On 07/21/2018 12:20 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
On Saturday 21 July 2018 11:42:31 Richard Owlett wrote:
When I'm "ignorant" and know it, I refer to myself as a "newbie".
My first contact with Linux was when Squeeze was just introduced.
I've been around computers for a while [remember 12AX7 based CPU's?].
No, but I recall seeing, in Iowa City in the very early 1950's, a bit of
a monster that had 12,000 12AU7's in it. Used at the time to grade the
Iowa tests, the same one I had taken in school and got a quite high
score on. They had rigged a Harris Stream fed printing press with a
photocell at every mark location on the paper and were calculating the
scores from that.
As a BSEE student 50+ years ago I took an introductory programming
course. Later I programmed in 8080 assembler - at the time we were
moving to 8085. As a consumer I ended up in the M$ land.
I started with the rca 1802. Still an interesting architecture, one that
was able to function in several rads a minute of atomic radiation. But I
tried the z-80, found it wanting, then the 6809 which put me firmly on a
unix like path, and to this day I still don't have a winders box on the
premises. Quite a few linux machines though.
OS-9 Level II on a CoCo 3 by any chance? I had one of those systems and
then I went to DOS and Windows. That to me was a step down until
Slackware came along. Then Red Hat, then Mandrake ('scuze me...er...
Mandriva), then Mint, Then Solyd, now full on Debian. I only used Ubuntu
as a web server at work and in test VMs. Oh, and there was a stint in
there somewhere where I was dabbling on a real-life Unix system. My ISP
back in the day had "shell accounts" and a wizard (RIP) who worked there
took me under his wing and taught me how to use it and saved my sorry
butt when I screwed up. :)
The VERY FIRST computer I ever used was a teletype terminal on a DEC
Rainbow (TeleWriter) at the Jr. High School. I was one year too young to
technically be allowed to use it but they let me anyway. Only a few whiz
kids were allowed on it. Me? I couldn't do a damn thing with it so gave
up. :-/ Then I started tinkering with the Bell & Howell and Apple
Computers at the school. I think that came after I bugged my parents for
a computer and they came home from Radio Shack with a Trash-80 Model III
with 4K RAM, cassette interface (later CGP-115 4" roll paper 4-color
plotter). They never put disk drives in the thing. I spent HOURS
programming stuff and got good enough to do labels for my dad's business
and title screens for family videos (VHS - my dad would record the
screen, and tape-splice VHS tapes). From there they gave me a Trash-80
(called "Tandy" by then) PC-4 pocket computer. When I got a job I got a
Tandy CoCo 3 and OS-9 Level II and let's just say that was the beginning
of everything Unix-like for me. Though it was more a VAX/Unix blend I
think. And Basic09 was more a Pascal/Basic blend.
And I'm still a new bee... But a fading one due to the age of the wet
ram now.
I'm also a bee of some kind. Probably a drone or worker bee. I'll always
be a bee of some kind though. I often find myself getting sidetracked
and wanting to learn new things, not realizing just how old I got already!
So, how would this group have me to refer to myself without claiming
competency I just *DO NOT* have?
P.S. I've saved ~6 years of useful posts from this group. I've been
trying to figure out how to organize it in order to create a QWSBFA
rather than a FAQ. QWSBFA=="Questions Which Should Be Frequently
Asked" ;/
That sounds like a heck of a usefull project.
OWL ducks fer cover ;}
If you find a good cover, see if there's room for me too.
And me too, along with a good flame-retardant suit and a nice, cozy rock
to hide under. ;->
That's the one cool thing about this group and groups like it is the
conversations where you learn a little bit about those folks in the
group in between learning other useful things. Reminds me of the old
FidoNet days (and later newsgroup days - do they still even have either
anymore??)
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TAGLINE: "Wait-a-minit. Almonds don't have legs."
