"In the old days we...."

[MurphCID]

I remember programming a Univac 1004 with a plugboard which I had to hand wire with hundreds of wires to create a working program which I had written. Sort of dates me doesn't it.

'way back in the mid 60's I was an Intercept Equipment Repairman in the old Army Security Agency. I maintained a monster which was a 32 channel Teletype demux, in, as I remember, some four full relay racks and driving up to 32 Teletype machines. All vacuum tubes and mechanical relays, not a transistor in sight, and programmed via a patch panel. Made by a mechanical engineering company. It was an old, outdated piece of gear even then. That was in my second hitch in ASA.
First hitch I was a Morse Code Intercept Operator (better known as a Ditty-Bopper). Knowing Morse could be a great advantage if I'm ever in a third-world prison hellhole. I could communicate with other prisoners by tapping on the pipes in Morse. Otherwise it's a useless skill today but I still find myself occasionally reading road signs mentally in Morse Code. The Army did a great job burning the code into long-term memory. __._ _. _, __._ ... _._ (QNN QSK)

I am old enough to remember the ASA....

[fstjohn]

I am old enough to remember the ASA....

It was originally going to be named the Army Security Service until some bright Pentagon pencil pusher wrote out the initials.

[legacypowers]

...waited for saturday post 12:00 because the phone company would only charge 1 minute no matter how much time you were connected to bbs or later on internet, and it lasted until sunday 23:59.
And the usual parent picking up the phone and the connection dropping(usually in the middle of some relatively big download, or during online gaming)

[MurphCID]

...waited for saturday post 12:00 because the phone company would only charge 1 minute no matter how much time you were connected to bbs or later on internet, and it lasted until sunday 23:59.
And the usual parent picking up the phone and the connection dropping(usually in the middle of some relatively big download, or during online gaming)

Or call waiting coming in and knocking you off the internet. You had to do something like *67 to turn off call waiting.

[fstjohn]

Modems went from 150 baud to 300, 600, 1200 then 2400 and beyond. Compuserv and AOL dialup, and what was the predecessor to AOL (it was for Commodore only)? Finally got a second phone line and ran a BBS for a time. We lived in the Philly suburbs so there was always a local access point, so no LD fees. You could make coffee while a jpeg downloaded.

[MurphCID]

I am old enough to remember the ASA....

It was originally going to be named the Army Security Service until some bright Pentagon pencil pusher wrote out the initials.

I can well imagine that being the case knowing the Army....

[gittiest personITW]

In a different decade (you can figure out which one), I was honoured, as a young person, to be able to attend a 'hacker' party where Commodore 64 and 1541 drives were spiced up.
They also had a modem and a program that would 'access the DoD in the USA'. (think Wargames)
Now, at that time, landline costs to ring the USA from where we were were astronomical high. Think they were running at the super speed of about 80baud(?).
On the screen came up a black screen, line by line, with 'Welcome to the Pentagon' on the middle of the screen.
They ripped out the modem pretty damned quick while the person whose phone it was was commiserating about the phonebill and having the police knocking on his door any second. Of course the last bit didn't happen but it did shake him up a bit.

[MurphCID]

My daughters think that I carved out my first computer from a stone block, since I use that "Old person's O/S: Linux".

[MurphCID]

Daughter saw me using CLI and asked what it was, so I told her. She commented: Well I guess that was how you had to do it back in the days when you had to write your own programs to get the computer started" as she went back to her iPhone.....

[Moem]

When my mother saw the terminal for the first time, I told her: This is just like the underwater screen in WordPerfect. And she understood.

[rambo919]

The closest I can come is relied on magazine cover disks for most things because internet was too expensive to download much of anything.

Then later when local only internet became cheaper you could log requests for mods and demos (etc) from the magazine or ISP local FTP's for stuff that did not make the disks.

Some people even had multiple ADSL lines installed so that one could route to local and the other to foreign traffic.

Then came uncapped internet which obsoleted all that.

[GELvdH]

I remember setting up a telephone data connection between Baltimore, MD and Oklahoma City in the 60's. It was a Univac 1004 to a Univac 1050, hand wired programming boards for the 1004.

[fstjohn]

In the late 60's during the Cold War I worked for RCA Service Company at the Thule, Greenland BMEWS site. My job was shift supervisor in the Rearward Communications section. We maintained the Codex data transmitter and managed/troubleshot the long-line communications back to Cheyenne Mountain NORAD. We were coming down to Thule base in a bus convoy after a shift change when the B52 crashed on the bay near Thule. The plane had a full load of both A-bombs and fuel and the crash was spectacular, looking exactly like a nuclear explosion (all the bomb's detonators exploded scattering radioactive stuff over a very wide area but fortunately the fail-safes worked so no nuclear explosion). We all thought nuclear war was underway, Thule had just been vaporized and the nearest airport was thousands of miles away; we were toast. Sphincter tightening thoughts. Big relief when we found out the base was still there, but the cleanup was probably the most expensive in history.

[Peter Linu]

My 'old days' was 1995. I was 48 and my son asked me to store his new computer while he went on holidays. That's the last time he used it because he returned from vacation with a Mac and he's bin with Mac ever since.
The computer was a desktop that booted with floppy discs and used Win95. Modems were dial-up although cable was just being introduced. Cable prices were prohibitive... and I had no need. Within a year I had purchased a new computer with Win98 and no floppies. I guess from then on I followed a well-trodden path.

The only remarkable fork in the road was that even, or probably because Win was becoming complex, obtuse and their help desks were atrocious, I had heard about Linux and asked for a demo. Two propellor-heads came to my place. I saw its merits but it was too complex for this untrained-in-command-line activities. I was also too busy running a business to make the time.

[MurphCID]

It is funny we went from DOS commands (or CP/M) to GUI, and now we are using Command line again. Some good ideas never really die, they just get ignored for a while. Also we went from ASCII art, to GUI art, and then there is Neofetch..... We went from the agony of building or writing your own drivers, to having them installed.

[MurphCID]

In the old days we had to install our own transistors, and capacitors! After carving them out of stone....

[AndyMH]

Some of us remember valves (or tubes to those of you in the US). I was taught valve theory at university, the last year they did it.

[RollyShed]

Some of us remember valves (or tubes to those of you in the US). I was taught valve theory at university, the last year they did it.

Some of us built our own kitset one valve radio, Hikers One. I think I was 12 years old at the time. It was an improvement over my crystal set.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~radio/hikers.html
We have just come in a Ford car radio, spotted it on the bench. It definitely is a valve radio and will use a vibrator to provide the oscillation to run a transformer to get the high enough voltage for the valves. So who here remembers vibrators in car radios?

[Peter Linu]

Ah, valves.
I have built a 600Kg monster using 6C33 valves and a psu big enough to light up the whole suburb. Closely followed by several other lesser units for friends. This was followed by a 2-box 300B amp. I have also built valve phono stages, tuners and even a DAC. Then age-related hearing problems set in and I'm now happy with 20 year old computer speakers... dammit!

[MurphCID]

Tubes are still used in super high end stereo systems. But wow do those things put out the heat!