On 2009-04-30, Ivan Vegvary wrote:
How many of you have taken this road? Those that have know what I'm talking
about.
Slide Rule, Marchant, Friden, Monroe, Curta, HP35, HP45, HP67, HP95, Wang,
IBM PC, DOS, IBM XT, $395 for 64K Ram card, VisiCald, Wordstar
modern day PCs and CAD programs.
Slide rules (many over the years), Best current one is a 20"
mahagony and ivory K&E, (and for fun a 36" store demo
Picket log-log.)
Friden
Would have *loved* to have a Curta (still would)
Soroban & Abacus (still have them)
HP 9100B (at work only -- but it got me hooked on programming.)
HP-45
Altair 680b (6800 based kit computer)
TI Programmer (computer math)
HP-67
HP-15C (better computer math)
HP-16C
STWP 6800 (DOS-68)
SWTP 6809 (DOS-69 and OS-9)
Radio Shack Color Computer (OS-9)
Cosmos CMS-16/UNX (68000 based v7 unix system)
XT clone
AT&T Unix-PC (68010 based SysV unix)
Sun 2/120 (68010 based BSD unix)
Tektronix 6130 (NS 32016 based BSD unix)
Lots of Sun3 machines (68010 CPU, unix)
Lots of Sun4, Sun4c, and Sun4m machines (SPARC based)
Four Sun4u machines (Sun Blade 1000, 2000, Sun fire 280R)
Intel based Mac Mini (for things which *demand* a "popular" OS
to be connected to the net.
Misc Intel based machines running OpenBSD and linux, as well as
single token Windows machine (without Word. :-)
Most software of choice is open source, including the various
CAD programs which I use from time to time.
The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus one
bead)
Actually -- minus *two* per column. only one in the top row,
and only four in the bottom row. :-)
and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone with a
hand-crank Monroe.
I never got that good.
I think the slide rule should still be taught.
Agreed -- though I was self taught.
It sure gave use the ability
to estimate the order of magnitude of the answer. Ask a kid today what 100
times 100 is. No clue. Something that's lost today.
Sigh.
Just an old fart reminiscing,
And another one, joining in.
Thanks,
DoN.
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