3 ms·

> I was lucky. Our high school system shared a DEC PDP-8. This was in 1974. Luxury! (Monty Python "Four Yorkshiremen" reference) In 1974 I was (the equivalent

> I was lucky. Our high school system shared a DEC PDP-8. This was in 1974. Luxury! (Monty Python "Four Yorkshiremen" reference) In 1974 I was (the equivalent of) a junior in high school in South Africa. Back then we called it "Form 4", fwiw. * Number of computers at high school: Zero * Number of computers to which we had access: Zero A friend and I joined the school computer club. I think we were the only members. We were allowed to sit in on a FORTRAN IV programming course at the local university, and use their IBM 360/50 mainframe via golfball ttys. We were even allowed to write the exam, which we failed spectacularly. We would have killed for a PDP-8 (if we even knew what that was, frankly). There was no such thing as "online". "And you tell that to the kids today? They won't believe ya!"

musesum 9y ago
And yet here we are. It appears that all roads lead to hacker news. > "Four Yorkshiremen" Zero computers? Ok, you win. This is a later version of our computer https://youtu.be/NtAF-WfWyGU https://youtu.be/NtAF-WfWyGU To load the OS, you first had to hand key in a bootstrap loader in octal (base 8) on the front panel. The loader would then read the OS from paper tape into magnetic core. Our computer was a PDP-8/i. Someone mentioned that the PDP-8/i was about as powerful as a Raspberry Pi. So, imagine a half dozen schools timesharing a Raspberry Pi. Currently, I'm writing for the Apple Watch, which is more powerful than a Cray-2 -- a supercomputer that cost $16 Million in 1984.
- defined 9y ago
  > This is a later version of our computer... Nice YouTube video, thanks. > To load the OS, you first had to hand key in a bootstrap loader in octal (base 8) on the front panel. When I eventually got to university in 1978, we had a PDP-11 of some sort, and I recall entering the boot program by setting the address and data toggle switches and booting from paper tape. I have no idea if it was core memory. Those were the days :)

musesum 9y ago

And yet here we are. It appears that all roads lead to hacker news. > "Four Yorkshiremen" Zero computers? Ok, you win. This is a later version of our computer https://youtu.be/NtAF-WfWyGU https://youtu.be/NtAF-WfWyGU To load the OS, you first had to hand key in a bootstrap loader in octal (base 8) on the front panel. The loader would then read the OS from paper tape into magnetic core. Our computer was a PDP-8/i. Someone mentioned that the PDP-8/i was about as powerful as a Raspberry Pi. So, imagine a half dozen schools timesharing a Raspberry Pi. Currently, I'm writing for the Apple Watch, which is more powerful than a Cray-2 -- a supercomputer that cost $16 Million in 1984.

defined 9y ago
> This is a later version of our computer... Nice YouTube video, thanks. > To load the OS, you first had to hand key in a bootstrap loader in octal (base 8) on the front panel. When I eventually got to university in 1978, we had a PDP-11 of some sort, and I recall entering the boot program by setting the address and data toggle switches and booting from paper tape. I have no idea if it was core memory. Those were the days :)