Re: [PLUG] Old computers and stuff

["Keith C. Perry" <kperry@daotechnologies.com>]

LOL, must be!!!

Turbo Pascal for the win!  I agree 100% there.  Especially in the context of portability since many times back then I was implementing "glue code" or "secret sauce" solutions in Pascal to get data manipulations done.  I don't ever remember if I used Pascal elsewhere.  C and Fortran I think I used on 8086 (with and without and an 8087 eek!), Unix and mainframe in the late '80s and early '90's.

Looks like you had the T/S 1000... that was actually my first personal computer.  BTW, from your post, I agree, it was very rudimentary and the BASIC on it was... yea, basic.  My enthrallment with computers really came from pushing that little computer to the limit.  Upgrading to the T/S 2000 was a no brainer.

The T/S 2000 could give the C-64 (one of my brothers had that) and the TI-994A (the other brother had that one) a run for the money.  I first hand coded assembly on there- took me 2 years of self-study for it to finally make sense but it was worth it since that knowledge was helpful in doing things on the C-64.

One of the reasons why I like ARM or MIPS SBCs and Arduino's is because I really enjoy the lower level programming that you can easily do with those devices.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E. 
Owner, DAO Technologies LLC 
(O) +1.215.525.4165 x2033 
(M) +1.215.432.5167 
www.daotechnologies.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Litt" <slitt@troubleshooters.com>
To: plug@lists.phillylinux.org
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2015 12:20:07 PM
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Old computers and stuff

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 16:25:10 -0500 (EST)
"Keith C. Perry" <kperry@daotechnologies.com> wrote:

> That was definitely a nice trip down memory lane.  I didn't know that
> many people also had a Unix or VMS background before Linux.

You and I must be brothers separated at birth. My first IT job was as a
medical management software programmer on PDP11 with TSX running atop
RT/11 to give RT/11 multiuser/multitasking capabilities. We used
Whitesmith Pascal.

> 
> I had mentioned my Timex Sinclair 2000 during the conversation.

My second computer was a Timex Sinclair, maybe a 2000. It's mentioned
in this article:

http://troubleshooters.com/lpm/200610/200610.htm#_Computers_Ive_Known_and_Loved

> Since most people were not familiar with, I figured I would show
> pictures from a post I did on G+ awhile back.
> 
> https://goo.gl/photos/AJSH9UyvjzFx1maS9
> 
> Oh and JP, that bubble sort brought a tear to my eye.  Also circa '90
> - '91 when I was tutoring engineering and comp. sci majors in
> Pascal. 

Turbo Pascal 3 was almost perfect. Every bit as fast as C. Built in
right-sized development environment. Able to fit on and work off a
floppy in your shirt pocket, with a license allowing you to do that (as
long as you kept it on the floppy). When your customer couldn't get his
chosen language to do task X, you just finessed it in Turbo Pascal.
Having that Turbo Pascal 3 floppy in your pocket made you a traveling
solution. Years after later Turbo Pascal versions were install-only, I
still carried my Turbo Pascal 3 floppy.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
November 2015 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
     of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques
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