[ale] Need Tractor Feed Dot Matrix printer

[tfreeman at intel.digichem.net]

On Fri, 27 May 2005, Mark Wright wrote:

<<snip>> 
> I think anyone that used or owned an XT should qualify.
<<snip>>

I'm not sure XT use/ownership should qualify as "old fart" status,  partly 
because I disagree with common wisdom about how much change there has been 
in computing since that time on a fundamental level (Which is not to deny 
frantic engineering changes, many of them to the good.) Introducing the 
'386 processor and the 68000 which gave better hardware protection of 
memory areas from rogue programs probably was fundamental, but the idea 
had been around for perhaps 20 years at that time on other archetectures.

First machine I owned, I built. Heathkit H89 with two Z80 processors, one 
as the computer, the other running the terminal. Ran CP/M. Also ran HDOS, 
which I wish I'd payed to play with, as it had dynamically loaded device 
drivers and some other pretty neat concepts. I think MP/M was also 
available, but memory fades. Also built the first XT clone I owned, a 
H-150 which wound up with 1.5 meg RAM (It tickled me to beat the alledged 
640k ram barrier which never existed from MS - it was a hardware limit 
imposed by IBM and ignored by all of the early competetors)

By the time I was getting started, Unix was already almost a decade old if 
memory/fingers serve. Of course, Unix was for the big boys, since it ran 
on true 16 bit machines, not my puny little 8 bit machines. Then, somehow, 
when I got into the 8/16 bit world of the XT, Unix was for 32 bit 
machines... And cost a bundle also. I was able to run Unix for a while in 
'86-'87 on a Fortune 68000 based machine, but I was not in a position to 
make good use/learning on it at the time.

But somehow, much as I enjoyed my Heathkits, I cann't feel "old fart" 
status while some relatives are still around. My uncle's "first computer" 
is supposed to be in a museum in europe, although he didn't stay in the 
field after that. And one of the cousins worked on something called drum 
memory - which meant if I recall correctly, the machine had 4k or main 
memory implemented on a spinning drum. Supposedly shook the building when 
running.

A graduate school friend had the pleasure of working on vacumn tube 
machines while serving in the navy, but I was told that was partially an 
effort to see how long they could keep that machine running rather than 
actually modern equipment.

I've babbled enough, but I do appreciate the use of your bandwidth.

-- 
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If you think Education is expensive
Try Ignorance
                   Author Unknown
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