Change in computers as a hobbiest... 2837
Morten Reistad You're talking about multi-user operating systems, running on hardware that only companies could afford. That's a very different viewpoint. I can see...
How different we can perceive things.
I was spoilt by having early access to Tops20, Primos and micros. Early in this respect is 1976 for micros, 1978 for Tops20 and 1979 for Primos; and I was among a group of around 40 people who knew what this was about. We also read up on Unix, PDP11s and other interesting stuff.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler People were dialing into several machines at CMU (then CIT) in the late 60's. By 1970 I had a "Data Port" which was two rather heavy cases, one was a KSR33...
We saw the then hardware as very promising, but a lot of things were moving the wrong way at drastic speeds. We all saw the period from 1982 to 1988 as a little "dark age". Software was at it's most closed ever, hardware and software designs in the mainstream had abysmal quality; and the generation-X'ers hadnn't really entered the job market yet.
We saw that whatever was to save this probably had to be called Unix in some form or another; and we looked with exitement to every news item we could find.
Sun and Risc was a glimmer of hope, as was QNX. Not quite what we needed, but getting closer. The 386 finally made the PC hardware bearable; and we eagerly installed the first BSDs and Linux when that came. We read Linus' first posting and wondered it he was for real.
I still remember the first Linux installfest vividly. We couldn't really afford real hardware for it, but between us we scrounged up a machine to test it; and called it "lasarus". The heat sink for the CPU is a flattened beer can. It ran a manual, (but not via minix) install of linux 0.98c. I have kept the machine. It was on usenet via a dialup connection until 1997.
That day the tinkering spirit came back. We could bring this along to all the Gen-X'ers too.
I was active in the BBS community from 1982, but saw clearly how much better this could be done with real systems.
ref: slightly related concerning billing and off-shift dialin i didn't get home terminal until mar70, it was initially...
The BBS'es are back, btw. They take the form of web discussion fora now; and we see painstakingly how the bad parts of the BBSes have returned, with ego-infrated sysops, infights, etc. At the same time usenet has improved from the decline; most of the trolls are gone now. They don't see text based fora as interesting.
UofMich was one of several universities that were convinced to order 360-67 on the promise of tss-360. when tss-360 floundered, many just used the...
We all wanted to build that at some time.
-- mrr
Change in computers as a hobbiest... 2838
Alt Folklore Computers from Newsgroups