"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:07:07 +0100, brass monkey wrote:

"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:46:17 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:16:46 +0100, polygonum
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.




I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was well
respected for having a 1GB memory stick :-) I was one of 2 who had
one with such a large capacity at the time. I have just been given
a free 2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards and
being pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were
incredibly ahead of most schools...

Wow.. punch cards, how modern... we had to make do with coils of
7-hole punched paper tape and could do some crafty editing with a hand
punch if the character we wanted happened to have more holes than the
one that needed editing. I remember you could delete a character by
punching out all the remaining holes (127 = delete). We were coding in
Algol-60 on an Elliot 803 IIRC.

pedant
It would have been 9-hole (8 data plus one sprocket)!
/pedant

I worked with 5-hole (OK, 6) tape for a while. It came off teleprinters
but we fed it into an ICL 1902S.

Good god, Bob. I trust your slippers are warming by the fire? LOL I
remember playing startrek on a teletype 43 and pdp9 (i think).
42'ish years back.

That was actually 39 years ago! I had a vacation job working for Advance
Linen (roller towels in pub loos, etc.) and 5 track tape was how their
depots sent back stock levels every day....

Are you sure you have the years correct?
I started programming in primary school, so before I was 11.
That was with punched cards and a portapunch and we had to post the cards to
IC to run.
That would be at least 44 years ago.
I don't recall ever seeing punched tape around at that time.

In message , Phil Addison
writes

At my first job in the 60's they had electro-mechanical "desk-top"
calculators (Friden?), green beasts about 1/2 the size of a typewriter
with typewriter-like keys. Clever bit of kit though ISTR they could do
long devision and square roots, lord knows how they did it.

grin I remember the manual calculators we had. Monroes, I think.
--
Graeme

En el artículo
oups.com, mike escribió:

It was from ebuyer.

Ebuyer recently screwed me over on a refund due under DSR, so their
business ethics are questionable.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

En el artículo , The Natural Philosopher
escribió:

Proves my point. Obsolete, worthless - have to give 'em away

The USB equivalent of the floppy disk.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

On Sep 24, 5:26*pm, "Jim Hawkins" wrote:
Just had a 1GB Kingston Data Traveller give up the ghost.
I see you can get up to 64GB USB memory sticks these days
Which makes and sizes have the best reputation/longest lives ?

Are you having any other problems with your computer.
I had a working computer that was toasting hard drives.

I never bothered testing the thing for the actual fault. If it was the
mother board or the CPU I wouldn't have wanted to put any more money
in it.

You can buy serviceable second hand boxes good enough for office work
for a hundred quid or so.

Tesco did a nice one a while ago. A small one of 4 to 8 Gb is OK but
anything larger and you risk losing a lot of data if you leave it
plugged in at a public machine.
A favourite trick of mine not long ago.

The Tesco online shop might have better bargains than the local
supermarket. Not that I am a fan of supermarkets. Or online shopping.

Note bargain offer on one of them:
From £3.83 or 3 for £18

On Sep 25, 7:37*am, Bob Martin wrote:

I just bought two 16GB sticks for under £8

Nice link.

On 24 Sep 2012 23:48:42 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

I worked with 5-hole (OK, 6) tape for a while. It came off teleprinters
but we fed it into an ICL 1902S.

There is a Creed 444 teleprinter 6' behind my left shoulder and a load of
blank tape in the garage, terminal unit(s) to drive it are in the loft.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sep 24, 8:47*pm, Java Jive wrote:
Beware of buying unbadged chips, or what may be faked brand-name
products. *Where possible buy a respected brand-name from their own
company site.

The world of 'grey' USB sticks is ripe with trickery, many cheap ones
are a scam - one that claims to be, say 16GB, actually turns out to
be, say, 2GB, with its memory addressing rolling over to fill the same
2GB eight times, thus looking to the computer as though it has 16GB,
but it fills up after only 2GB, when you think it should have another
14GB to go. Yet, even when full, when examined in Explorer or Disk
Manager, it may still say 14GB free!

This is the complete thread where I first read about this ...
* * * * Flash Drive Recommendations

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.co...frm/thread/fc8...
... but you may wish to go straight to the most relevant post ...
* * * * #9 Theo Markettos

The manufacturer's blog linked in the latter is also worth reading, if
you get sufficiently interested in the case.

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:26:44 +0100, "Jim Hawkins"

Fancy a hack like you not knowing about top posting.
Oh wait...

Anyway:
"In the end, I’d have to say that both SanDisk and Samsung look like
they might be superior wholesale vendors to Kingston for memory cards
due to their more direct control of their respective supply chains.

Unfortunately, you can’t buy Samsung-branded microSD cards on the
retail market, as far as I know — Samsung only sells their cards to
wholesalers who then rebrand and/or resell the card, and like Kingston
these non-OEM brands may blend their vendors so it’s hard to say if
you’re getting the best card or simply a usable card."

Sounds like the manufacturers are using the scammers to their own
advantage. Otherwise they would have their own outlets.

It might be that Kingston itself is only a shell company. It wasn't
all that long ago that these people were caught out for price fixing
RAM so there is plenty of reason to believe they haven't changed.

On 24/09/2012 23:58, geoff wrote:
In message , Bernard Peek
writes
On 24/09/12 17:26, Jim Hawkins wrote:
Just had a 1GB Kingston Data Traveller give up the ghost.
I see you can get up to 64GB USB memory sticks these days
Which makes and sizes have the best reputation/longest lives ?

By the time anyone has tested them they have become obsolete and you
can't buy them any more. Buy a reputable brand and hope.

I use them to back up my company database

I always use two


I have one I keep on a neck cord that I use for backing up my company
data. I then transfer the data to a second computer in a different location.

Colin Bignell

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:56:07 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
Phil Addison wrote:

On 24 Sep 2012 23:48:42 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:46:17 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:16:46 +0100, polygonum
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.

I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was well
respected for having a 1GB memory stick :-) I was one of 2 who had
one with such a large capacity at the time. I have just been given a
free 2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards and
being pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were incredibly
ahead of most schools...

Wow.. punch cards, how modern... we had to make do with coils of 7-hole
punched paper tape and could do some crafty editing with a hand punch if
the character we wanted happened to have more holes than the one that
needed editing. I remember you could delete a character by punching out
all the remaining holes (127 = delete). We were coding in Algol-60 on an
Elliot 803 IIRC.

pedant
It would have been 9-hole (8 data plus one sprocket)!
/pedant

I worked with 5-hole (OK, 6) tape for a while. It came off teleprinters
but we fed it into an ICL 1902S.

It did come off teleprinters, that's what we typed the code on. Maybe it
was 5 hole (I don't count the sprocket), it certainly only supported
upper case but 32 characters doesn't sound enough for Algol text. Are
you sure it couldn't be 7-hole, I seem to recall it was an odd number
with the sprocket hole not quite in the centre, e.g. 4 holes + sprocket
+ 3 holes, but its very hazy now.

One of the 32 was a "shift" character that gave you access to another 31
characters.

Yes, that'll be it.

Phil

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:15:34 +0100, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

En el artículo
roups.com, mike escribió:

I also thought Kingston was a reliable brand but not quite so
sure now...

Prolly a knock-off one. Millions of the buggers on ebay.

How about buying directly from Crucial (Micron) in the UK. Probably
expensive - and I've not looked at the products - but might be worth it in
the long (FSVO) run.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

"Jim Hawkins" wrote in message
m...
Just had a 1GB Kingston Data Traveller give up the ghost.
I see you can get up to 64GB USB memory sticks these days
Which makes and sizes have the best reputation/longest lives ?

How good are you with a small soldering iron? I've seen a couple of these
where the USB connector is soldered directly to the main board of the stick.
After a few insert/removes the joins give up. Quick dab with a soldering
iron and voila - of course it does require you break into the casing - a
little prising with a screw driver might help but if it's one of those with
a sliding cover, hacksaw the cover off if you can't force it. Even with a
careful split, the cover will work well enough for what you need.

OK, it's cheaper to buy a new one, but the pleasure of fixing stuff...

Paul DS

"Phil Addison" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:16:46 +0100, polygonum
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.




I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was well
respected for having a 1GB memory stick :-) I was one of 2 who had one
with such a large capacity at the time. I have just been given a free
2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards and being
pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were incredibly ahead of
most schools...

Wow.. punch cards, how modern...

ITYF that punch cards pre-dated coils of punched tape.

tim

On 25 Sep 2012 05:21:07 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:07:02 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On 24 Sep 2012 23:48:42 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:46:17 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:16:46 +0100, polygonum
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.




I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was
well respected for having a 1GB memory stick :-) I was one of 2
who had one with such a large capacity at the time. I have just
been given a free 2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards and
being pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were
incredibly ahead of most schools...

Wow.. punch cards, how modern... we had to make do with coils of
7-hole punched paper tape and could do some crafty editing with a
hand punch if the character we wanted happened to have more holes
than the one that needed editing. I remember you could delete a
character by punching out all the remaining holes (127 = delete). We
were coding in Algol-60 on an Elliot 803 IIRC.

pedant
It would have been 9-hole (8 data plus one sprocket)!
/pedant

I worked with 5-hole (OK, 6) tape for a while. It came off teleprinters
but we fed it into an ICL 1902S.

It did come off teleprinters, that's what we typed the code on. Maybe it
was 5 hole (I don't count the sprocket), it certainly only supported
upper case but 32 characters doesn't sound enough for Algol text.

We weren't using it for Algol. But it could have been used; there were in-
band shift characters.

Are
you sure it couldn't be 7-hole, I seem to recall it was an odd number
with the sprocket hole not quite in the centre, e.g. 4 holes + sprocket
+ 3 holes, but its very hazy now.

8 hole, 5 one side and 3 the other. You can see some here, just a little
way down on the right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape
It shows 7 holes, sure, but the capacity for an 8th hole was there. Not
used for source text, but used for storing a full byte when storing
binary information (the 1902S operating system was on paper tape,
although it used disks for data storage).

The one on the right looks like ours, but surely I can see 8 holes
(+sprog)? My hazy memory is homing in on that one, I'm sure it wasn't
5-hole. This would have been 1962/3 at the Bristol BSCT, just before it
was moved over to Bath to be elevated to Bath uni.

Phil

Hmmm, I thought the 803 used 5-hole paper-tape. At least the one we
had at Uni did. Algol? Now there's posh - we were stuck with Autocode.

I am pretty sure the one we went from school to see at Elliot's in
Rochester in the 60s used punch cards. That was certainly how we
(briefly) played with it later. But we did not have the luxury of a
punch card machine for our brief lessons: we used to have to fill in
special coding pages to have the cards punched by their people; then
check the cards; then have them run. Nothing as fancy as Algol though:
IIRC more a matter of keeping track of whatws in the accummulator. And
all done by post so the time from coding to output was around 10 days
--
Robin
reply to address is (meant to be) valid

Jim Hawkins wrote:

Just had a 1GB Kingston Data Traveller give up the ghost.
I see you can get up to 64GB USB memory sticks these days
Which makes and sizes have the best reputation/longest lives ?

Jim Hawkins

I've had my Corsair Voyager (in the ali tube that's waterproof) since 2006
ish and it's still fine.

--
Tim Watts

Robin wrote:

Hmmm, I thought the 803 used 5-hole paper-tape. At least the one we
had at Uni did. Algol? Now there's posh - we were stuck with Autocode.

I am pretty sure the one we went from school to see at Elliot's in
Rochester in the 60s used punch cards. That was certainly how we
(briefly) played with it later. But we did not have the luxury of a
punch card machine for our brief lessons: we used to have to fill in
special coding pages to have the cards punched by their people; then
check the cards; then have them run. Nothing as fancy as Algol though:
IIRC more a matter of keeping track of whatws in the accummulator. And
all done by post so the time from coding to output was around 10 days

I'd love to have heard the screams caused by opening the final post to read
a single sheet with the words "SYNTAX ERROR" or somesuch crash message...

I could not have lived in those times...

--
Tim Watts

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:55:49 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Jim Hawkins wrote:
Just had a 1GB Kingston Data Traveller give up the ghost.
I see you can get up to 64GB USB memory sticks these days
Which makes and sizes have the best reputation/longest lives ?

As TNP says, they're all the same chips, and are probably all made in a
random factory in China.

Kingston have a good reputation. and most of the USB sticks I've had
fail have been for mechanical reasons such as being driven over or
stepped on. If you can find one where the whole thing retracts into the
body, they're a touch safer than ones where the connector is permanently
exposed, even if that's under a cap.

I had a regularly used Sandisk Titanium memory stick that disappeared off my
keyring a few years ago. It then turned up one evening, underfoot on my drive.
No idea where it had been in the interim, certainly not in the car, house or on
the drive. Maybe a cat or a magpie picked it up. Either way it looked like it
has been outside for some time.

I soaked it in isopropyl to remove any gunge and dried it out. The connector was
quite badly damaged with corrosion, but after I fitted a new one I discovered
from the file dates it had been missing for about three and a half years.

--

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 21:39:40 +0000 (UTC), dmc@puffin. (D.M.Chapman) wrote:

Used to recommend the Sandisk titanium but they stopped making them a
while back

On looks and solidity I would too but only if you *never* want to transport them
around as the method to attach them to a keyring is dire. Even with an upgraded
high quality split ring they still tend to just drop off and disappear from a
small bunch of keys, either for a short while or many years (see my other post!)

The best mechanical ones have large moulded in holes. 7dayshop do some Lexar
ones that were well built and with a casing that won't split or fall off a
keyring if you fart in the wrong direction.


--

in 1165085 20120925 082521 Weatherlawyer wrote:
On Sep 25, 7:37=A0am, Bob Martin wrote:

I just bought two 16GB sticks for under =A38

Nice link.

1st n 2nd in Waterlooville.
I get everything (computer) there.

On Sep 25, 8:00*am, "dennis@home"
wrote:
"Bob Eager" wrote in message

...









On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:07:07 +0100, brass monkey wrote:

"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:46:17 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:16:46 +0100, polygonum
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, *wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.

I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was well
respected for having a 1GB memory stick :-) I was one of 2 who had
one with such a large capacity at the time. I have just been given
a free 2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards and
being pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were
incredibly ahead of most schools...

Wow.. punch cards, how modern... we had to make do with coils of
7-hole punched paper tape and could do some crafty editing with a hand
punch if the character we wanted happened to have more holes than the
one that needed editing. I remember you could delete a character by
punching out all the remaining holes (127 = delete). We were coding in
Algol-60 on an Elliot 803 IIRC.

pedant
It would have been 9-hole (8 data plus one sprocket)!
/pedant

I worked with 5-hole (OK, 6) tape for a while. It came off teleprinters
but we fed it into an ICL 1902S.

Good god, Bob. I trust your slippers are warming by the fire? LOL I
remember playing startrek on a teletype 43 and pdp9 (i think).
42'ish years back.

That was actually 39 years ago! I had a vacation job working for Advance
Linen (roller towels in pub loos, etc.) and 5 track tape was how their
depots sent back stock levels every day....

Are you sure you have the years correct?
I started programming in primary school, so before I was 11.
That was with punched cards and a portapunch and we had to post the cards to
IC to run.
That would be at least 44 years ago.

1968 then.

I don't recall ever seeing punched tape around at that time.

It was around until well into the 70s.

MBQ

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:35:46 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Robin wrote:

Hmmm, I thought the 803 used 5-hole paper-tape. At least the one we
had at Uni did. Algol? Now there's posh - we were stuck with Autocode.

I am pretty sure the one we went from school to see at Elliot's in
Rochester in the 60s used punch cards. That was certainly how we
(briefly) played with it later. But we did not have the luxury of a
punch card machine for our brief lessons: we used to have to fill in
special coding pages to have the cards punched by their people; then
check the cards; then have them run. Nothing as fancy as Algol though:
IIRC more a matter of keeping track of whatws in the accummulator. And
all done by post so the time from coding to output was around 10 days

I'd love to have heard the screams caused by opening the final post to read
a single sheet with the words "SYNTAX ERROR" or somesuch crash message...

I could not have lived in those times...

1. That was all too common and exceedingly frustrating, especially as we
didn't have the luxury of a text editor. We prepared our programs
loghand then typed them directly into a Teletype whose output was a
paper tape, plus a printed copy from a tear-off roll of paper. The roll
of tape was left with the 'computer operator' and if we were lucky they
would put it in a batch to be run overnight

Typos? Tough luck!! Goto 1.

Phil

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 09:20:12 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On 25 Sep 2012 05:21:07 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:07:02 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On 24 Sep 2012 23:48:42 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:46:17 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:16:46 +0100, polygonum
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.




I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was
well respected for having a 1GB memory stick :-) I was one of 2
who had one with such a large capacity at the time. I have just
been given a free 2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards
and being pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were
incredibly ahead of most schools...

Wow.. punch cards, how modern... we had to make do with coils of
7-hole punched paper tape and could do some crafty editing with a
hand punch if the character we wanted happened to have more holes
than the one that needed editing. I remember you could delete a
character by punching out all the remaining holes (127 = delete).
We were coding in Algol-60 on an Elliot 803 IIRC.

pedant
It would have been 9-hole (8 data plus one sprocket)! /pedant

I worked with 5-hole (OK, 6) tape for a while. It came off
teleprinters but we fed it into an ICL 1902S.

It did come off teleprinters, that's what we typed the code on. Maybe
it was 5 hole (I don't count the sprocket), it certainly only
supported upper case but 32 characters doesn't sound enough for Algol
text.

We weren't using it for Algol. But it could have been used; there were
in- band shift characters.

Are
you sure it couldn't be 7-hole, I seem to recall it was an odd number
with the sprocket hole not quite in the centre, e.g. 4 holes +
sprocket + 3 holes, but its very hazy now.

8 hole, 5 one side and 3 the other. You can see some here, just a
little way down on the right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape
It shows 7 holes, sure, but the capacity for an 8th hole was there. Not
used for source text, but used for storing a full byte when storing
binary information (the 1902S operating system was on paper tape,
although it used disks for data storage).

The one on the right looks like ours, but surely I can see 8 holes
(+sprog)? My hazy memory is homing in on that one, I'm sure it wasn't
5-hole. This would have been 1962/3 at the Bristol BSCT, just before it
was moved over to Bath to be elevated to Bath uni.

Phil

Pah! all this modern stuff. Now, when I was at Bletchley.....

VBG

David

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:49:06 +0100, AlanD
wrote:

On 24/09/2012 19:15, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artículo
roups.com, mike escribió:

I also thought Kingston was a reliable brand but not quite so
sure now...

Prolly a knock-off one. Millions of the buggers on ebay.


+1

The only problem I ever had with a Kingston card turned out to be a copy.
DONT buy these from ebay or an Amazon seller. Use 7dayshop or ebuyer or
similar.

Exactly so.
Kingston isn't exactly pricey anyway and I don't mind paying for a
genuine article. Fwiw, I've never had a Kingston failure and have been
using them for years.

in 1165226 20120925 124655 Tim Streater wrote:
In article
,
"Man at B&Q" wrote:

On Sep 25, 8:00Â*am, "dennis@home"
wrote:

That would be at least 44 years ago.

1968 then.

I don't recall ever seeing punched tape around at that time.

It was around until well into the 70s.

I was using paper tape on an 803 in 1965, and cards on a 7094 in 1967.

7094 in 1967? Where was that? I was a CE on CEGB's 7094 but that had
been replaced by 360s by 1967. Wasn't aware of any others.

On 25/09/12 12:17, Man at B&Q wrote:
On Sep 25, 8:00 am, "dennis@home"
wrote:

1968 then.

I don't recall ever seeing punched tape around at that time.

It was around until well into the 70s.

I was using it at NCR in 1974.


--
djc

On Monday, September 24, 2012 5:26:45 PM UTC+1, Jim Hawkins wrote:
Just had a 1GB Kingston Data Traveller give up the ghost.

I see you can get up to 64GB USB memory sticks these days

Which makes and sizes have the best reputation/longest lives ?


Go for a relible make like Kingston and get them from a ruputable dealer there were a lot of fake ones about a while ago...

http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/Fake-USB-P...00000005112847


even some shops were selling fakes.

"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message , polygonum
writes
On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.




I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was well
respected for having a 1GB memory stick :-) I was one of 2 who had one
with such a large capacity at the time. I have just been given a free
2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards and being
pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were incredibly ahead of
most schools...


I remember getting shown an "electronic calculator" at school

about the size of a desktop PC

Fantastic Maxie, fantastic! Did it have valves?

"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message , Bernard Peek
writes
On 24/09/12 17:26, Jim Hawkins wrote:
Just had a 1GB Kingston Data Traveller give up the ghost.
I see you can get up to 64GB USB memory sticks these days
Which makes and sizes have the best reputation/longest lives ?

By the time anyone has tested them they have become obsolete and you can't
buy them any more. Buy a reputable brand and hope.

I use them to back up my company database

I always use two

Maxie, do you use backup software that only updates not overwriting the lot?

"Terry Fields" wrote in message
...

Phil Addison wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:03:33 +0100, geoff wrote:

I remember getting shown an "electronic calculator" at school

about the size of a desktop PC

At my first job in the 60's they had electro-mechanical "desk-top"
calculators (Friden?), green beasts about 1/2 the size of a typewriter
with typewriter-like keys. Clever bit of kit though ISTR they could do
long devision and square roots, lord knows how they did it.

My first job in the 60s involved a slide rule for approximate
calculations, logs for more accurate work, and for what we called
'data reduction' (calculating figures for successive columns ruled on
a large sheet of squared paper) there was the Madas electromechanical
calculator. I'd been taught how to use a Brunsviga calculator at
college, where I'd seen my first computer - an analogue one for
calculating the roots of a quadratic. 'Data reduction' was ten hours
overtime on a Saturday following a week collecting the data.

Terry Fields

I believe, before my time, that in the 1960s, the Olivetti was the first
"smallish" electronic mains powered calculator - with a paper roll.

In article ,
The Other Mike wrote:
On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 21:39:40 +0000 (UTC), dmc@puffin. (D.M.Chapman) wrote:

Used to recommend the Sandisk titanium but they stopped making them a
while back

On looks and solidity I would too but only if you *never* want to transport
them around as the method to attach them to a keyring is dire. Even with
an upgraded high quality split ring they still tend to just drop off and
disappear from a small bunch of keys, either for a short while or many
years (see my other post!)

Ah yes, I'd forgotten that. The included keyring is crap, I'll give you that.


The best mechanical ones have large moulded in holes. 7dayshop do some Lexar
ones that were well built and with a casing that won't split or fall off a
keyring if you fart in the wrong direction.

My wife has been using a couple for many years in school, as have many of
her colleages. Admittedly, they all have them hanging around their necks
with a whiste on a lanyard (not relying on the crap keyring)

The kingston one I mentioned ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006YBARCA/ )
is pretty good in that respect. Decent metal hole, and it's tiny so
less likely to get levered against keys in your pocket :-) The whole
thing is the size of the USB plug on most.

It is dog slow to write to though...

Darren

In message , Doctor Drivel
writes

"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message , Bernard Peek
writes
On 24/09/12 17:26, Jim Hawkins wrote:
Just had a 1GB Kingston Data Traveller give up the ghost.
I see you can get up to 64GB USB memory sticks these days
Which makes and sizes have the best reputation/longest lives ?

By the time anyone has tested them they have become obsolete and you
can't buy them any more. Buy a reputable brand and hope.

I use them to back up my company database

I always use two

Maxie, do you use backup software that only updates not overwriting the lot?


WTF are you on about?

I copy the back end of my Co database to USB sticks and to a HD which is
dated



--
geoff

I saw this at the old Tetley Brewery in Leeds the other day

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ouutuvng6x...8Medium%29.jpg

Can anyone tell me anything about it and a date?

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:53:50 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:

In article ,
Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:16:46 +0100, polygonum
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.

I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was well
respected for having a 1GB memory stick :-) I was one of 2 who had
one with such a large capacity at the time. I have just been given
a free 2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards and
being pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were
incredibly ahead of most schools...

Wow.. punch cards, how modern... we had to make do with coils of 7-hole
punched paper tape and could do some crafty editing with a hand punch
if the character we wanted happened to have more holes than the one
that needed editing. I remember you could delete a character by
punching out all the remaining holes (127 = delete). We were coding in
Algol-60 on an Elliot 803 IIRC.

Hmmm, I thought the 803 used 5-hole paper-tape. At least the one we had
at Uni did. Algol? Now there's posh - we were stuck with Autocode.

It used both. At least, the tape reader that we had did...it was actually
identical to the one on the 1902S. You can see one working at NMoC.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 09:20:12 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On 25 Sep 2012 05:21:07 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:07:02 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On 24 Sep 2012 23:48:42 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:46:17 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:16:46 +0100, polygonum
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.




I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was
well respected for having a 1GB memory stick I was one of 2
who had one with such a large capacity at the time. I have just
been given a free 2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards
and being pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were
incredibly ahead of most schools...

Wow.. punch cards, how modern... we had to make do with coils of
7-hole punched paper tape and could do some crafty editing with a
hand punch if the character we wanted happened to have more holes
than the one that needed editing. I remember you could delete a
character by punching out all the remaining holes (127 = delete).
We were coding in Algol-60 on an Elliot 803 IIRC.

pedant
It would have been 9-hole (8 data plus one sprocket)!
/pedant

I worked with 5-hole (OK, 6) tape for a while. It came off
teleprinters but we fed it into an ICL 1902S.

It did come off teleprinters, that's what we typed the code on. Maybe
it was 5 hole (I don't count the sprocket), it certainly only
supported upper case but 32 characters doesn't sound enough for Algol
text.

We weren't using it for Algol. But it could have been used; there were
in-
band shift characters.

Are you sure it couldn't be 7-hole, I seem to recall it was an odd
number with the sprocket hole not quite in the centre, e.g. 4 holes +
sprocket + 3 holes, but its very hazy now.

8 hole, 5 one side and 3 the other. You can see some here, just a
little way down on the right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape
It shows 7 holes, sure, but the capacity for an 8th hole was there. Not
used for source text, but used for storing a full byte when storing
binary information (the 1902S operating system was on paper tape,
although it used disks for data storage).

The one on the right looks like ours, but surely I can see 8 holes
(+sprog)?

I was talking about the diagram a little way down, rather than the photo
at the top. As you say, that shows eight.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:00:25 +0100, dennis@home wrote:

"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:07:07 +0100, brass monkey wrote:

"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:46:17 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:16:46 +0100, polygonum

wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.




I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was
well respected for having a 1GB memory stick :-) I was one of 2
who had one with such a large capacity at the time. I have just
been given a free 2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards and
being pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were
incredibly ahead of most schools...

Wow.. punch cards, how modern... we had to make do with coils of
7-hole punched paper tape and could do some crafty editing with a
hand punch if the character we wanted happened to have more holes
than the one that needed editing. I remember you could delete a
character by punching out all the remaining holes (127 = delete). We
were coding in Algol-60 on an Elliot 803 IIRC.

pedant
It would have been 9-hole (8 data plus one sprocket)!
/pedant

I worked with 5-hole (OK, 6) tape for a while. It came off
teleprinters but we fed it into an ICL 1902S.

Good god, Bob. I trust your slippers are warming by the fire? LOL I
remember playing startrek on a teletype 43 and pdp9 (i think). 42'ish
years back.

That was actually 39 years ago! I had a vacation job working for
Advance Linen (roller towels in pub loos, etc.) and 5 track tape was
how their depots sent back stock levels every day....

Are you sure you have the years correct?
I started programming in primary school, so before I was 11.
That was with punched cards and a portapunch and we had to post the
cards to IC to run.
That would be at least 44 years ago.
I don't recall ever seeing punched tape around at that time.

Certain about the years. Summer and Christmas 1973. I'd just graduated.

I was surprised to see them using paper tape, but it suited them for the
data transmission. Their machine room wasn't that big, and card readers/
punches were expensive. They had little data entry.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 12:10:57 -0700 (PDT), Murmansk wrote:

I saw this at the old Tetley Brewery in Leeds the other day


https://www.dropbox.com/s/ouutuvng6x...20%28Medium%29..
jpg

Can anyone tell me anything about it and a date?

Looking at the keyboard I'd say it's an £SD calculating machine. Bung
"ncr live keyboard" into google or eBay.




--
Cheers
Dave.

On 25 Sep 2012 21:30:38 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 09:20:12 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On 25 Sep 2012 05:21:07 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:07:02 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On 24 Sep 2012 23:48:42 GMT, Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:46:17 +0100, Phil Addison wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:16:46 +0100, polygonum
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:11:33 +0100, wrote:

On 24/09/2012 17:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

1GB is SO old it must go back YEARS.




I remember when I started secondary school back in 2006, I was
well respected for having a 1GB memory stick I was one of 2
who had one with such a large capacity at the time. I have just
been given a free 2GB one from work!

I remember at my secondary school being given some punch cards
and being pointed at a hand-punch and a code chart. And we were
incredibly ahead of most schools...

Wow.. punch cards, how modern... we had to make do with coils of
7-hole punched paper tape and could do some crafty editing with a
hand punch if the character we wanted happened to have more holes
than the one that needed editing. I remember you could delete a
character by punching out all the remaining holes (127 = delete).
We were coding in Algol-60 on an Elliot 803 IIRC.

pedant
It would have been 9-hole (8 data plus one sprocket)!
/pedant

I worked with 5-hole (OK, 6) tape for a while. It came off
teleprinters but we fed it into an ICL 1902S.

It did come off teleprinters, that's what we typed the code on. Maybe
it was 5 hole (I don't count the sprocket), it certainly only
supported upper case but 32 characters doesn't sound enough for Algol
text.

We weren't using it for Algol. But it could have been used; there were
in-
band shift characters.

Are you sure it couldn't be 7-hole, I seem to recall it was an odd
number with the sprocket hole not quite in the centre, e.g. 4 holes +
sprocket + 3 holes, but its very hazy now.

8 hole, 5 one side and 3 the other. You can see some here, just a
little way down on the right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape
It shows 7 holes, sure, but the capacity for an 8th hole was there. Not
used for source text, but used for storing a full byte when storing
binary information (the 1902S operating system was on paper tape,
although it used disks for data storage).

The one on the right looks like ours, but surely I can see 8 holes
(+sprog)?

I was talking about the diagram a little way down, rather than the photo
at the top. As you say, that shows eight.

OK, got it now, the one that spells out "Wikipedia".

Phil

"Murmansk" wrote in message
...
I saw this at the old Tetley Brewery in Leeds the other day

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ouutuvng6x...8Medium%29.jpg

Can anyone tell me anything about it and a date?


It's a comptometer, or glorified adding machine.

In the days before computers many large organisations had
rooms full of the things, usually operated by women.

For most female clerical workers there were usually two main career
options, working in the typing pool or as a comptometer operator.

They remained in use right up until the use of computers
well into the 70's as did the smaller desktop manual adding
machines where you had to pull a lever after each operation
and the result showed in a window which you then had to
write down. By the end of the 70's electronic calculators
both pocket sized and desktop were already fairly cheap.

The "Live Keyboard" feature probably denotes the keyboard was
electrically powered - from films etc. ISTR a roomful of the
manual models made quite a racket. Also there's no lever
to be pulled.

ISTR in the film "The Rebel" Tony Hancock and all his fellow
workers were using comptometers or at least manual adding
machines.


michael adams

....

On 26/09/12 00:15, michael adams wrote:
"Murmansk" wrote in message
...
I saw this at the old Tetley Brewery in Leeds the other day

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ouutuvng6x...8Medium%29.jpg

Can anyone tell me anything about it and a date?


It's a comptometer, or glorified adding machine.

In the days before computers many large organisations had
rooms full of the things, usually operated by women.

For most female clerical workers there were usually two main career
options, working in the typing pool or as a comptometer operator.

They remained in use right up until the use of computers
well into the 70's as did the smaller desktop manual adding
machines where you had to pull a lever after each operation
and the result showed in a window which you then had to
write down. By the end of the 70's electronic calculators
both pocket sized and desktop were already fairly cheap.

The "Live Keyboard" feature probably denotes the keyboard was
electrically powered - from films etc. ISTR a roomful of the
manual models made quite a racket. Also there's no lever
to be pulled.

There was also a larger, more complex version that could keep track of
transactions by adding them to record cards. Some also had a punched
tape output. When I worked at NCR (1973-4) most of the punched tape
originated from such machines, it was then fed into the NCR315 for
processing.




--
djc