor.html

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    5. Zip disks and the infamous "Click of Death".

      - Victor

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    6. Victor - The click of death...

      Not good at all!

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  7. Went through the conversion from POMSEE [don’t ask, because I don’t think I ever learned] books for preventive maintenance on our gear.
    Each unit had its own book filled with checklists.
    The conversion was to hard cards that had little boxes to be filled in with code numbers for the tasks performed on the equipment.
    Each piece had its own set of codes.
    There was a catalogue with all of the codes.
    The new process was called PMS (for preventive maintenance system).
    Oh, the irony.
    There was no quick way to log the individual tasks so went from gun decking the POMSEE books to skipping the logging altogether.
    Besides, there was no place to keep the damn cards after they were filled out.
    I wasn’t around for the next Admin Inspection.
    So I don’t know what the outcome was.
    But I’m betting it wasn’t pretty.

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  8. Took my first “Data Processing” class was in ‘64, where I learned all about 1s and 0s and how many it took to write the number ten in binary. It is the only time I ever had to use punch cards.
    It was a couple of decades later that I took my next computer science class, where we were introduced to the Apple IIe and some programming.
    It was pretty basic stuff, but reinforced what little I knew about computer logic.

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    1. At least I kinda understand what's going on inside that box.

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    2. I knew damned near everything about my first computer, then Windows happened.

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  9. Oh man, memories... My first (well, technically it was my grandfather's, but it was the first one I really used) computer was an Apple IIe clone called the Laser 128. Why 128? For the massive 128kb of onboard memory that it supported. It ran 5.25" floppies. I had two main games for it - Dig Dug, and Solo Flight.

    Of those two, Solo Flight is far more significant for being my first flight simulator. The game tasked you with delivering the mail in one of three maps: Colorado, Kansas, and Washington. That taught juvenile me the basics of VOR navigation and instrument flying. In Kansas, mostly, because the ground had a nasty habit of rising up to smite me every time I flew in Colorado or Washington.

    What's really funny is that I was just thinking about this game yesterday, as I ended up being on a CAP mission that flew stopped for lunch in Topeka. I logged a lot of simulated takeoffs and landings (also crashes) at that airport in Solo Flight. Yesterday was the first time I actually landed there for reals though.

    Walking to the FBO with our little 182 parked next to some very nice private jets while whistling "One of these things is not like the other." is fun.

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  10. I remember having to learn how to print blood draw labels on WP (I think?) circa 1984-ish. Machines were IBM PC's with no internal hard drive, just OS on one 5.25 and program on another. What a trainwreck of an experience. Then someguy figured out how to make the machine play Anchors Aweigh and I thought, hmmm, this has some real promise!

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    1. The time frame sounds about right. I was in college at the time (as a 30-something year old E-5 Staff Sergeant) learning about all of this stuff. Kind of reminds me of the computers onboard the E-3A AWACS aircraft. Had to load the OS via tape (before take-off of course) to get the computer to work. Not bad if you did it right.

      Painful if you didn't.

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  11. Circa 1966,USAREUR, Bar story in the EM Club as related by a HQ Pfc. Seems the Army was still using punch cards for most supply functions. Someone got into the circuit and started dialing in random numbers with a telephone. Chaos ensued. Since the Pfc had only consumed two Singapore Slings at the time, there may have been some truth in his tale.

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    1. I can see that as a problem. I also kinda believe it probaby happened.

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  12. Off the computer topic and on to REALLY IMPORTANT topics....

    What's the story on the Beer?

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    1. Ah yes, glad you asked. Now I know what I'm posting about tomorrow.

      😈

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  13. During my 2nd semester of junior college (1972) I took a physical science class. One of our projects allowed us to dabble with the paper tape machines.

    Fast forward to the early 2000's. I don't recall the actual date and am too lazy to go dig in a dusty box to pin it down. Bear with me while I set this up.

    I had already been an FFL in California since '96. During that time, the background check system (for handguns) was all paper. The waiting period was 10 days. Each dealer had what looked like a traffic citation pad. Four color coded carbon copies for each firearm. Top copy stayed in the book, pink went to the customer, yellow got mailed to your head LEO (PD or Sheriff). I honestly can't remember now who the hell the green copy went to. I have always wondered just how many mail sacks CAL DOJ got each day. Anyhoo, the State decided to go digital, and required dealers to go online. State called the tune, the bill is on the State's dime. Every dealer would receive from the state a computer tower, mouse keyboard, CRT monitor, and a magnetic card swipe for driver licenses to populate the onscreen fields. IIRC, the software was Win2000. All with no strings attached. We were told quite plainly that we were welcome to hock it all if we chose. Good luck doing business though if you do.

    I did not find out until after the fact that the state had contracted some outfit to oversee and manage this whole process. Came time to start shipping stuff out, and crickets. Apparently nobody at state had followed through. They sent somebody over to see what the problem might be, and found out that their contractor had quietly gone out of business! Pandemonium and hilarity ensued.

    The first event in my circumstance was a phone call from out of the blue from some outfit in Kentucky--
    "Hi. This is so-and-so. Your modem is on the way".

    Me: "Great. And just what modem might that be?"

    "Well, you're a California FFL, right?"

    Me: "Umm, yeah".

    "Well, the first batch of towers that got shipped didn't have any modems, so there's no way to go online".

    Me: "Ah (stifling a guffaw). OK, thanks for the heads-up".

    True to their word, a few days later the modem PCI card showed up in my mailbox. A few days after that, UPS dropped off the rest. My first lesson in computer hardware installation was OJT.

    A buddy (also an FFL) in the next town over got his tower with no CD-ROM, so no way to install the OS. Half the card readers locked up the OS (mine worked OK).

    By this time, I had moved my business into my garage, and space was at a premium. I gave the CRT monitor to and older buddy who was on a fixed income and bought a 15" flat screen. My buddy said the one I gave him lasted about six weeks and died. I'm guessing it was a refurb of some kind.

    Good times.

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    1. Ah, love that government furnished equipment...

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  14. You guys are killing me here... Memories. First college course was IBM assembler, Prof required everyone to memorize the instruction set before first punch card was even punched. Served me well in later years. My last Navy job was managing a PDP-11 system in the training command. Got a Navy Achievement Medal for that one back when they weren't handed out like Cracker Jack toys. First post Navy job involved programming on an Ohio Scientific office system running Basic-in-ROM on 8" floppies. State of the art...

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    1. Those were pretty good days, we had to work at producing something that worked.

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  15. Back in graduate school days, we had an old card punch in our lab/office to produce 1 or 2 control cards for crystallographic programs...one afternoon an undergraduate appropriated it to code his long class assignment program (without permission). We didn't tell him to leave, but since he didn't ask we didn't tell him it punched out BCDIC instead of EBCDIC (Extended binary coded decimal interchange code) either...the alphanumeric printing at the top of the cards looked right - but I always wondered how well his program ran...

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    1. Probably, because he never came back...an inch thick wad of fan-fold paper from the computer dispassionately swearing at your errors is not pretty reading...

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  16. The good old days when PC's came with BASICA and GWBASIC. At work the problem was to render (almost) 3D images from data provided by a client from their proprietary CAD program (which they would not share [(x,y,z,data like temperature]) in 64k memory (there is NEVER enough memory)...Youngsters forget the screen IS memory. The first thing was a coordinate transformation for viewing (simple). Next sorting by increasing z (back to front reading and writing between two disk files with a bubble sort [slow, but I was too lazy to look up a faster one])...Finally putting the data on the screen pixel by pixel. When something is in front, it overwrites the pixel of what is behind it (calculating what is in front of what is a nightmare)...The result is a pretty good 3D picture, but without perspective (things behind are not smaller). One of our engineers (once he finally figured out what was going on) recoded it in C (spit) to run much faster...

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    1. I'll bet you used the poke and peek commands. I know I did for accessing memory directly. (Yes, the screen is memory too!)

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  17. Notes not in the right format!? WTH. Beggars can't be choosers, but sometimes they can be arseholes.

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  18. Sarge, you always do a good job in stimulating thoughts and resultant conversation. My first computer experience (other than slide rule) was on punch cards running Fortran programs on a big (by 1970 standards) CDC (Control Data Corp) mainframe in the SMU computer center. And I appreciated the diagonal line on more than one occasion. First job out of school involved a PDP 11 system, 5 MB platters and BASIC, then went to a manufacturing plant using a PDP 11 that had a whopping 64K of iron core memo, a 5 or 10 MB Drum data storage, and paper or Mylar tape to load programs I wrote in assembly language since processing speed was required (the computer ran the plant in real time). Learned the assembly language in a course that I took at a local college where we had to write a Fortran compiler in assembly. Yikes, that was a long time ago - and 'kids today' have no idea how all their digital devices work!

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    1. I have written a compiler (back in college), not a trivial task!

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  19. Learned some practical electronics too in my younger days (no money to replace, no instrument, no data, no degree). a fellow graduate student tried to change a bulb that said the diffractometer was on (there were plenty of other light to say so) and managed to short 120V AC power into the 5V logic ground (the interface boards sacrificed themselves to protect the computer...Our advisor was little guy that greeted the other three of us and walked around the culprit like he wasn't there...not to easy to pull off with a 6'4" ex special forces sergeant...took a another Chem prof and I about two months to fix (easy at first as almost every circuit board we pulled [mostly transistor logic-the equivalent of one TTL chip] was bad), We lost count after about 1000 transistors and diodes burned out...Finally, only one problem -the computer would only give even x-ray counts and not odd ones...after a late night (and very strong beverages later)...I had a revelation could call them up on a Saturday and tell exactly what two cards had to be the problem - they had replaced the transistors, but they were 3X too slow...Got another call..Working again!!!!...

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