[ale] a moment of silence please

Wed Apr 28 07:50:24 EDT 2010

Rats! Topped again before I could "old geezer" myself.

For personal machines - cassette tape was my first - after  
building the machine. Had a (for the time) whopping 48K  
RAM. Graduated _quickly_ (and had planned on it) to 100K  
5.25 hard sector floppies. In a few ways I'm sorry I sold  
that machine... but not many. I think it was possible to  
get a paper tape reader for it, but I could be full of  
stuff.

Does it count if I know (a relative) whose first computer  
experience was designing it? For years macro assembles  
baffled him.

On 04/28/2010 07:24:14 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> YOU HAD MAGNETIC MEDIA?!?!?!?!?
> 
> toggle switches, and paper tape were the IO methods on the
> first computer I
> had access to. It was a big next step up to be able to use
> punch cards for
> program entry over those horrid toggle switches. And
> output was multiple
> feet of wide greenbar with tractor holes never quite were
> perforated
> correctly for fast tear off.
> 
> And it wasn't my Dad's computer room with the bazillion
> floppies and rw
> tape. It was mine. :-)
> 
> I still have a huge pile of floppies with win 3.1, MS
> office, autocad,
> mathmatica, Lotus 1,2,3, excel 4, quicken, Prodigy and the
> upgrade to
> 14,400baud, etc. I may still have my first Slackware
> floppies downloaded
> over that speed-boosted 14.4 modem.
> 
> Still have a box of zip disks with the tons-o-crap
> downloaded from uusnet as
> I bounced between win3.11 and slackware.
> 
> 
> Hmm. Maybe I should throw out some cruft...
> 
> On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 6:47 AM, Richard Bronosky
> <Richard at bronosky.com>wrote:
> 
> > I remember the punch tools. I remember using a soldering
> iron on the
> > 3.5s and cleaning up the hole with an Xacto. I'll raise
> you: knowing
> > exactly where in my Dad's "computer room" I could go
> today to find the
> > little black stickers that I would put on a 5.25 to make
> it writable
> > again. I'll raise you: going to visit my dad for the
> weekend to find
> > my room full of ceiling to floor stacks of boxes of 5.25
> floppies when
> > it was his turn to look after the inventory of CUGA*.
> Good times!
> >
> > *Computer User's Group of Ashland (KY), which was
> basically like a
> > monthly software swap meet.
> >
> > On 4/28/10, Pat Regan <thehead at patshead.com> wrote:
> > > A friend of mine once bought OS/2 on cd.  I know we
> had 2.0 and Warp,
> > > but I'm pretty certain this was Warp.  We were
> probably in the early
> > > part of high school.  He didn't own a cd-rom drive,
> but I did.  A
> > > monstrous 1x sony external deal that used caddies.
> > >
> > > He saved 10 or 20 bucks by going cd instead of floppy.
>  But we had to
> > > find 10-20 floppies to use to create the install
> disks.  We made those
> > > at my house and we walked the couple miles to his
> house to install it.
> > > Half way through we hit our first bad floppy...  So we
> had to go back,
> > > recreate that one...  I think we had to do that twice.
> > >
> > > I don't miss 3.5 inch floppies.  My fond memories are
> of 5.25 floppies.
> > >   I had a neat little punch tool that made perfect
> clean holes to make
> > > the other side writable in the Apple drives.
> > >
> > > The 3.5 punch tool was much more monstrous by
> comparison, and the hard
> > > plastic didn't cut as cleanly.  I do remember once
> melting a hole in a
> > > 3.5 floppy with a soldering iron to make it high
> density...
> > >
> > > Pat
> > >
> > > On 04/28/2010 12:49 AM, Chris Woodfield wrote:
> > >> I see your loading Windows 3.1 from floppies and
> raise you multiple
> > >> installs of Microsoft Office 5.1(?) for Mac - I think
> there were at
> > least
> > >> 30 floppy disks in the box. And Windows 95 clocked in
> at 15 disks?
> > >>
> > >> -C
> > >>
> > >> On Apr 27, 2010, at 6:59 26PM, Dustin Puryear wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> I have vague memories of loading Windows 3.11 from
> floppies when I was
> > >>> in 9'th grade or so. Wow.
> > >>>
> > >>> -----Original Message-----
> > >>> From: ale-bounces at ale.org
> [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
> > >>> Michael Trausch
> > >>> Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 4:11 PM
> > >>> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
> > >>> Subject: Re: [ale] a moment of silence please
> > >>>
> > >>> On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 9:00 AM, Paul
> Cartwright<ale at pcartwright.com>
> > >>> wrote:
> > >>>> JoshuaInNippon writes "In a brief press release
> buried within Sony
> > >>> Japan's
> > >>>> website, the company announced that they would be
> ending sales of the
> > >>> classic
> > >>>> 3.5 inch floppy disk in the country in March of
> 2011. Sony introduced
> > >>> the
> > >>>> size to the world in 1981, which saw its heyday in
> the 1990s. Sony has
> > >>> been
> > >>>> one of the last major manufacturers to continue
> shipments of the disk
> > >>> type
> > >>>> they helped develop, but had ended most worldwide
> sales in March of
> > >>> this
> > >>>> year. The company's production of the 3.5 inch
> floppy ceased in 2009.
> > >>> Sony
> > >>>> noted the demand, or a lack thereof, as the reason.
> The company's
> > >>> withdrawal
> > >>>> is one of the final marks in the slow death of the
> floppy era."
> > >>>
> > >>> Being that I *still* use 3.5" floppy disks, this
> does make me quite
> > sad.
> > >>>
> > >>> I use them these days as ~900KB encrypted stores
> (with duplicates!) of
> > >>> small things like encryption keys and certificates.
> Something about
> > >>> sorting the things and working with them without
> them being in my
> > >>> $HOME is nice to me.
> > >>>
> > >>>   -- Mike
> > >>> _______________________________________________
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> > >>> Ale at ale.org
> > >>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
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> > >>>
> > >>> _______________________________________________
> > >>> Ale mailing list
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> > >>
> > >>
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> Ale mailing list
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> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > >
> >
> > --
> > Sent from my mobile device
> >
> > .!# RichardBronosky #!.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
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> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> --
> James P. Kinney III
> Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
> Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits
> 

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