Michael A. Terrell wrote:
Ivan Vegvary wrote:
"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
...
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.

The above are approximately in order.
Just for fun, I did spend some time with a Soroban (same as Abacus minus
one bead) and could multiply and divide just about as fast as someone
with a hand-crank Monroe.

I think the slide rule should still be 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.
You left out teletype connected to PDP 8/L minicomputer.
You are so right, Jim. Digital Equipment Corporation was a big player. I
got to use one for a few months back in 1972. I also forgot to mention
Radio Shack's tandy computer.


No one here has ever played with any Data General computers? How
about Prime? National Semiconductor? Metrodata? Intel Multibus? How
about VME/VXI?

Hell yes. I worked as a bench tech debugging
Nova hard disk controllers and shoehorned an
Eclipse into an electron beam lithography system,
Also designed a digital interface to said Eclipse.

I designed a Multibus natural voice speech playback
system used in all the LLNL secure area entry points.