[OT] Old Guys - was (Re: KDE4.3 beta issues <OT>)

[Thorny]

On Sat, 23 May 2009 04:13:08 -0400, Ric Moore posted:

> On Sat, 2009-05-23 at 09:26 +0200, Donn wrote:
>> On Saturday, 23 May 2009 07:49:13 Ric Moore wrote:
>> > Worked like a dream for firing up a modem under CP/M.
>> All I dimly recall about CP/M is "pip". The world spun pretty fast and
>> DOS was there before I could learn any more.
> 
> I had to stay in the cheap seats awhile. A blooming XT cost a coupla
> grand, when they first came out. A harddrive then? Forgetaboutit. Next
> thing you know I'll be the cranky grandpa going "In MY day, I had two
> floppy drives and I was grateful to have that!" Of course Ole Gene will
> trump that with his ferrite cores and sore fingers from flipping switches.
> <grins>  Ric

Ya! Before the start of the FRU (Field Replaceable Unit) concept, which
was based on pulling a board and putting in another one to get the
customer back up faster and centralize repair, sometimes we used to have
to change driver transistors for the rows and columns of those core memory
boards. 

Fat-fingering in a bootstrap on the front panel address and data switches
to load the system seems amazing these days but the display of leds on the
front panel were cool and could be made to resemble Darth Vader eyes
while representing the activity level of the system. <BG>

I didn't get a PC (clone) until '85 because I had the use of a mainframe
but it still cost $1600 and only had the two 5 1/2 inch floppies. I don't
know what a real IBM XT cost at the time.

But Gene probably can still trump me, I think he's older than me, though
not quite as old as dirt. :-)