Nostalgia Lane

[seacoast]

great!!

[smokeshadow]

3 hours ago, Steve said:

I suspect that some of us used these yellow, plastic thingies so we didn't have to go hunting for the adapter 

 

 

[teddy0012]

5 hours ago, smokeshadow said:

I suspect that some of us used these yellow, plastic thingies so we didn't have to go hunting for the adapter 

 

 

Damn, I think I saw one of those in my junk drawer. I'd forgotten what it was for.  Thanks @smokeshadow

[Steve]

Great times and great memories

[smokeshadow]

1 hour ago, teddy0012 said:

Damn, I think I saw one of those in my junk drawer. I'd forgotten what it was for.  Thanks @smokeshadow

I've got a Ziplock baggie containing a couple dozen of those thingies left over from when I last bought a bunch in college (45 or so years ago  ).  I hang onto them because I still occasionally browse the 45 RPM rack at Half-Price Books

[David9311]

[cdadbr]

15 hours ago, Steve said:

In 1955, the Ford Fairlane Sunliner stole the show with its retractable hardtop, a revolutionary feature ahead of its time!

The "retractable hardtop" Ford Skyliners were made from 1957-1959, as the T-birds with a similar set-up of folding metal top which retracted into what used to be the trunk area were from 1958-1960 model years.  Those cars had a metal roof which had sections which folded, rather than a cloth top.  A massive amount of wire, travel-limit switches, and relays for the symphony of motion which was well-coreographed.  In what I suspect was the first season of "Perry Mason", Perry drove a black 1957 Ford Skyliner in the show.

[Brucex]

Learning to drive on Dad's 1959 Conway Yellow and Black Ford Mk II Consul. Manual gearbox with column change and a wonderfully smooth hydraulic clutch but awful drum brakes all round. Bench seats and no seat belts!

 

[Horace12]

On 12/29/2021 at 9:36 PM, Guest GlenCoco said:

So true:  the difference between lived and observed experience.  

[Brucex]

University computing 1970's style :

 

 

 

 

Spend months learning Fortran

Spend 3 days to write and check flow chart and program. Never speak of nested do-loops to me

Wait 2 days for 2hour slot on punch card machine.

Take pile of punch cards to computing centre - if you are lucky you won’t drop them and spend  a morning putting them back in order. Yes, I did have that happen!

Hand in card pile to grumpy old bat in reception and wait 3 days for program to run on mainframe.

 

 

Collect program only to find it failed few lines in because of a misplaced bracket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start again and, if successful, collect processed data and enter into hand-written table in lab book. The results will probably only contribute a couple of sentences to your thesis and these days would be processed with a few key strokes in Excel

 

Edited February 8 by Brucex

[teddy0012]

2 minutes ago, Brucex said:

University computing 1970's style :

 

 

And to think I actually took a 1st year course on Fortran and other now very obsolete computer programming codes back in the early 1980s

[gwtwh]

On 5/4/2023 at 8:33 PM, Steve said:

The CBS Evening News premieres today in 1948 and becomes the longest running network news show in history.

News studios invariably hold a great deal of fascination for me.

[Steve]

[Brucex]

19 minutes ago, Steve said:

I spy Andy Pandy and Little Ted😀 BTW you always had to have a television lamp on in the evening - watching in the dark was also considered a bad idea.

Edited February 8 by Brucex

[JackFTwist]

11 hours ago, Brucex said:

Hand in card pile to grumpy old bat in reception and wait 3 days for program to run on mainframe.

At my university's computer center, the reception desk was staffed by computer science graduate students who treated undergraduates like some lower life form.  This turned out to be excellent preparation for my interactions with computer technical support people for most of the rest of my education and professional career.  Luckily, at my school's computer center, the turnaround time to get our results back was typically under 12 hours, depending on how busy the mainframe was.  

11 hours ago, Brucex said:

Collect program only to find it failed few lines in because of a misplaced bracket.

Oh, yes.

11 hours ago, teddy0012 said:

And to think I actually took a 1st year course on Fortran and other now very obsolete computer programming codes back in the early 1980s

Actually, Fortran lives on!  It's the preferred language for many applications because each new version is designed to be backward-compatible with legacy Fortran programs that are still being used.

11 hours ago, Brucex said:

Never speak of nested do-loops to me

Life is a nested do-loop.

Edited February 9 by JackFTwist

[cdadbr]

1 hour ago, Brucex said:

University computing 1970's style :

 

 

 

 

Spend months learning Fortran

Spend 3 days to write and check flow chart and program. Never speak of nested do-loops to me

Wait 2 days for 2hour slot on punch card machine.

Take pile of punch cards to computing centre - if you are lucky you won’t drop them and spend  a morning putting them back in order. Yes, I did have that happen!

Hand in card pile to grumpy old bat in reception and wait 3 days for program to run on mainframe.

 

 

Collect program only to find it failed few lines in because of a misplaced bracket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start again and, if successful, collect processed data and enter into hand-written table in lab book. The results will probably only contribute a couple of sentences to your thesis and these days would be processed with a few key strokes in Excel

 

Yep, did Fortran IV.  Write program, go to the computing center and transfer it to punch cards.  Take cards to university computing center.  Hand cards to nice male attendant.  Return to see how things went.  The Major Do-Loop was "write, run program, collect results, re-write, cycle repeat until success happened".  Another way of implementing "Continuous Improvement!  Never bothered with Cobol!

[cdadbr]

1 hour ago, Brucex said:

I spy Andy Pandy and Little Ted😀 BTW you always had to have a television lamp on in the evening - watching in the dark was also considered a bad idea.

Two things at play here.  TV screens were dimmer back then, so the Lava Lamp on the TV provided enough light in the dim room to see what was going on in the room.  Being in a dark room with a TV could be "blinding", for some people.  Like driving on a moonless night and suddenly a car with high-beams blaring appears.  A side note, the dimly-lit room reminded one of going to the movies to watch black & white adventure movies!

[Brucex]

Moving boldy into the pioneering era of personal computing with a BBC B microcomputer and programming in BBC Basic

[smokeshadow]

2 hours ago, Brucex said:

University computing 1970's style :

 

 

 

 

Spend months learning Fortran

Spend 3 days to write and check flow chart and program. Never speak of nested do-loops to me

Wait 2 days for 2hour slot on punch card machine.

Take pile of punch cards to computing centre - if you are lucky you won’t drop them and spend  a morning putting them back in order. Yes, I did have that happen!

Hand in card pile to grumpy old bat in reception and wait 3 days for program to run on mainframe.

 

 

Collect program only to find it failed few lines in because of a misplaced bracket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start again and, if successful, collect processed data and enter into hand-written table in lab book. The results will probably only contribute a couple of sentences to your thesis and these days would be processed with a few key strokes in Excel

 

I was an architecture major in college; and, we still had a year of Fortran Watfor to enjoy.  It was 1975; and, even I could see that the future of computing wasn't in the cards 

[smokeshadow]

4 minutes ago, Brucex said:

Moving boldy into the pioneering era of personal computing with a BBC B microcomputer and programming in BBC Basic

and look what you paid for your first home computer 

 

 

[xiaolili]

nice

[JackFTwist]

9 hours ago, smokeshadow said:

and look what you paid for your first home computer 

And notice that the price didn't even include the monitor, a dot-matrix printer, or even the mouse!

Edited February 9 by JackFTwist

[teddy0012]

25 minutes ago, JackFTwist said:

And that price didn't even include a dot-matrix printer!

I think I bought my first PC clone (it had a pokey 10 inch amber screen with courier font only and no games - not even pong) plus a dot matrix printer (fuck that thing was noisy) for about C$7,500 back in the mid-1980s.  It sole purpose was word processing😆

[Lecs]

On 5/17/2023 at 1:04 PM, RHawk said:

Planet of the apes movie. Wasn't the woman a skeleton at the beginning of the movie?

Mlml

[Kawika]

On 2/7/2024 at 6:15 AM, Brucex said:

The GPO telephone in the hall with a proper ringtone

 

 

Sounds like the telephone my father had when he lived in London... different ring when he retired and moved to Wimbledon.