How about Wordstar? - Page 2

wodin · 05-14-2010, 01:47 PM

In those days I was a sysadmin/programmer on a DEC PDP 11-44 minicomputer. We had three Hard Disk drives, each the size of a washing machine and containing removable disk packs with about six platters each. All three together gave us 100 megabytes!

One of the IOs was an 8" floppy drive, as I recall those dinner plate sized floppies were 180 Kilobytes! Our main IO method was paper teletype tape though, because all of our customers had teletype capability.

poohbear_nc · 05-14-2010, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wodin

In those days I was a sysadmin/programmer on a DEC PDP 11-44 minicomputer. We had three Hard Disk drives, each the size of a washing machine and containing removable disk packs with about six platters each. All three together gave us 100 megabytes!

One of the IOs was an 8" floppy drive, as I recall those dinner plate sized floppies were 180 Kilobytes! Our main IO method was paper teletype tape though, because all of our customers had teletype capability.

Oh man - one of my first jobs was editing & repairing paper teletype tape! What a mind-boggling boring job! For minimum wage!

Wetdogeared · 05-14-2010, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wodin

In those days I was a sysadmin/programmer on a DEC PDP 11-44 minicomputer. We had three Hard Disk drives, each the size of a washing machine and containing removable disk packs with about six platters each. All three together gave us 100 megabytes!

One of the IOs was an 8" floppy drive, as I recall those dinner plate sized floppies were 180 Kilobytes! Our main IO method was paper teletype tape though, because all of our customers had teletype capability.

My first programming job was on a PDP 11-45. It's been a while, but I think the max program size was 16k.

wodin · 05-14-2010, 04:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

My first programming job was on a PDP 11-45. It's been a while, but I think the max program size was 16k.

Yea, that's why big projects had to be modular, but then 16k went a lot further back then.

GeoffC · 05-15-2010, 06:47 AM

In an era when highly respected scientists predicted that the UK could solve its computing needs with just three machines in the entire country, the Pilot ACE showed real potential of powerful computing.

How Alan Turing's Pilot ACE changed computing (BBC Web link)

05-14-2010, 01:47 PM	#16
wodin Illiterate Posts: 10,279 Karma: 37848716 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: The Sandwich Isles Device: Samsung Galaxy S10+, Microsoft Surface Pro	In those days I was a sysadmin/programmer on a DEC PDP 11-44 minicomputer. We had three Hard Disk drives, each the size of a washing machine and containing removable disk packs with about six platters each. All three together gave us 100 megabytes! One of the IOs was an 8" floppy drive, as I recall those dinner plate sized floppies were 180 Kilobytes! Our main IO method was paper teletype tape though, because all of our customers had teletype capability.

05-15-2010, 06:47 AM	#20
GeoffC Chocolate Grasshopper ... Posts: 27,599 Karma: 20821184 Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Scotland Device: Muse HD , Cybook Gen3 , Pocketbook 302 (Black) , Nexus 10: wife has PW	In an era when highly respected scientists predicted that the UK could solve its computing needs with just three machines in the entire country, the Pilot ACE showed real potential of powerful computing. How Alan Turing's Pilot ACE changed computing (BBC Web link)

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