Re: The good old days.

Subject: Re: The good old days.
From: "Simon North" <sintac -at- home -dot- nl>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 21:41:13 +0100

They weren't ALL good of course.

I was given (well, I swapped it for a crate of beer) a PDP 11/44 about 12 years ago. It takes
at least 2 people to mount a hard disk; the darn things weighs about 80 kg. The CPU alone
draws 4 kW ... and from a cold start it takes me about 18 hours to do a full reboot. There are
16 manuals for the basic system, plus another 22 for the OS (RSX 11 ... but it's still a
wonderful machine.

And as for the PC, well it wasn't all good either ... and I don't mean the usual complaints
about Windows. Does anyone remember Lotus Manuscript? or dBase ...

As for mice ... I think I tried them all; mice, with 2, 3, 4 and 5 buttons, pucks, trackballs (my
first trackball weighed about 80 lbs and cost an arm and a leg), touch pads, joysticks ...
been using a Wacom pen pad for the last 9 years or so and haven't looked back since.
I pick them up ridiculously cheap on eBay .. I now have 8 A5 units (it was easier to pay $2
for a pad to get the spare pen than pay $30 for a replacement pen), 4 A4 units, 2 A3 units
and a huge A2 unit ... one of these days -- in my dreams -- I'll buy a Cintiq.

There are a few packages (a very few) that have *really* survived the test of time:
Vim (mentioned before), Norton Commander (or Total Commander these days ... I
still hate copying files by drag & drop), PFE (professional file editor ... the simple macro
keystroke recording is priceless), and Pegasus Mail.

Simon.

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Follow-Ups:

References:
The good old days.: From: Joanne Wittenbrook
Re: The good old days.: From: Suzanne Chiles

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