On 01/20/2017 06:26 PM, Jeffrey Jonas via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Movies kinda show what it was like back then with the closed shop fishbowl-data-center. Only operators were inside to touch the machine. Now with "the cloud", we don't even get to see das blinkenlights and tapes-a-twirling. I still remember feeling so heartfallen when I learned that the FORTRAN "sense lights" might not actually light up anything. That's why I was so happy to use the LGP-21, where sense switches were REAL SWITCHES!
Come back in minutes or hours, depending on the load,
Last Monday a gentleman was interested in what IXR had to offer. He as interested in IoT so I showed him some of the Home Automation stuff I'm working with. I also had the Atari 600xl opened up and on the table (it has a good color signal so I know it's working). He mentioned he had grown up with an Atari 400 and a tape drive in Siberia. He lamented on the trustworthiness of the tape drive and how long it took to load (yes he must have really had one). Load times for a 16 minute tape (why did Radio Shack have 16 minute tapes) was about 45 minutes, if it worked. I also recall compiling Yggdrasil Linux on my 6386SX/EL WGS. That usually took 28 hours to compile. ;-) You did have to be careful with the options you selected. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies