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2019-10-21 Science & Technology
Buh bye, 8
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Posted by M. Murcek 2019-10-21 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11139 views ]  Top

#1 Last time I used a 8 inch floppy was 1985 and they were already obsolete and almost impossible to find.
Posted by 3dc 2019-10-21 00:46||   2019-10-21 00:46|| Front Page Top

#2 First time I saw one used was on a Xerox computer.
Posted by Alaska Paul 2019-10-21 01:00||   2019-10-21 01:00|| Front Page Top

#3 I still have a few packed away somewhere. They look huge by today’s standards.
Posted by CrazyFool 2019-10-21 01:20||   2019-10-21 01:20|| Front Page Top

#4 Boot disk on a VAX-11/785
Posted by SteveS 2019-10-21 01:21||   2019-10-21 01:21|| Front Page Top

#5 "highly-secure solid state digital storage solution"

AKA thumb drive.
Posted by Seeking Cure For Ignorance 2019-10-21 01:44||   2019-10-21 01:44|| Front Page Top

#6 CD-ROM disk. No rewrite, can only burn once and discard after use. Anything that can be erased and rewritten should not be used.
Posted by magpie 2019-10-21 04:15||   2019-10-21 04:15|| Front Page Top

#7 Ima just had a Lotus Symphony flashback....
Posted by Raj 2019-10-21 07:47||   2019-10-21 07:47|| Front Page Top

#8 Ah, the Vax. Eminently configurable but didn't scale up worth a damn.
Posted by Mercutio 2019-10-21 08:47||   2019-10-21 08:47|| Front Page Top

#9 I remember our office Tandy and Wang workstations had these for word processing storage. The Tandy drive was a vertical integrated unit.

Speaking of VAX, I have a 80mb Dysan drive hanging on my office wall from a system we decommissioned in the mid-80's. It is a conversation starter.
Posted by Mullah Richard 2019-10-21 09:06||   2019-10-21 09:06|| Front Page Top

#10 I'm amazed that SACCS was still using this technology.
Posted by JohnQC 2019-10-21 09:55||   2019-10-21 09:55|| Front Page Top

#11 Mullah, if you had an RP06 hanging on your wall I'd be impressed. Used to be a DEC-head and could boot a PDP with the toggle switches but that was 40 years ago......my how time flies.
Posted by AlanC 2019-10-21 11:08||   2019-10-21 11:08|| Front Page Top

#12 magpie, when I worked for Sun Micro we worked with the NSA. We sold big UNIX servers and when a board that costs as much as a ferrari went bad we wanted it back. NSA said no, until finally we set it up where they could write 0 and 1 in their chosen pattern over every rom chip on the board and confirm the pattern was indeed there (I assume a number of times). Once we provided that they were comfortable in returning the boards. So you can erase things sufficiently enough to destroy any underlying data.
Posted by rjschwarz 2019-10-21 13:47||   2019-10-21 13:47|| Front Page Top

#13 Logo says Dysan SMD/80 702168 Silver.

It's just the Disc Pack, 5 Platters. RP06 would be a tad large to hang.
Posted by Mullah Richard 2019-10-21 13:54||   2019-10-21 13:54|| Front Page Top

#14 could boot a PDP with the toggle switches

Toggle switches and blinken lights... I need to go lie down.
Posted by SteveS 2019-10-21 14:05||   2019-10-21 14:05|| Front Page Top

#15 I still have a pack of FORTRAN cards.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-10-21 14:11||   2019-10-21 14:11|| Front Page Top

#16 G(r)om - do you mean those punch card thingies? I remember having to run a box of them over to the geek building every week (Kingsbury Hall at UNH - Durham) as part of my work-study job at the Controller's office updating their fixed assets. Woe to the person who dropped those cards and got the order of them mixed up...
Posted by Raj 2019-10-21 14:16||   2019-10-21 14:16|| Front Page Top

#17 Yep. I took a FORTRAN course in 82.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-10-21 14:18||   2019-10-21 14:18|| Front Page Top

#18 Same here in 1980
Posted by Frank G 2019-10-21 14:31||   2019-10-21 14:31|| Front Page Top

#19 Woe to the person who dropped those cards and got the order of them mixed up...

That's why it was smart to take a black marker and run a diagonal line across the top of the stack. You can regain a semblance of order pretty quickly just using the black line as an index. Not perfect but fast and easy insurance.
Posted by Anguting B. Hayes5633 2019-10-21 14:33||   2019-10-21 14:33|| Front Page Top

#20 I remember using the marker (or a pencil) that way.
Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-21 14:36||   2019-10-21 14:36|| Front Page Top

#21 Wrote my dissertation as one giant 'REM' on our lab PDP-11.
Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-21 14:38||   2019-10-21 14:38|| Front Page Top

#22 Sure hope those thumb drives are EMP protected.
Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-21 14:38||   2019-10-21 14:38|| Front Page Top

#23 Have CP/M on 8" floppies. Used to boot an Interdata 70 from a card reader after entering to the boot routine via front panel switches. OS was called BOSS and the drive 'directory' was a physical piece of paper with names and sector numbers written on it.
Posted by CrazyFool 2019-10-21 15:12||   2019-10-21 15:12|| Front Page Top

#24 Did the same thing here, ABH5633. 128-column and later 80-column.

Didn't help when they were improperly carried through a rain storm in a leaky bag, though.
Posted by Mullah Richard 2019-10-21 16:35||   2019-10-21 16:35|| Front Page Top

#25 Y'all are making me feel old. Learned Fortran in 75 in college... Keypunch cards... Infinite do loops...causing everyone to stay late 'cause I locked up the printer because 1 card was out of sequence. That was a long time ago.
Posted by BrerRabbit 2019-10-21 17:09||   2019-10-21 17:09|| Front Page Top

#26 My dad's master's thesis was on punch cards. A cloud model. Said the computer guys hated him because his program was really too big for their computer. My brother and I turned dead cards into paper airplanes.
Posted by Silentbrick 2019-10-21 19:21||   2019-10-21 19:21|| Front Page Top

#27 Fortran '67; punch cards. Would have failed the course, but "the computer lost my registration"...heheheh
Posted by Mercutio 2019-10-21 19:30||   2019-10-21 19:30|| Front Page Top

#28 Fortran IV & Cobol. 1971-74.

Forgotten most of it (new info pushes out old, etc.). Could have made a mint in Fall of 1999.
Posted by Mullah Richard 2019-10-21 20:32||   2019-10-21 20:32|| Front Page Top

#29 Mullah Richard - still have the text books from those courses.
Hacked my first computer in 1974. An IBM-360 that was a node in the early ARPA net.


Hacked because the I/O clerk intentionally dropped my FORTRAN deck of 2000 cards to draw Miss November in splines and curves.
Posted by 3dc 2019-10-21 21:45||   2019-10-21 21:45|| Front Page Top

#30 Wrote my first FORTRAN code in 1964. IBM 1620.
Posted by KBK 2019-10-21 22:27||   2019-10-21 22:27|| Front Page Top

23:26 Gramp Brown5117
23:25 Fat Bob Javish1936
23:24 Fat Bob Javish1936
23:16 Secret Master
23:08 JohnQC
23:05 JohnQC
22:47 JohnQC
22:38 KBK
22:27 KBK
22:12 Cesare
22:09 Glenmore
21:45 3dc
21:21 Lex
21:20 USN, Ret.
20:52 DarthVader
20:43 Rob Crawford
20:36 Vespasian Angomoting1359
20:32 Mullah Richard
20:11 trailing wife
19:54 jpal
19:36 Mercutio
19:30 Mercutio
19:23 Silentbrick
19:21 Silentbrick









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