30 Jun
2022
30 Jun
'22
3:14 p.m.
What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills “our grandkids won’t have”?
Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because your keyboard has a stuck
key
- something I absolutely don’t miss.
Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime & wondering how a
reboot might go?
steve j
=========
9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
<https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/>
1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
2: Using analog phones [ or an Analog Clock ]
3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
4. Reading and writing in cursive
5. Using manual research methods [ this is a Genealogy site ]
6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
7. Creating and mending clothing
8. Building furniture from scratch
9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
30 Jun
30 Jun
3:39 p.m.
Programming an 026 skip card. Inserting the skip card.
Using ed in kernel safe mode to fix a broken config file.
Threading a half-inch tape in a tape drive. Remembering to insert or
remove the write ring.
Cleaning floppy disk heads.
Manually keying a boot program into an SDS-930.
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:14 AM steve jenkin <sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au>
wrote:
What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills
“our grandkids won’t
have”?
Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because your
keyboard has a stuck key
- something I absolutely don’t miss.
Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime &
wondering how a reboot might go?
steve j
=========
9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
<
https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/
1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
2: Using analog phones
[ or an Analog Clock ]
3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
4. Reading and writing in cursive
5. Using manual research methods [
this is a Genealogy site ]
6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
7. Creating and mending clothing
8. Building furniture from scratch
9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
3:54 p.m.
Taking floppy disks out of the holders and floating them on the cold air
updrafts in computer room false floor.
On 6/30/22 9:39 AM, Marc Donner wrote:
Programming an 026 skip card. Inserting the skip
card.
Using ed in kernel safe mode to fix a broken config file.
Threading a half-inch tape in a tape drive. Remembering to insert or
remove the write ring.
Cleaning floppy disk heads.
Manually keying a boot program into an SDS-930.
=====
nygeek.net <http://nygeek.net>
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:14 AM steve jenkin
<sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au> wrote:
What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills “our grandkids
won’t have”?
Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because
your keyboard has a stuck key
- something I absolutely don’t miss.
Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime &
wondering how a reboot might go?
steve j
=========
9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
<https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/>
1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
2: Using analog phones [ or an Analog
Clock ]
3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
4. Reading and writing in cursive
5. Using manual research methods [ this is a
Genealogy site ]
6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
7. Creating and mending clothing
8. Building furniture from scratch
9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
4:08 p.m.
A fun one: Using folders.
People in their early 20s and younger - mostly those who grew up with
iPhones, Androids and Ipads - didn't interact with filesystems.
Instead, they grew up using apps that handled storage for them. When
they wanted a video, they were looking for it in a streaming app, and
they used the app's search function. If they were looking at photos,
it was much the same. Because of this, as hard as it is to believe,
they don't really grok the concept - and this keeps popping up, to my
delight.
It initially popped into my field of view last year, when an astro
professor was running into trouble with undergrad students. The
professor was asking the students to put certain data into certain
folders, but the students fundamentally didn't understand what
"putting certain data in certain folders" meant:
https://twitter.com/saavikford/status/1425235201047908359
I love this quote from the professor, though unfortunately the tweet
prompting it was deleted. The professor was asked something like "do
the students not understand how drawers work?" Her response was, "They
fail to grasp that the idea of drawers themselves might exist. Because
they have a perfectly valid system of a laundry basket and a robot
that retrieves exactly the sock they want when they want it (as I'm
finally figuring out). Or something like that, anyway."
And this continues to pop up - I saw a reddit thread the other day
that brought up entry-level computer science students who are coming
in not understanding folders at all. It's being added to the list of
abstractions that most people don't interact with day-to-day anymore,
and which must be explained.
With that said, I have a friend my age (30s) who enjoys bringing up
their conviction that the Zoomers are correct, and hierarchical
filesystems should go the way of the dinosaur - with
searchability/tagging being the correct way to handle storage. That
could also be a fun discussion for the ML.
One other fun note for the prompt. Someone noted that, working at an
apple store, they kept seeing young people use the caps lock key even
when just typing the first letter of the sentence; it then clicked
that this is closest to how phone keyboards work, and is likely where
they got the muscle memory from.
Hope you're all having a nice morning,
Marshall
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:40 AM Marc Donner <marc.donner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Programming an 026 skip card. Inserting the skip card.
Using ed in kernel safe mode to fix a broken config file.
Threading a half-inch tape in a tape drive. Remembering to insert or remove the write
ring.
Cleaning floppy disk heads.
Manually keying a boot program into an SDS-930.
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:14 AM steve jenkin <sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au> wrote:
>
> What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills “our grandkids won’t have”?
>
> Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because your keyboard has a
stuck key
> - something I absolutely don’t miss.
>
> Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime & wondering how a
reboot might go?
>
> steve j
>
> =========
>
> 9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
>
<https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/>
>
> 1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
> 2: Using analog phones [ or
an Analog Clock ]
> 3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
> 4. Reading and writing in cursive
> 5. Using manual research methods [ this is a
Genealogy site ]
> 6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
> 7. Creating and mending clothing
> 8. Building furniture from scratch
> 9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
>
> --
> Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
> PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
>
> mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
>
4:15 p.m.
I can still remember my amazement when I learned that a floppy or a
hard disk wasn't one big file. That's when the light went on that
there was a file system.
Another one was popen(), I saw the fork in there and my head exploded, for
some stupid reason I didn't think that libc would create new processes.
One light bulb after another.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 10:08:34AM -0400, Marshall Conover wrote:
A fun one: Using folders.
People in their early 20s and younger - mostly those who grew up with
iPhones, Androids and Ipads - didn't interact with filesystems.
Instead, they grew up using apps that handled storage for them. When
they wanted a video, they were looking for it in a streaming app, and
they used the app's search function. If they were looking at photos,
it was much the same. Because of this, as hard as it is to believe,
they don't really grok the concept - and this keeps popping up, to my
delight.
It initially popped into my field of view last year, when an astro
professor was running into trouble with undergrad students. The
professor was asking the students to put certain data into certain
folders, but the students fundamentally didn't understand what
"putting certain data in certain folders" meant:
https://twitter.com/saavikford/status/1425235201047908359
I love this quote from the professor, though unfortunately the tweet
prompting it was deleted. The professor was asked something like "do
the students not understand how drawers work?" Her response was, "They
fail to grasp that the idea of drawers themselves might exist. Because
they have a perfectly valid system of a laundry basket and a robot
that retrieves exactly the sock they want when they want it (as I'm
finally figuring out). Or something like that, anyway."
And this continues to pop up - I saw a reddit thread the other day
that brought up entry-level computer science students who are coming
in not understanding folders at all. It's being added to the list of
abstractions that most people don't interact with day-to-day anymore,
and which must be explained.
With that said, I have a friend my age (30s) who enjoys bringing up
their conviction that the Zoomers are correct, and hierarchical
filesystems should go the way of the dinosaur - with
searchability/tagging being the correct way to handle storage. That
could also be a fun discussion for the ML.
One other fun note for the prompt. Someone noted that, working at an
apple store, they kept seeing young people use the caps lock key even
when just typing the first letter of the sentence; it then clicked
that this is closest to how phone keyboards work, and is likely where
they got the muscle memory from.
Hope you're all having a nice morning,
Marshall
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:40 AM Marc Donner <marc.donner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Programming an 026 skip card. Inserting the skip card.
> Using ed in kernel safe mode to fix a broken config file.
> Threading a half-inch tape in a tape drive. Remembering to insert or remove the
write ring.
> Cleaning floppy disk heads.
> Manually keying a boot program into an SDS-930.
> =====
> nygeek.net
> mindthegapdialogs.com/home
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:14 AM steve jenkin <sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au>
wrote:
>>
>> What are the 1970???s & 1980???s Computing / IT skills ???our grandkids
won???t have????
>>
>> Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because your keyboard
has a stuck key
>> - something I absolutely don???t miss.
>>
>> Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime & wondering
how a reboot might go?
>>
>> steve j
>>
>> =========
>>
>> 9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
>>
<https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/>
>>
>> 1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
>> 2: Using analog phones
[ or an Analog Clock ]
>> 3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
>> 4. Reading and writing in cursive
>> 5. Using manual research methods [ this
is a Genealogy site ]
>> 6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
>> 7. Creating and mending clothing
>> 8. Building furniture from scratch
>> 9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
>>
>> --
>> Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
>> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
>> PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
>>
>> mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
>>
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
4:32 p.m.
Every time I teach a course that deals with the terminal, I have to have
a complete lecture on files, filesystems and the concept of current
directory. It is a rare exception that I get students who know them from
prior experience. This includes folks into their 40's.
in the spirit of what our grandkids won't have skills (or knowledge) for:
Our grandkids won't go looking for bent pins on their video cables or
know that's why their normally colorful view of the world suddenly tints
cyanish...
or that a crossover's a cable
or that whiz-bang programming languages of the modern era are still
playing catch-up to ALGOL 1960 and other brilliant languages of the 20th
century
or that there was a time when current decided 0's and 1's rather than
voltage
they'll be endlessly frustrated by CD/DVDs even if they can find a
player - some working and some not (writeables have significant
calibration and/or deterioration issues) - oh wait, that last one's not
my grandkids, it's me :).
On 6/30/22 9:08 AM, Marshall Conover wrote:
A fun one: Using folders.
People in their early 20s and younger - mostly those who grew up with
iPhones, Androids and Ipads - didn't interact with filesystems.
Instead, they grew up using apps that handled storage for them. When
they wanted a video, they were looking for it in a streaming app, and
they used the app's search function. If they were looking at photos,
it was much the same. Because of this, as hard as it is to believe,
they don't really grok the concept - and this keeps popping up, to my
delight.
It initially popped into my field of view last year, when an astro
professor was running into trouble with undergrad students. The
professor was asking the students to put certain data into certain
folders, but the students fundamentally didn't understand what
"putting certain data in certain folders" meant:
https://twitter.com/saavikford/status/1425235201047908359
I love this quote from the professor, though unfortunately the tweet
prompting it was deleted. The professor was asked something like "do
the students not understand how drawers work?" Her response was, "They
fail to grasp that the idea of drawers themselves might exist. Because
they have a perfectly valid system of a laundry basket and a robot
that retrieves exactly the sock they want when they want it (as I'm
finally figuring out). Or something like that, anyway."
And this continues to pop up - I saw a reddit thread the other day
that brought up entry-level computer science students who are coming
in not understanding folders at all. It's being added to the list of
abstractions that most people don't interact with day-to-day anymore,
and which must be explained.
With that said, I have a friend my age (30s) who enjoys bringing up
their conviction that the Zoomers are correct, and hierarchical
filesystems should go the way of the dinosaur - with
searchability/tagging being the correct way to handle storage. That
could also be a fun discussion for the ML.
One other fun note for the prompt. Someone noted that, working at an
apple store, they kept seeing young people use the caps lock key even
when just typing the first letter of the sentence; it then clicked
that this is closest to how phone keyboards work, and is likely where
they got the muscle memory from.
Hope you're all having a nice morning,
Marshall
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:40 AM Marc Donner <marc.donner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Programming an 026 skip card. Inserting the skip card.
> Using ed in kernel safe mode to fix a broken config file.
> Threading a half-inch tape in a tape drive. Remembering to insert or remove the
write ring.
> Cleaning floppy disk heads.
> Manually keying a boot program into an SDS-930.
> =====
> nygeek.net
> mindthegapdialogs.com/home
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:14 AM steve jenkin <sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au>
wrote:
>> What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills “our grandkids won’t
have”?
>>
>> Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because your keyboard has
a stuck key
>> - something I absolutely don’t miss.
>>
>> Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime & wondering
how a reboot might go?
>>
>> steve j
>>
>> =========
>>
>> 9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
>>
<https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/>
>>
>> 1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
>> 2: Using analog phones
[ or an Analog Clock ]
>> 3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
>> 4. Reading and writing in cursive
>> 5. Using manual research methods [ this
is a Genealogy site ]
>> 6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
>> 7. Creating and mending clothing
>> 8. Building furniture from scratch
>> 9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
>>
>> --
>> Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
>> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
>> PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
>>
>> mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
>>
4:42 p.m.
- Add an entry to /etc/termcap.
- Try all speeds on your terminal in order to find the good one to connect
to your host.
Pierre
5:44 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 04:42:20PM +0200, Pierre DAVID wrote:
- Add an entry to /etc/termcap.
I have to admit that something like 40 years ago, I tried and failed.
Paid Dave Cohrs $20 to write one for me. I remember him laughing at
me because it was trivial for him but I just kept screwing it up.
That and sendmail.cf, I've fought with that file quite a bit, got it
to work but just barely.
5:23 p.m.
- that goes with >>dialing<< the phone and putting it in the rubber cups
after you hear the tone from the FSK modem at that other end.
- putting your deck into run queue and waiting for your turn to get 5
seconds of compile and 3 seconds of CPU time for a student job
- being limited to > .5M of storage (if you had any at all)
- If you were an operator
- handing a tape change request
- starting/stopping the batch system to let students' jobs run
- changing the print train
- moving a plot tape from the computer to the plotter for output
- changing disks
- what a disk crash actually sounds like (and looks like on the platters)
ᐧ
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:41 AM Marc Donner <marc.donner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Programming an 026 skip card. Inserting the skip
card.
Using ed in kernel safe mode to fix a broken config file.
Threading a half-inch tape in a tape drive. Remembering to insert or
remove the write ring.
Cleaning floppy disk heads.
Manually keying a boot program into an SDS-930.
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:14 AM steve jenkin <sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au>
wrote:
> What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills “our grandkids won’t
> have”?
>
> Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because your
> keyboard has a stuck key
> - something I absolutely don’t miss.
>
> Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime &
> wondering how a reboot might go?
>
> steve j
>
> =========
>
> 9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
> <
> https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/
> >
>
> 1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
> 2: Using analog phones
> [ or an Analog Clock ]
> 3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
> 4. Reading and writing in cursive
> 5. Using manual research methods [
> this is a Genealogy site ]
> 6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
> 7. Creating and mending clothing
> 8. Building furniture from scratch
> 9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
>
> --
> Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
> PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
>
> mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
>
>
5:35 p.m.
a few more ...
- the sounds of an ASR 33 - why bang, and splat are called that
- the sounds of terminal room
- running 'system' diagnostics
- what 'dumping core' refers too
- rolling an unspooled DECtape up after dropping it and stepping on it,
and it still reading
- the concept/use of PPT
- entering the RIM loader for the PDP-8 from the front panel, so you
could load the rest of the boot from PPT
- entering the board program into a PDP-8 11/45 without an M792 diode
'ROM' board.
- Watching the idle pattern on the lights
Note the last 3 can be re-lived with a PiDP-8
<https://streaklinks.com/BGyDfuK4ePmLFWSPRwRm6v_o/https%3A%2F%2Fobsolescence.wixsite.com%2Fobsolescence%2Fpidp-8>
or PiDP-11
<https://streaklinks.com/BGyDfuWMjBQsSqgHCA6qh56Y/https%3A%2F%2Fobsolescence.wixsite.com%2Fobsolescence%2Fpidp-11>
ᐧ
ᐧ
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 11:23 AM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
- that goes with >>dialing<< the phone and putting it in the rubber
cups after you hear the tone from the FSK modem at that other end.
- putting your deck into run queue and waiting for your turn to get 5
seconds of compile and 3 seconds of CPU time for a student job
- being limited to > .5M of storage (if you had any at all)
- If you were an operator
- handing a tape change request
- starting/stopping the batch system to let students' jobs run
- changing the print train
- moving a plot tape from the computer to the plotter for output
- changing disks
- what a disk crash actually sounds like (and looks like on the
platters)
ᐧ
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:41 AM Marc Donner <marc.donner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Programming an 026 skip card. Inserting the skip card.
> Using ed in kernel safe mode to fix a broken config file.
> Threading a half-inch tape in a tape drive. Remembering to insert or
> remove the write ring.
> Cleaning floppy disk heads.
> Manually keying a boot program into an SDS-930.
> =====
> nygeek.net
> mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 9:14 AM steve jenkin <sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au>
> wrote:
>
>> What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills “our grandkids won’t
>> have”?
>>
>> Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because your
>> keyboard has a stuck key
>> - something I absolutely don’t miss.
>>
>> Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime &
>> wondering how a reboot might go?
>>
>> steve j
>>
>> =========
>>
>> 9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
>> <
>> https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/
>> >
>>
>> 1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
>> 2: Using analog phones
>> [ or an Analog Clock ]
>> 3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
>> 4. Reading and writing in cursive
>> 5. Using manual research methods
>> [ this is a Genealogy site ]
>> 6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
>> 7. Creating and mending clothing
>> 8. Building furniture from scratch
>> 9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
>>
>> --
>> Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
>> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
>> PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
>>
>> mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
>>
>>
4:23 p.m.
On 30 Jun 2022 23:14 +1000, from sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au (steve jenkin):
What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills
“our grandkids won’t have”?
Tediously typing computer programs into their (or others') systems
from listings in printed magazines bought in and brought home from a
store (by which I mean the physical, brick-and-mortar kind), only to
spend anywhere from minutes to days figuring out why the program
doesn't do what the magazine says it will, if it even works at all.
This thread should probably be on COFF, not TUHS.
--
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael(a)kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”
5:55 p.m.
On Jun 30, 2022, at 6:14 AM, steve jenkin
<sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au> wrote:
What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills “our grandkids won’t have”?
80s: being able to understand more or less what the whole machine was doing at any given
time. I consider myself fortunate that I grew up on 80s micros where the machines were
powerful enough to do interesting-to-a-bright-12-year-old things (like, say, Choplifter),
but small enough that...well, there's only 64K, only one instruction is operating at
a time, the sound-and-video-coprocessor-(if-any)-APIs are tiny, if you're a
determined bright 12-year-old, you can figure out how it's doing what it's
doing.
This is post-80s, but:
Massive midrange hearing loss in their 40s and 50s because of their late 20s and 30s being
spent inside very very noisy datacenters.
Not that I'm bitter. Just it would have been nice if my parents were right and it
had been that loud rock 'n' roll rather than, you know, _fans_.
Adam
6:37 p.m.
On 6/30/22, steve jenkin <sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au> wrote:
What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills
“our grandkids won’t
have”?
Not skills, but knowledge of why some things in Unix are the way they are:
o why a memory access violation is reported as "segmentation fault" or
"bus error", and the difference between the two
o why CTRL/D is used to end a shell command line session
o why CTRL/S and CTRL/Q are used for flow control in a shell command
line session
o why an application memory dump after an application crash is called
a core file
-Paul W.
1 Jul
1 Jul
3:05 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 7:38 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com wrote:
> o why CTRL/S and CTRL/Q are used for flow control in a shell command
> line session
Also would be happy to know.
> o why an application memory dump after an
application crash is called
> a core file
> -Paul W.
o why a memory access violation is reported as "segmentation fault" or
"bus error", and the difference between the two
o why CTRL/D is used to end a shell command line session
I am not sure I know that, I'd be happy to know.
3 Jul
3 Jul
1:01 a.m.
Thanks for asking Ori, I was just working up the courage to express my ignorance
On July 1, 2022 6:05:30 AM PDT, Ori Idan <ori(a)heliconbooks.com> wrote:
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 7:38 PM Paul Winalski
<paul.winalski(a)gmail.com wrote:
> o why CTRL/S and CTRL/Q are used for flow control in a shell command
> line session
Also would be happy to know.
> o why an application memory dump after
an application crash is called
> a core file
> -Paul W.
>
o why a memory access violation is reported as "segmentation fault" or
"bus error", and the difference between the two
o why CTRL/D is used to end a shell command line session
I am not sure I know that, I'd be happy to know.
2:08 a.m.
On Sat, Jul 2, 2022 at 7:02 PM Mark Sutton <mes(a)lazo.ca> wrote:
/2 6:05:30 AM PDT, Ori Idan
<ori(a)heliconbooks.com> wrote:
ASCII reserved four characters, ^Q through ^T, for unspecified device
controls. The ASR 33 Teletype, which had a built-in paper tape reader and
punch, allowed programmatic control of these devices using these
characters: ^Q started the reader (assuming paper tape was in it) and ^S
stopped it. In classic Teletype use, the protocol was bidirectional. (By
the same token, ^R started the punch, which meant that characters sent to
the terminal were punched as well as printed, and ^T stopped it.
Some DEC OSes used ^T to print a single-line status of the current
process. I do not know why ^C (end of text, as opposed to ^D which is end
of transmission) took on its present role, but it was definitely already
true in early DEC OSes.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 7:38 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
\
o why CTRL/S and CTRL/Q are used for flow control
in a shell command
line session
Also would be happy to know.
>
>>
>> o why an application memory dump after an application crash is called
>> a core file
>>
>
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory
30 Jun
30 Jun
9:24 p.m.
At the risk of going off-topic (Linux and 90's/00's) I'll play too:
1)remembering to set ftp type to binary (that one bit me more than once, at
least)
2)learning what a "winmodem" is and avoiding it like the plague!
3)Splitting a partition with FIPS
4)Writing an image to floppy
5)doing anything at all with a floppy, come to think of it
6)Setting jumpers on sound cards and drives
7)learning how to configure XFree86 so that it doesn't blow out your
monitor! (never happened to me, but I remember the scary warnings about it:
https://www.xfree86.org/4.0.3/chips7.html )
8)configuring PPP internet
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 5:14 AM steve jenkin <sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au>
wrote:
What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills
“our grandkids won’t
have”?
Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because your
keyboard has a stuck key
- something I absolutely don’t miss.
Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime &
wondering how a reboot might go?
steve j
=========
9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
<
https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/
1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
2: Using analog phones
[ or an Analog Clock ]
3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
4. Reading and writing in cursive
5. Using manual research methods [
this is a Genealogy site ]
6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
7. Creating and mending clothing
8. Building furniture from scratch
9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
10:43 p.m.
editing /etc/inittab
On 1/7/22 05:24, Michael Huff wrote:
At the risk of going off-topic (Linux and
90's/00's) I'll play too:
1)remembering to set ftp type to binary (that one bit me more than
once, at least)
2)learning what a "winmodem" is and avoiding it like the plague!
3)Splitting a partition with FIPS
4)Writing an image to floppy
5)doing anything at all with a floppy, come to think of it
6)Setting jumpers on sound cards and drives
7)learning how to configure XFree86 so that it doesn't blow out your
monitor! (never happened to me, but I remember the scary warnings
about it: https://www.xfree86.org/4.0.3/chips7.html )
8)configuring PPP internet
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 5:14 AM steve jenkin
<sjenkin(a)canb.auug.org.au> wrote:
What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills “our grandkids
won’t have”?
Whistling into a telephone while the modem is attached, because
your keyboard has a stuck key
- something I absolutely don’t miss.
Having a computer in a grimy wharehouse with 400 days of uptime &
wondering how a reboot might go?
steve j
=========
9 Skills Our Grandkids Will Never Have
<https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/06/9-skills-our-grandkids-will-never-have/>
1: Using record players, audio cassettes, and VCRs
2: Using analog phones [ or an Analog
Clock ]
3. Writing letters by hand and mailing them
4. Reading and writing in cursive
5. Using manual research methods [ this is a
Genealogy site ]
6. Preparing food the old-fashioned way
7. Creating and mending clothing
8. Building furniture from scratch
9. Speaking the languages of their ancestors
--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
11:11 p.m.
at the coreboot workshop 2w ago, we were having very weird memory
corruption issues. At some point I popped up dc and started doing base
16 math.
Comment: "that's the first time in my life I've ever seen someone use
dc for hex math"
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 1:49 PM Chris Pinnock via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
Editing /etc/inittab with ed(1).
On 30 Jun 2022, at 21:43, Robert Stanford via
TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
editing /etc/inittab
11:21 p.m.
When your tty settings are messed up, ed(1) has saved my butt a number
of times. Also really pleasant to use on slow modems where just the
screen refresh takes a long time.
ed foo.c
/^busted_function
.,.+20p
is dramatically faster than vi(1) at 300 baud.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 09:49:19PM +0100, Chris Pinnock via TUHS wrote:
Editing /etc/inittab with ed(1).
> On 30 Jun 2022, at 21:43, Robert Stanford via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> editing /etc/inittab
>
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
11:24 p.m.
And, of course, even worse editing with cat!
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 5:22 PM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
When your tty settings are messed up, ed(1) has saved
my butt a number
of times. Also really pleasant to use on slow modems where just the
screen refresh takes a long time.
ed foo.c
/^busted_function
.,.+20p
is dramatically faster than vi(1) at 300 baud.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 09:49:19PM +0100, Chris Pinnock via TUHS wrote:
Editing /etc/inittab with ed(1).
> On 30 Jun 2022, at 21:43, Robert Stanford via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org>
wrote:
>
> editing /etc/inittab
>
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing
http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
11:41 p.m.
Loading your 18" gigantic 5 MB disc in the tray, and giving it 5 minutes to
temperature equalize.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 2:26 PM Marc Donner <marc.donner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
And, of course, even worse editing with cat!
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 5:22 PM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
--
James D. (jj) Johnston
Chief Scientist, Immersion Networks
When your tty settings are messed up, ed(1) has
saved my butt a number
of times. Also really pleasant to use on slow modems where just the
screen refresh takes a long time.
ed foo.c
/^busted_function
.,.+20p
is dramatically faster than vi(1) at 300 baud.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 09:49:19PM +0100, Chris Pinnock via TUHS wrote:
Editing /etc/inittab with ed(1).
> On 30 Jun 2022, at 21:43, Robert Stanford via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org>
wrote:
>
> editing /etc/inittab
>
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing
http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
11:54 p.m.
Wire wrapped computers. The Geophysics department (I worked there as
a sys admin) had one and we all hated it, wanted it gone, but "there
is no budget". So one night after some beers, Bruce Karsh got an evil
grin, opened it up, and bent one wire back and forth until it broke
under the insulation. Pulled it enough that the wires didn't touch.
Attempted to boot it, nothing (which was amazing because I bet there
were a ton of wires that could have been broken and you wouldn't notice
until you tried to use whatever that wire did).
Bruce had a satisfied grin on his face and said "They'll find budget"
and they did, whatever we got was way more modern and easy to use,
I think it was a Masscomp.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 02:41:26PM -0700, James Johnston wrote:
Loading your 18" gigantic 5 MB disc in the tray,
and giving it 5 minutes to
temperature equalize.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 2:26 PM Marc Donner <marc.donner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
And, of course, even worse editing with cat!
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 5:22 PM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
--
James D. (jj) Johnston
Chief Scientist, Immersion Networks When your tty settings are messed up, ed(1) has
saved my butt a number
of times. Also really pleasant to use on slow modems where just the
screen refresh takes a long time.
ed foo.c
/^busted_function
.,.+20p
is dramatically faster than vi(1) at 300 baud.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 09:49:19PM +0100, Chris Pinnock via TUHS wrote:
Editing /etc/inittab with ed(1).
> On 30 Jun 2022, at 21:43, Robert Stanford via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org>
wrote:
>
> editing /etc/inittab
>
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing
http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
1 Jul
1 Jul
12:05 a.m.
Making more mods to the mods you had already made to a driver using adb on /dev/kmem.
12:51 a.m.
Back when I worked at JPL in the late 1970s I was the most junior engineer,
so my time slot on the computer (an SDS 930) was from 2AM to 4AM Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday.
Over time I got to know the guard who patrolled our building and we would
hang out and chat when he came by and found me there with the machine room
door open.
After a while I was ordered to keep the computer room door closed, since
keeping it open was unbalancing the A/C.
Nonetheless he somehow managed to come in and find me quite regularly.
One night I asked him how he knew when I was working. He told me that my
program, when it was running, made a characteristic sound on his
walkie-talkie.
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 6:19 PM Rik Schneider <unix(a)deranged.schneider.org>
wrote:
Using a cheap pocket AM radio as an improvised signal
probe.
12:48 p.m.
Rik Schneider <unix(a)deranged.schneider.org> writes:
Using a cheap pocket AM radio as an improvised signal
probe.
A classmate and I discovered this while learning Z-80 machine language
programming on his TRS-80. Of course our programs hung all the time,
but we discovered that with a cheap transistor radio, not tuned to any
station, sitting next to the TRS-80, we could learn to follow the
execution through the BASIC code, into our machine language subroutines,
and through the various parts of those. After a while, when our
programs hung, we'd usually know just where it had happened.
-tih
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay
30 Jun
30 Jun
11:24 p.m.
I’ve just used it in a paper I’m writing. As an aside, the relatively recent ed(1) mastery
book by Michael Lucas is a rather fun (and very informative read).
C
On 30 Jun 2022, at 22:21, Larry McVoy
<lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
When your tty settings are messed up, ed(1) has saved my butt a number
of times. Also really pleasant to use on slow modems where just the
screen refresh takes a long time.
ed foo.c
/^busted_function
.,.+20p
is dramatically faster than vi(1) at 300 baud.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 09:49:19PM +0100, Chris Pinnock via TUHS wrote:
Editing /etc/inittab with ed(1).
> On 30 Jun 2022, at 21:43, Robert Stanford via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> editing /etc/inittab
>
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat 
1 Jul
1 Jul
2:41 a.m.
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 11:14:20PM +1000, steve jenkin wrote:
What are the 1970’s & 1980’s Computing / IT skills
“our grandkids
won’t have”?
[...]
Speaking any foreign language at all without help of a machine.
Perhaps also being unable to formulate one's own judgements based on
archive contained in one's own head, while offline, i.e. without
asking other people/bots what to think.
Being offline i.e. without constant buzz of b-s-hit coming in - for a
long time (define what "long" actually means - minutes, days?) and not
getting psychologically crippled as a result. Come to think about it,
for them it is like sensory deprivation is for us. The difference will
be, perhaps, that todays adult can undergo s.d. for a while and return
to normal, while I can imagine for future adult, such a cutoff (no
sensory deprivation, just internet deprivation) might result in
effects similar to post traumatic disorders (and similarly long
lasting).
Ability to turn a computer off/on. Ability to understand importance of
having the switch in devices.
Handwriting.
Ability to perform multiplication & division of long numbers on
paper, flawlessly. Already lost to youngsters, from what I hear.
Learn to use device by reading paper manual, and only this. Assuming
paper manual is any good for the purpose, not just a bunch of
slogans.
Understand minutiae of older technology, limiting their understanding
of our ways and times. So far, the gap seems to would be much bigger than
between us and, say, Homo ergaster. Perhaps the gap will be more like
between us and H. australopitecus. But paradoxically, understanding of
the world, I expect to be bigger nowadays than in a future. Even
today, how many people could explain why there is a light after
switching the light on? I recall reading about some movie, whose fans
were unable to understand why a protagonist took film (celuloid) to
some "red room". They suggested it was for making photos sharper. Now
imagine what would they say after watching Antonioni's "Blow up" where
photography making is a central part of a plot.
I am not sure - maybe I am taking it too seriously and I perceive most
of posters here as tongue in cheek. But I keep imagining that one day
some guy writes "ls -axl" and his head will be stuck on pike, because
some cretine would claim his cow's milk turned black.
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com **
2:46 a.m.
I just thought of another one. Reading maps, both road and contour maps.
Google maps is a wonderful thing but they don't work in the back country.
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
3:13 a.m.
Sure they work. Just download the area for offline use. Bring a solar charger.
But in my day we had a topo map and a compass and liked it.
These days I would also bring a satphone or QRP ham rig.
Has anyone mentioned porting kermit to a new micro yet?
On Jun 30, 2022, at 8:46 PM, Larry McVoy
<lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I just thought of another one. Reading maps, both road and contour maps.
Google maps is a wonderful thing but they don't work in the back country.
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
8:12 p.m.
Tomasz Rola [01/07/2022 02.41]:
I recall reading about some movie, whose fans
were unable to understand why a protagonist took film
(celuloid) to
some "red room". They suggested it was for making photos sharper.
Except that we didn't use red light in our darkrooms at all, at least
not from the 1970s and on. Panchromatic film, of course, needs to be
developed in total darkness, so we used film tanks.
Photographic paper was not sensitive to red light, but neither very
sensitive to yellow-green or amber brown light, which we used when
developing paper copies.
--
Hilsen Harald
Слава Україні!
868
days inactive
871
days old
34 comments
27 participants
participants (27)
-
Adam Thornton -
Al Kossow -
Chris Pinnock -
Clem Cole -
Dr Iain Maoileoin -
Harald Arnesen -
James Johnston -
John Cowan -
Jon Steinhart -
Larry McVoy -
Larry Stewart -
Marc Donner -
Mark Sutton -
Marshall Conover -
Michael Huff -
Michael Kjörling -
Ori Idan -
Paul Winalski -
Pierre DAVID -
Rik Schneider -
Robert Stanford -
ron minnich -
steve jenkin -
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo -
Tom Teixeira -
Tomasz Rola -
Will Senn