[ubuntu-uk] (no subject)

[David Restall - System Administrator]

~s Re: [ubuntu-uk] memory lane, was: Please can someone look at this and try to help
Hi,

lots of interesting stuff on this subject but I have to disagree with
Norman (I think) the best terminal EVER was the DEC VT100 closely
followed by the wonderful VT220.  DEC lost it after that :-(  Best ever
printer was the DECWriter III.  I've seen cars with smaller starter
motors than that printer's head motor :-)  I currently have (though not
used for a couple of years) an HP 2563A line printer, another good piece
of kit but not with the same cachet as the DECWriter :-(

I think it was Alan that mentioned solder bridges etc. I realised a couple
of years ago that that was why computers are not as much fun as they
used to be.  When I started you had to know how to use a soldering iron,
you had to know that a paperclip was the perfect tool for testing that
a dumb terminal's RS232 port was working properly, you had to be able to
solder RS232 cables and later centronics cables if they broke.  We have
lost something over the years because of this lack of understanding -
I too remember having to use the CP/M debugger to read the wordstar
binary in and edit the binary by hand and then save it back to another
floppy just to get the thing to do stuff like print underscores and bold
on a printer that wasn't known.

Now, you can't even have a soldering iron without a qualification from
the safety inspector and lead in solder - whoa there - toxic material -
can't have that - you'll need hard hat, eye protection, fume protection,
gloves and a leather apron before you can touch it.  We were so poor we
couldn't afford evo-stik - we got our highs breathing in resin cored
solder fumes :-)

TTFN



D
ubuntu/uk-2007-11-13.tx                                        ubuntu-uk
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