4 ms·

The first time I did this in 2001 it took me a week. It's still up there as one of the most educational things I've ever done. A perfect graduate level class

by sprior 6y ago

The first time I did this in 2001 it took me a week. It's still up there as one of the most educational things I've ever done. A perfect graduate level class would be "here's a box full of computer parts, at the end of the semester I'll give you the grade you display on a web page served by the computer you build and compile from scratch".

kevinherron 6y ago
So... basically pass/fail? Who's gonna get that far but type 'F' instead of 'A' into the HTML they author?
- sprior 6y ago
  Puts skin in the game. No kidding in 1987 I actually did convince a professor to agree to an independent study course for me and a friend to build a voice synthesizer on an IBM PC proto board using the TI chipset available at the time and the only terms of the class would be that he gave us the grade my computer verbally asked him for at the end of the semester. We actually built two of them, one for each of us. It was wire-wrapped. We had no backup plan whatsoever and it was a brave/stupid thing to do, but we both got A's and the prof told us his only regret was that he didn't have us make one for him too. Even more skin was that it went into my own IBM PC, so if I blew that up not only wouldn't I have had enough credits to graduate but PCs were very expensive at the time. These days you can blow up a Raspberry Pi and who cares.
saagarjha 6y ago
I wonder if it would be less work to write an OS with the sole purpose of pushing out packets for the hardcoded webpage…
mindcrime 6y ago
A perfect graduate level class would be "here's a box full of computer parts, at the end of the semester I'll give you the grade you display on a web page served by the computer you build and compile from scratch". I actually had a class not too different in spirit from that once, but it wasn't even close to graduate level. It was a class I took at Brunswick Community College while working on an A.S. degree in Computer Programming. Here's how it went: I had been at BCC before, when I got an Associate in General Education degree. I had taken a few computer related classes, and had gotten to know the main instructor who taught most of the computer programming stuff. Maybe it helped that we were both named "Phil" but we struck up a mild acquaintanceship if not an outright friendship. Fast forward a few years, after I had transfered to UNC-W, then dropped out, then returned to BCC to get another associate degree. I signed up for a class titled "Operating Systems", which turned out to be more of a "Survey of Operating Systems" not any kind of "OS internals" (keep in mind, we were at a community college here). Anyway, I walk into class the first day and my old friend Phil is the instructor. He looks at me, smiles, and says "I have a deal for you." I don't know what the rest of the class did all semester, but he pointed me to a room off to the side of the main room we were in, that held: 1. An ancient IBM AS/400 minicomputer 2. The biggest stack of those big-ass reel tapes I've ever seen 3. A ginormous stack of manuals The deal he offers me? Get an operating system installed on this machine, get it booting (except they don't call it "boot" in AS/400 land, they call it "IPL" for Initial Program Load or something to that effect), put it on the Internet, and be able to log into it remotely. If I do that, no matter how long it takes, I get an "A" for the class, and don't have to do any of the other work the others are doing. Apparently this monstrosity had been donated to the college by a local company that decommissioned it. And I guess the college had nobody on staff (besides instructor Phil) who knew anything about the things. Not sure how long it had been sitting there before the job fell into my lap, but I digress... As it were, it took a little while (at the time I'd never touched an AS/400 before), but I managed to get it going. Then I spent the rest of the semester coming in and just playing around on that thing. I got my "A" and even more, Phil helped me land my first real IT job as an AS/400 operator. Which all led, indirectly, through fits and starts, to where I am today. I don't work specifically with AS/400 (iSeries now, I think) machines any more, but I have a sort of sentimental attachment to them I guess. Not so much for RPG/IV and SEU though.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  So the only two grades possible are A and NULL?
  - mindcrime 6y ago
    Pretty much. But back in those days the central computer for the college, where they kept student records and stuff, was a Prime mainframe running PRIMOS, and I'm not sure how well it handled NULL. So who knows what (apparent) grade I would have wound up with in that case...

by sprior 6y ago

kevinherron 6y ago

So... basically pass/fail? Who's gonna get that far but type 'F' instead of 'A' into the HTML they author?

sprior 6y ago
Puts skin in the game. No kidding in 1987 I actually did convince a professor to agree to an independent study course for me and a friend to build a voice synthesizer on an IBM PC proto board using the TI chipset available at the time and the only terms of the class would be that he gave us the grade my computer verbally asked him for at the end of the semester. We actually built two of them, one for each of us. It was wire-wrapped. We had no backup plan whatsoever and it was a brave/stupid thing to do, but we both got A's and the prof told us his only regret was that he didn't have us make one for him too. Even more skin was that it went into my own IBM PC, so if I blew that up not only wouldn't I have had enough credits to graduate but PCs were very expensive at the time. These days you can blow up a Raspberry Pi and who cares.

saagarjha 6y ago

I wonder if it would be less work to write an OS with the sole purpose of pushing out packets for the hardcoded webpage…

mindcrime 6y ago

A perfect graduate level class would be "here's a box full of computer parts, at the end of the semester I'll give you the grade you display on a web page served by the computer you build and compile from scratch". I actually had a class not too different in spirit from that once, but it wasn't even close to graduate level. It was a class I took at Brunswick Community College while working on an A.S. degree in Computer Programming. Here's how it went: I had been at BCC before, when I got an Associate in General Education degree. I had taken a few computer related classes, and had gotten to know the main instructor who taught most of the computer programming stuff. Maybe it helped that we were both named "Phil" but we struck up a mild acquaintanceship if not an outright friendship. Fast forward a few years, after I had transfered to UNC-W, then dropped out, then returned to BCC to get another associate degree. I signed up for a class titled "Operating Systems", which turned out to be more of a "Survey of Operating Systems" not any kind of "OS internals" (keep in mind, we were at a community college here). Anyway, I walk into class the first day and my old friend Phil is the instructor. He looks at me, smiles, and says "I have a deal for you." I don't know what the rest of the class did all semester, but he pointed me to a room off to the side of the main room we were in, that held: 1. An ancient IBM AS/400 minicomputer 2. The biggest stack of those big-ass reel tapes I've ever seen 3. A ginormous stack of manuals The deal he offers me? Get an operating system installed on this machine, get it booting (except they don't call it "boot" in AS/400 land, they call it "IPL" for Initial Program Load or something to that effect), put it on the Internet, and be able to log into it remotely. If I do that, no matter how long it takes, I get an "A" for the class, and don't have to do any of the other work the others are doing. Apparently this monstrosity had been donated to the college by a local company that decommissioned it. And I guess the college had nobody on staff (besides instructor Phil) who knew anything about the things. Not sure how long it had been sitting there before the job fell into my lap, but I digress... As it were, it took a little while (at the time I'd never touched an AS/400 before), but I managed to get it going. Then I spent the rest of the semester coming in and just playing around on that thing. I got my "A" and even more, Phil helped me land my first real IT job as an AS/400 operator. Which all led, indirectly, through fits and starts, to where I am today. I don't work specifically with AS/400 (iSeries now, I think) machines any more, but I have a sort of sentimental attachment to them I guess. Not so much for RPG/IV and SEU though.

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
So the only two grades possible are A and NULL?
- mindcrime 6y ago
  Pretty much. But back in those days the central computer for the college, where they kept student records and stuff, was a Prime mainframe running PRIMOS, and I'm not sure how well it handled NULL. So who knows what (apparent) grade I would have wound up with in that case...