[
I thought this was pretty funny. This is a true IBM ordering
information quote from one of their catalogues. Pass it on...

This is an actual alert to IBM Field Engineers that went out to
all IBM Branch Offices. The person who wrote it was very
serious. The rest of us may find it rather funny.


__________________________________________________ ________________

Abstract: Mouse Balls Available as FRU (Field Replacement Unit)

Mouse balls are now available as FRU. Therefore, if a mouse
fails to operate or should it perform erratically, it may need a
ball replacement. Because of the delicate nature of this
procedure, replacement of mouse balls should only be attempted by
properly trained personnel.

Before proceeding, determine the type of mouse balls by examining
the underside of the mouse. Domestic balls will be larger and
harder than foreign balls. Ball removal procedures differ
depending upon manufacturer of the mouse. Foreign balls can be
replaced using the pop-off method. Domestic balls are replaced
using the twist-off method. Mouse balls are not usually static
sensitive. However, excessive handling can result in sudden
discharge. Upon completion of ball replacement, the mouse may be
used immediately.

It is recommended that each replacer have a pair of spare balls
for maintaining optimum customer satisfaction. Any customer
missing his balls should suspect local personnel of removing
these necessary items.

To re-order, specify one of the following:

P/N 33f8462 - Domestic Mouse Balls
P/N 33f8461 - Foreign Mouse Balls
]

Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 03:11:21 -0500...
Cliff
typed these letters:


[
I thought this was pretty funny. This is a true IBM ordering
information quote from one of their catalogues. Pass it on...

This is an actual alert to IBM Field Engineers that went out to
all IBM Branch Offices. The person who wrote it was very
serious. The rest of us may find it rather funny.


__________________________________________________ ________________

Abstract: Mouse Balls Available as FRU (Field Replacement Unit)

Mouse balls are now available as FRU. Therefore, if a mouse
fails to operate or should it perform erratically, it may need a
ball replacement. Because of the delicate nature of this
procedure, replacement of mouse balls should only be attempted by
properly trained personnel.

Before proceeding, determine the type of mouse balls by examining
the underside of the mouse. Domestic balls will be larger and
harder than foreign balls. Ball removal procedures differ
depending upon manufacturer of the mouse. Foreign balls can be
replaced using the pop-off method. Domestic balls are replaced
using the twist-off method. Mouse balls are not usually static
sensitive. However, excessive handling can result in sudden
discharge. Upon completion of ball replacement, the mouse may be
used immediately.

It is recommended that each replacer have a pair of spare balls
for maintaining optimum customer satisfaction. Any customer
missing his balls should suspect local personnel of removing
these necessary items.

To re-order, specify one of the following:

P/N 33f8462 - Domestic Mouse Balls
P/N 33f8461 - Foreign Mouse Balls
]


I recall reading this or a similar version of it in the mid 90's on a
local BBS. Probably floating around Fidonet. Them old mice
could be aggrvating. In my experience the problem wasn't so much the
balls but the crud that built up on the rollers. Since the advent
of the ball-less optical mouse 5 or so years ago I had forgotten about
that problem.

Devonshire

Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan

On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:09:38 -0800...
dan
typed these letters:


Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan

An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?
I never seen such a thing. You wouldn't happen to still have that
mouse would you? I'd like to see it. I have a growing collection of
vintage computer stuff and look regularly at salvage stores to see
what old goodies I can find. I rarely find an optical mouse. Most
of the ones I do find are USB which makes them a bit newer than 1991
for sure. Around 1991 I was a bit behind the times with my 386sx
16Mhz machine. It came with a ball mouse. I don't recall even using
a mouse much back then. I was still running DOS and most of the stuff
I did either did not support a mouse, or hot keys were a much faster
way to maneuver.

Devonshire

Dammit!!! You got me! I just realized that the
old ball mice are optical as well.

I couldn't see the forest for the trees

Devonshire

(Devonshire) writes:

I just realized that the old ball mice are optical as well.

Actually, 15 years ago I used an optical mouse regularly. No, it
didn't use a ball. No, it wasn't IBM compatible.

Matt

Devonshire wrote:

Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan


An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?

Aaah, therein lies your problem. Your vision is blinkered.
Many *nix systesm had optical mice before the PC.

On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:20:51 -0600...
Matt Helm
typed these letters:


(Devonshire) writes:

I just realized that the old ball mice are optical as well.

Actually, 15 years ago I used an optical mouse regularly. No, it
didn't use a ball. No, it wasn't IBM compatible.

Matt

And I thought this was a joke...I think I may have found this mystery
optical mouse device. Was it made by Mouse Systems? And perhaps used
on machines made by Sun Microsystems? The mouse I'm refering to was
indeed optical. No ball. But it required a special gridded mouse
pad that had to be oriented in a certain way in order for it to work
correctly. If this is the mouse in question it doesn't work the same
as the modern optical mice. The modern ones take pictures of the
surface to track movement. The modern optical mice were not available
in 1991.

Devonshire

I had optical mice on an IBM XT (1980/81). Sun computers came with opticals in the 4xxx line.

I have both LED and Laser now. Laser is nice. The new optical are anywhere optical.
The new (last year or year before now maybe) Laser has 10x resolution IIRC.


Martin
Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member


Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:09:38 -0800...
dan
typed these letters:




Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan


An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?
I never seen such a thing. You wouldn't happen to still have that
mouse would you? I'd like to see it. I have a growing collection of
vintage computer stuff and look regularly at salvage stores to see
what old goodies I can find. I rarely find an optical mouse. Most
of the ones I do find are USB which makes them a bit newer than 1991
for sure. Around 1991 I was a bit behind the times with my 386sx
16Mhz machine. It came with a ball mouse. I don't recall even using
a mouse much back then. I was still running DOS and most of the stuff
I did either did not support a mouse, or hot keys were a much faster
way to maneuver.

Devonshire


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On the day of Wed, 29 Mar 2006 10:14:36 +1000...
Terry Collins
typed these letters:

Devonshire wrote:

Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan


An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?

Aaah, therein lies your problem. Your vision is blinkered.

What's that supposed to mean?

Devonshire

"Cliff" wrote...
[
I thought this was pretty funny. This is a true IBM ordering
information quote from one of their catalogues. Pass it on...

This is an actual alert to IBM Field Engineers that went out to
all IBM Branch Offices. The person who wrote it was very
serious. The rest of us may find it rather funny.
[ snip ]

This is vintage mid-1980s. Our CE gave us a copy of it when I worked at the
University of Oklahoma in 1986. The part numbers were real (probably still
are).

-jc-

Devonshire wrote:

Aaah, therein lies your problem. Your vision is blinkered.
What's that supposed to mean?

all you knew was ibm-compatible computers.

OTOH, my first computer was a PDP 11/45 (?) which only had paddles and
blinking lights.

On the day of Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:41:07 +1000...
Terry Collins
typed these letters:

Devonshire wrote:

Aaah, therein lies your problem. Your vision is blinkered.
What's that supposed to mean?

all you knew was ibm-compatible computers.

OTOH, my first computer was a PDP 11/45 (?) which only had paddles and
blinking lights.

You don't know that. Why do you assume that the only thing I knew
about was IBM compatables? My first computer was a Commodore Vic-20.
It wasn't IBM compatable, nor did it come with an "optical mouse".
Which means absolutely nothing.

Devonshire

Devonshire wrote:

OTOH, my first computer was a PDP 11/45 (?) which only had paddles and
blinking lights.


You don't know that. Why do you assume that the only thing I knew
about was IBM compatables? My first computer was a Commodore Vic-20.
It wasn't IBM compatable, nor did it come with an "optical mouse".
Which means absolutely nothing.

Well, if you had a brain, then you would have realised that I was
blinkered to that possibility, but in any case it was after PDP's. The
point of the post was that optical mice existed well before they made
the ibm-compatible stage.

Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:09:38 -0800...
dan
typed these letters:




Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan


An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?
I never seen such a thing. You wouldn't happen to still have that
mouse would you? I'd like to see it. I have a growing collection of
vintage computer stuff and look regularly at salvage stores to see
what old goodies I can find. I rarely find an optical mouse. Most
of the ones I do find are USB which makes them a bit newer than 1991
for sure. Around 1991 I was a bit behind the times with my 386sx
16Mhz machine. It came with a ball mouse. I don't recall even using
a mouse much back then. I was still running DOS and most of the stuff
I did either did not support a mouse, or hot keys were a much faster
way to maneuver.

Devonshire


Bought my Mac SE/30 in 1986 or 7 (1 MB RAM, expanded to 8, 20 MB HD, 16
MHz 68030 processor). Came with ball mouse. Updated to optical mouse
1990 or so. Original optical mice came with a special pad, with bicolor
grid markings under a transparent coating.

So, yeah, 15 years. Still have it, and the Mac, still functions, last
used it during my elementary student teaching in 1998! I think the
mouse was SCSI (round plug, 4 pins in a V, a rectangular guide inside,
two indentations ~90* apart).

MSC Technologies, Inc. Fremont, CA
Model M4 A + ADB

The Mac sure beat the hell out of the LISA ("I'd describe it as
'glacial,' but glacial implies movement...")! THAT would be a
collector's item!

Dan

Devonshire wrote:
Dammit!!! You got me! I just realized that the
old ball mice are optical as well.

I couldn't see the forest for the trees

Devonshire

No, they were roller driven (unless inside there were optical sensors to
check the rotation of the rollers).

This was a true optical (no roller ball) mouse!

Dan

Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Wed, 29 Mar 2006 10:14:36 +1000...
Terry Collins
typed these letters:


Devonshire wrote:


Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan


An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?

Aaah, therein lies your problem. Your vision is blinkered.


What's that supposed to mean?

Devonshire

Limited to IBM/PC world. Real computers came with mice long before the
PC ; )

Dan

Terry Collins wrote:
Devonshire wrote:


Aaah, therein lies your problem. Your vision is blinkered.

What's that supposed to mean?


all you knew was ibm-compatible computers.

OTOH, my first computer was a PDP 11/45 (?) which only had paddles and
blinking lights.

I took my first programming class on a CDC-6400 - Programmed using
cards, baby! We reverently descended into the bowels of the building
and offered our card stacks to the priests behind the counter, then
returned later in the hope that our output was indeed resting on the
output table - hardly dreaming in might have actually (gasp) compiled
and (whoa) run, and (dream on) produced the output we desired...

Things like the 8 queens problem and recursive sorts were real wow items!

In the days of Bill Joy...

Dan

In article , dan
wrote:

Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:09:38 -0800...
dan
typed these letters:




Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan


An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?
I never seen such a thing. You wouldn't happen to still have that
mouse would you? I'd like to see it. I have a growing collection of
vintage computer stuff and look regularly at salvage stores to see
what old goodies I can find. I rarely find an optical mouse. Most
of the ones I do find are USB which makes them a bit newer than 1991
for sure. Around 1991 I was a bit behind the times with my 386sx
16Mhz machine. It came with a ball mouse. I don't recall even using
a mouse much back then. I was still running DOS and most of the stuff
I did either did not support a mouse, or hot keys were a much faster
way to maneuver.

Devonshire


Bought my Mac SE/30 in 1986 or 7 (1 MB RAM, expanded to 8, 20 MB HD, 16
MHz 68030 processor). Came with ball mouse. Updated to optical mouse
1990 or so. Original optical mice came with a special pad, with bicolor
grid markings under a transparent coating.

So, yeah, 15 years. Still have it, and the Mac, still functions, last
used it during my elementary student teaching in 1998! I think the
mouse was SCSI (round plug, 4 pins in a V, a rectangular guide inside,
two indentations ~90* apart).

Not SCSI, which was for disks, tapes, and scanners, and ran circles
around IDE and ATP.

It was ADB (Apple Desktop Bus), the intellectual ancestor of USB.


Joe Gwinn

Wow! Fidonet. Boy is that an old term you don't hear any more of.
Making me feel quite old. Echomail is another one from the BBS world.
Quite popular when I was using my datashare 300 modem posting messages
on the local BBS and getting a reply a few days later from someone on
the West Coast. Very creative technology for get around a long distance
phone call. Those were the days of CPM and wordstar. I remember using a
wand for a cursor on our $250K CAD/CAM system.

Thanks Devonshire for reminding me on just how old I really am.

gary


Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 03:11:21 -0500...
Cliff
typed these letters:



I recall reading this or a similar version of it in the mid 90's on a
local BBS. Probably floating around Fidonet. Them old mice
could be aggrvating. In my experience the problem wasn't so much the
balls but the crud that built up on the rollers. Since the advent
of the ball-less optical mouse 5 or so years ago I had forgotten about
that problem.

Devonshire

dan wrote:
Devonshire wrote:

Dammit!!! You got me! I just realized that the
old ball mice are optical as well.
I couldn't see the forest for the trees

Devonshire


No, they were roller driven (unless inside there were optical sensors to
check the rotation of the rollers).

Most of the ball stuff I pull apart, the roller drives a shutter system
that interrupts a light beam.

dan wrote:

OTOH, my first computer was a PDP 11/45 (?) which only had paddles and
blinking lights.

I took my first programming class on a CDC-6400 - Programmed using
cards, baby!

the PDP 11 was the elec eng lab.
Wow, was running the non-colliding train exercise.
We would have settled for the lab lights working properly.
that was assembler.

Fortan (maths) was punched cards, later mark sense (fsck)
These went into an ICL ??? under George 4.
If you were lucky, you could do it interactively with a teletype
Murder on the fingers
Naken ladies on stools from the paper tape accessory.

Later it was Decwriters (LA??) into a PDP11/70 running unix and you
progged in basic (physics, maths, psych, etc).

We reverently descended into the bowels of the building
and offered our card stacks to the priests behind the counter, then
returned later in the hope that our output was indeed resting on the
output table - hardly dreaming in might have actually (gasp) compiled
and (whoa) run, and (dream on) produced the output we desired...

Things like the 8 queens problem and recursive sorts were real wow items!

Fortran, Dam burst simulations (erk), 1 boxen of cards {:-(
Graphics by printed characters.

Algol, Towers of Hanoi,

Sadly, I'm using Thunderbird for newsgroups and wondering if the T-bird
programmers forgot all those lessons on matching sort method to load.

On the day of 29 Mar 2006 19:02:04 -0800...

typed these letters:

Wow! Fidonet. Boy is that an old term you don't hear any more of.
Making me feel quite old. Echomail is another one from the BBS world.
Quite popular when I was using my datashare 300 modem posting messages
on the local BBS and getting a reply a few days later from someone on
the West Coast. Very creative technology for get around a long distance
phone call. Those were the days of CPM and wordstar. I remember using a
wand for a cursor on our $250K CAD/CAM system.

Thanks Devonshire for reminding me on just how old I really am.

gary

Years ago I ran a multi-node WildCat BBS til the Interent service
providers set up camp here and drew away all the interest in BBS's. I
was also the Fidonet hub around here for a while. 1:3654/200 was my
hub address if I remember correctly. I must have got into it a bit
later. I started at 2400baud. Fidonet was a neet setup. Towards the
end I was was on Planet Connect and receiveing Fidonet mail, files,
and a bunch of other stuff by an old 10 foot C-band satellite dish
which is still in the yard. Of course all my outgoing stuff went via
modem.

Did the CAD software happen to be CadKey? In college we had tablets
and wands that worked with that software. The wand kinda looked like
a ball point pen.

Devonshire

On the day of Thu, 30 Mar 2006 07:41:10 +1000...
Terry Collins
typed these letters:


Well, if you had a brain, then you would have realised that I was
blinkered to that possibility, but in any case it was after PDP's. The
point of the post was that optical mice existed well before they made
the ibm-compatible stage.


So now I have no brain? Whatever.

Devonshire

Devonshire wrote:



So now I have no brain? Whatever.

Devonshire

you wanna put another chip up there for me to know off?
And to think I used to think that devonshire teas were nice!

(Devonshire) writes:

And I thought this was a joke...I think I may have found this mystery
optical mouse device. Was it made by Mouse Systems? And perhaps used
on machines made by Sun Microsystems?

Correct.

The mouse I'm refering to was
indeed optical. No ball. But it required a special gridded mouse
pad that had to be oriented in a certain way in order for it to work
correctly. If this is the mouse in question it doesn't work the same
as the modern optical mice. The modern ones take pictures of the
surface to track movement.

Not quite correct. The resolution and size of the picture as changed.


Matt

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 04:24:21 GMT, (Devonshire) wrote:

Every ball mouse I've had apart had optical sensors to check the
rotation of the rollers. Moden optical mice take pictures of the
surface to track movement.

Just pulses on/off as the slotted wheel goes past AFAIK .... but
how does it know which way it's turning?
--
Cliff

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 16:52:58 -0800, dan wrote:

Real computers came with mice long before the
PC ; )

I'll vouch for that.
They liked to nibble on the tasty cables ....
--
Cliff

On 29 Mar 2006 19:02:04 -0800, wrote:

I remember using a
wand for a cursor on our $250K CAD/CAM system.

CADDS-III?
I think I still recall how to use CALIBRATE TABLET to use it
as a digitizer ..
--
Cliff

Two photodiodes on the receiving side do the direction check.

--
Why do penguins walk so far to get to their nesting grounds?

As I recall, Sun had an optical mouse back in the '80s.

--
Why do penguins walk so far to get to their nesting grounds?

On the day of Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:25:11 -0600...
Matt Helm
typed these letters:

The mouse I'm refering to was
indeed optical. No ball. But it required a special gridded mouse
pad that had to be oriented in a certain way in order for it to work
correctly. If this is the mouse in question it doesn't work the same
as the modern optical mice. The modern ones take pictures of the
surface to track movement.

Not quite correct. The resolution and size of the picture as changed.


Matt

So this special gridded mouse pad wasn't wired to the mouse?
From the way the info I found on it read. I assumed it worked
like a digitizer pad where the mouse or pointing device and the pad
were wired and worked together. So this old optical mouse even
though it required a special pad, the pad served no other purpose
than for the mouse to see.

Devonshire

Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article , dan
wrote:


Devonshire wrote:

On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:09:38 -0800...
dan
typed these letters:





Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan


An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?
I never seen such a thing. You wouldn't happen to still have that
mouse would you? I'd like to see it. I have a growing collection of
vintage computer stuff and look regularly at salvage stores to see
what old goodies I can find. I rarely find an optical mouse. Most
of the ones I do find are USB which makes them a bit newer than 1991
for sure. Around 1991 I was a bit behind the times with my 386sx
16Mhz machine. It came with a ball mouse. I don't recall even using
a mouse much back then. I was still running DOS and most of the stuff
I did either did not support a mouse, or hot keys were a much faster
way to maneuver.

Devonshire


Bought my Mac SE/30 in 1986 or 7 (1 MB RAM, expanded to 8, 20 MB HD, 16
MHz 68030 processor). Came with ball mouse. Updated to optical mouse
1990 or so. Original optical mice came with a special pad, with bicolor
grid markings under a transparent coating.

So, yeah, 15 years. Still have it, and the Mac, still functions, last
used it during my elementary student teaching in 1998! I think the
mouse was SCSI (round plug, 4 pins in a V, a rectangular guide inside,
two indentations ~90* apart).


Not SCSI, which was for disks, tapes, and scanners, and ran circles
around IDE and ATP.

It was ADB (Apple Desktop Bus), the intellectual ancestor of USB.


Joe Gwinn

I must be getting old... I knew that at one time!

Dan

Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:25:11 -0600...
Matt Helm
typed these letters:


The mouse I'm refering to was
indeed optical. No ball. But it required a special gridded mouse
pad that had to be oriented in a certain way in order for it to work
correctly. If this is the mouse in question it doesn't work the same
as the modern optical mice. The modern ones take pictures of the
surface to track movement.

Not quite correct. The resolution and size of the picture as changed.


Matt


So this special gridded mouse pad wasn't wired to the mouse?
From the way the info I found on it read. I assumed it worked
like a digitizer pad where the mouse or pointing device and the pad
were wired and worked together. So this old optical mouse even
though it required a special pad, the pad served no other purpose
than for the mouse to see.

Devonshire

Si! Truly optical, passive pad.

Fun recalling old history (as opposed to new history).

Dan

Devonshire,

Autograph from Gerber Systems. Around 1983. About 1989 or so we
purchased the Saber 9000 CAD/CAM for around 90K which came with a HP
workstation running X Windows. Very powerful system for the time.
Gerber had their stuff together but I think the cost and lack of
marketing really hurt them. Many ended up working for CNC and I think
that gave them the lead. In around a ten mile radius, you had the
talents of Gerber, CNC and CadKey. Its a shame the direction that
Cadkey took. You use to see them all the time but today you hardly see
the software in any shop.

gary


Did the CAD software happen to be CadKey? In college we had tablets
and wands that worked with that software. The wand kinda looked like
a ball point pen.

Devonshire

It was a two color - blue and red. Red was faint. The grid started our wide apart
and got finer and finer. Sun used a real fine one - then went to balls and then back
to high quality optical.

Remember the SS balls on the Dec - I had a large graphic DEC with SS balls.

Martin

Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member


Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:25:11 -0600...
Matt Helm
typed these letters:


The mouse I'm refering to was
indeed optical. No ball. But it required a special gridded mouse
pad that had to be oriented in a certain way in order for it to work
correctly. If this is the mouse in question it doesn't work the same
as the modern optical mice. The modern ones take pictures of the
surface to track movement.

Not quite correct. The resolution and size of the picture as changed.


Matt


So this special gridded mouse pad wasn't wired to the mouse?
From the way the info I found on it read. I assumed it worked
like a digitizer pad where the mouse or pointing device and the pad
were wired and worked together. So this old optical mouse even
though it required a special pad, the pad served no other purpose
than for the mouse to see.

Devonshire


----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

Yep - remember the Gerber system - I think ours was a single rack wide - full height.
Saber 9000 - think we did early pcb on them before we went to IBM on the big stuff
I got us into. We got the IBM in '86 maybe '85. Lockheed and ourselves had the only
two machines that would run either of our software on. So we backed up each other
and used time back and forth when service or down time occurred. Before Cadence...

Martin

Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member


wrote:
Devonshire,

Autograph from Gerber Systems. Around 1983. About 1989 or so we
purchased the Saber 9000 CAD/CAM for around 90K which came with a HP
workstation running X Windows. Very powerful system for the time.
Gerber had their stuff together but I think the cost and lack of
marketing really hurt them. Many ended up working for CNC and I think
that gave them the lead. In around a ten mile radius, you had the
talents of Gerber, CNC and CadKey. Its a shame the direction that
Cadkey took. You use to see them all the time but today you hardly see
the software in any shop.

gary


Did the CAD software happen to be CadKey? In college we had tablets
and wands that worked with that software. The wand kinda looked like
a ball point pen.

Devonshire



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On the day of Thu, 30 Mar 2006 16:08:56 -0800...
dan
typed these letters:

Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:25:11 -0600...
Matt Helm
typed these letters:

Si! Truly optical, passive pad.

Fun recalling old history (as opposed to new history).

Dan

Well thanks for clarifying this. I was having a hard time finding any
good information on it. It amazes me how things that have been
advertised as new are copies of stuff made years ago.

Devonshire

We had to turn in our cards and the data was sent by modem to the 3 IBM
360's that provided computing power for all of Georgia's colleges. Later we
got to use the teletypes. Finally as a junior or senior we got our own
terminal in the science building with a phone type modem to call the IBM's.
One terminal for the whole building. Of course biology majors had never
heard of a computer so that left it for us chemistry types.
Karl

"dan" wrote in message
...
Terry Collins wrote:
Devonshire wrote:


Aaah, therein lies your problem. Your vision is blinkered.

What's that supposed to mean?


all you knew was ibm-compatible computers.

OTOH, my first computer was a PDP 11/45 (?) which only had paddles and
blinking lights.

I took my first programming class on a CDC-6400 - Programmed using
cards, baby! We reverently descended into the bowels of the building
and offered our card stacks to the priests behind the counter, then
returned later in the hope that our output was indeed resting on the
output table - hardly dreaming in might have actually (gasp) compiled
and (whoa) run, and (dream on) produced the output we desired...

Things like the 8 queens problem and recursive sorts were real wow items!

In the days of Bill Joy...

Dan

Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:09:38 -0800...
dan
typed these letters:


Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan

An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?
I never seen such a thing. You wouldn't happen to still have that
mouse would you? I'd like to see it. I have a growing collection of
vintage computer stuff and look regularly at salvage stores to see
what old goodies I can find. I rarely find an optical mouse. Most
of the ones I do find are USB which makes them a bit newer than 1991
for sure. Around 1991 I was a bit behind the times with my 386sx
16Mhz machine. It came with a ball mouse. I don't recall even using
a mouse much back then. I was still running DOS and most of the stuff
I did either did not support a mouse, or hot keys were a much faster
way to maneuver.

They were quite common on workstations like those from Sun and SGI;
they used a mat with grid lines ruled on it.

Leon

On 31 Mar 2006 03:40:16 -0800, "Leon"
wrote:


Devonshire wrote:
On the day of Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:09:38 -0800...
dan
typed these letters:


Funny, I've been using optical mice for at least 15 years... Nice to
know they were invented only 5 or so years ago! I was ahead of my time
- that, and my steam-powered computer : )

Dan

An optical mouse in 1991? You sure about that? Was it IBM compatable?
I never seen such a thing. You wouldn't happen to still have that
mouse would you? I'd like to see it. I have a growing collection of
vintage computer stuff and look regularly at salvage stores to see
what old goodies I can find. I rarely find an optical mouse. Most
of the ones I do find are USB which makes them a bit newer than 1991
for sure. Around 1991 I was a bit behind the times with my 386sx
16Mhz machine. It came with a ball mouse. I don't recall even using
a mouse much back then. I was still running DOS and most of the stuff
I did either did not support a mouse, or hot keys were a much faster
way to maneuver.

They were quite common on workstations like those from Sun and SGI;
they used a mat with grid lines ruled on it.

Leon
I used to have one - had a green mouse pad with a silver mesh on it.
Worked pretty good.
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