Jul. 16th, 2004 10:47 am
Conversation over dinner
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vin_petrolTrash: I think I'm going to buy a Vax.
<a dreamy look enters Vin's eye as he thinks he's married to the best woman on Earth. An 11/780 would just about fill the dining room, and would make a good conversation piece for fellow techies. I'm sure I could run some form of BSD Unix on it. I could call it 'minster' too, in honour of the student machine I used back in the 80s. Hmmm, don't they need an odd power supply...>
<Trash notices dreamy look on Vin's face>
Trash: no, not that sort of Vax - I mean the type you use to clean carpets with.
:-(
<a dreamy look enters Vin's eye as he thinks he's married to the best woman on Earth. An 11/780 would just about fill the dining room, and would make a good conversation piece for fellow techies. I'm sure I could run some form of BSD Unix on it. I could call it 'minster' too, in honour of the student machine I used back in the 80s. Hmmm, don't they need an odd power supply...>
<Trash notices dreamy look on Vin's face>
Trash: no, not that sort of Vax - I mean the type you use to clean carpets with.
:-(
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Why not install openVMS until the urge passes?
no subject
I've never been a fan of VMS. The 11/780s I used were always running BSD Unix.
I suppose I should install something like FreeBSD on an intel-based machine to recreate that 1980s feel.
There's nothing sad about an interest in beautiful old computer architecture (mmmmm, first production computer in the world with virtual addressing). It's no sadder than making model cars :-P
no subject
no subject
no subject
1) if I had got that right, and...
2) if I hadn't, who would correct me first:
no subject
no subject
no subject
It won't be on the '750 though, it has Issues. Something like a few 3100s or the 4000/200 - but I generally like to keep that one for myself to play on :D
no subject
no subject
no subject
If space was available, I could have a museum of all the tech I used. Oldest to newest, it must contain:
Nascom 2
Sinclair ZX80, ZX81, Spectrum
IBM PC/AT running MS-DOS 3.1
Vax 11/780 running BSD Unix
Apple Macintosh IIci with multiple colour monitors running System 7.0 (god, how I could annoy Windows users with *that* in 1991!)
A generic, badgeless heap of components running Windows 98 - hey, that's my home machine now :-)
Things like BBC Micros, Commodore 64s, Amigas, etc were all great, but were never really part of my life the way the above machines were.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
/me laughs.
I had one of those at work. But how I would anoy Mac users with my Acorn! When was it Apple went over to RISC precisely...?
As it happens my home PC is starting to show it's age. I give it another year and it will be replaced by a Dual G5 complete with nice telly.
no subject
Aye, nice machines those RISC based Acorns. I have this vague recollection that Braben and Bell declared the very best version of Elite ever created was the one for the Archimedes.
As it happens my home PC is starting to show it's age.
They always do... Interestingly, the one thing about PCs that has *finally* impressed me recently has been USB. Seems we *finally* (after how many years?) at last have "a simple desktop bus that lots of ickle peripheral devices can plug into". About bloody time, seeing as the Macintosh had ADB in 1988 :-)
no subject
no subject
/me starts a holy war over vacuum cleaners!
no subject
no subject
Also I remember using minster - aww!
no subject
no subject
% nslookup minster.cs.york.ac.uk
Name: minster.cs.york.ac.uk
Address: 144.32.40.2
no subject
It was 1988/89, I was on the MSc IP , it was a mainframe! Does that help??
I was telling a pal only t'other da that I did this whole computing conversion thing only 15 years ago and not only did we not use micros except in the Psycholgy Dep out teaching bit (hrup spit!) but I was explicitly DISCOURAGED, and indeed, i still believe, marked down for insisting on doing my big project at the end on a PC and using PC software..
And you tell the young ones today and they DOOO-OANT believe you :-)
no subject
It WAS the same machine! The 11/780 was the undergrad machine in 87-88, then moved off to service you MSc people the year after. I always had in my head that you were at York *after* me, that you were there in 1991 or somesich. I graduated in 1990, so we were there at the same time. Were you ever in Vision for any reason?
So you used the same CPU I used for all my late night
Nethackprogramming sessions. Ah!Um, you do know us 'proper' CompSci's used to laugh at you MSc people, don't you? :-) You were all so cute and, er, not very good with computers.
I was explicitly DISCOURAGED, and indeed, i still believe, marked down for insisting on doing my big project at the end on a PC and using PC software..
I can see that. CompSci was very funny about that sort of thing back in those days. I recall you *really* weren't supposed to use Computer Service facilities either. One friend of mine really did get marked down for using CompServe computers for a project. Of course, the stupid bugger did include things like "login to the Computer Service VAXA" in his project documentation. Marked down for being *stupid*, I think!
no subject
Um, yes we did, and no, no we weren't. What did you expect? We weren't geeks - we had lives :-)
I wish I still knew what people were doing off that course - in some ways it was a teribly bonding thing, we'd all have committed suicide if we hadn't bonded together to get through horrors like Glide, that maths formal specification language thingy (one letetr?) and that wanky guy who taught Pascal endlessly telling us about how he programed the Headingley cricket score board..
I recall you *really* weren't supposed to use Computer Service facilities either.
Um I think we were y'know? But I kept getting into trouble for the opposite,m as I say - using PC software, refusing to write reports inTRoff. I mean jesus wept; I was a fanzine fan, I'd had my own Amstrad for two years by then. I wrote my dissertation report on it (using paper with sprcoket holes in it on my baby printer, gods) and I'm sure that brought my mark down too :-)
Incidentally i got about 60 or less for my dissertation, and Oxford Univ press then agreed to publish it :-> Luckily (thank god) I lost interest in this pretty quickly..
I was also TOP in the Hardware course (Networks? something like that. About wires and caches and object and subject code and OSI models I think). How in GOD's name did that happen???!! (I suppose on reflection it says a lot abbout our general standard!!!)
no subject
(of Headingley infamy) for a long time.
Someone did once ask him what he meant when he was talking
about "nerd curd" - they thought it was some horribly
technical jargon, but it was just his curious accent's way
of saying "the node code" running on one of the processors
of the system he was working on ;)
When he was a postgrad, Briggs shared a house with one
of my current work colleagues (Gary Morgan, who you might
remember as a young lecturer in those days - now he's got
a proper job) - Gary claims they only communicated by email
for the whole year.
Popular opinion is that Briggs is not the product of sexual
union, we reckon his mum knitted him. He went South to some
Godforsaken polytechnic in about '96 apparently.
no subject
I *think* I possibly remember Gary as a young guy who though not really one of our lecturers was amazingly helpful with that formal specification language I was talking about .. ring any bells|?
no subject
BE MENTALLY PREPARED BEFORE YOU CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW! I recoiled in horror when his picture first appeared on my monitor. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/briggsj/
no subject
NOT ENOUGH WARNINGQ!!!!
no subject
Ah, I remember that - Functional Programming. All lecture courses had three letter codes, and this one was FUN (ha ha). Clearly the most mis-named course there was... Actually, I didn't find it that hard to do, but I can see how it was a bit of a head-fuck.
that maths formal specification language thingy (one letetr?)
Z *shudder*
Yes, I remember that well. All that bloody formal maths bollox. What a bag of shite. There's clearly a tiny niche of programming where proving your code works before you run it, but nearly all the programmers I know are not in that realm.
Anyway, as I always like to point out to 'formal methods' people, by mathematical proof, we shouldn't be using ethernet, 'cos you can't prove it will work 100% of the time. There's a worst case scenarion: all devices get the same random time to wait before re-transmits and no packets ever get through. Incredibly unlikely, but there's no room for "really, really not likely to happen" in *formal* methods :-)
There was one aside to the Z work I really enjoyed though. I prepared my Software Engineering report on Z using troff for the first time, and I was really interested in all the typesetting stuff that introduced me too (far more than the Z itself). It was the first time I typeset anything and sent it to a laser printer. That particular interest, in the beauty of typeset documents, has been with me ever since.
and that wanky guy who taught Pascal endlessly telling us about how he programed the Headingley cricket score board..
Gods... Jim Briggs. Arrrgh. It has always annoyed me that an aspect of my life depended on the opinion of that person: he marked some work I did that contributed to my degree. That simple fact alone pissed me off. I'm not great at dealing with other humans in a reasonable fashion, but this man seemed to have no social skills whatsoever. I wonder now if he had some minor mental illness that meant he couldn't empathise with members of his own species?
He also showed up to the staff versus students cricket match in full cricket whites and pads, whereas the rest of the players ambled along in whatever clothes they happened to be wearing at the time.
I was also TOP in the Hardware course (Networks? something like that. About wires and caches and object and subject code and OSI models I think).
What a lot of things you did in one year! I'm (almost) starting to have some respect for you MSc people now :-)
no subject
no subject
SQL
SQL skills never date. I first did SQL in 1988. I remember at the time how gloriously 1970s it felt. 16 years later I'm still writing SQL using Oracle's SQLPLUS and it doesn't seem to have changed one bit.
actually physically making gates and boards - why?
Because a Computer Science degree is a wide-ranging grounding in many aspects of computing! :-)
I think the idea was to cram an UG degree into a year.
You clearly did a lot for one year.
no subject
score higher than the "normal" population on most tests
that screen for autism. I've certainly worked with a lot
of people who I'd say showed classic Asperger's Syndrome
symptoms - JSB being one of them - although far from being
the most pronounced case I've seen.
I've certainly interviewed people who I would've been
happier referring for psychiatric treatment than offering
a job to in the past, on more than one occasion.
In some respects the more hardcore end of computing is
a natural refuge for people tending towards that end of
the autism spectrum - it's about detail, control, systems,
rules, things - not people! Of the engineering staff
in my current workplace, the former technical director was
(IMHO, and IANAD) probably borderline Asperger's, one of
my fellow team leaders shows many of the stereotypical
symptoms but seems aware of the issue and makes conscious
although not often successful efforts to work around it,
and about a third of the engineers display some of the
traits....
Ps
Re: Ps
Vision is one of the York student newspapers. I was the main photographer for it whilst I was at York. When I meet people I was at York with who I didn't know at the time, it's always worth me asking if they were in Vision. Sometimes it turns out I took their picture for some reason. I took soooo many pictures I can hardly ever remember them, but they generally remember me - long haired, leather clad man takes picture of you possibly being quite memorable :-)
I've still got most of the issues I worked on. They're an interesting snapshot of York student life in the late 80s. One day, I'll scan them and put them online.
Re: Ps
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
She did once stop a conversation between myself and
no subject
I've only recently met Pete at all. I had no idea he was so inclined. I shall attempt to rectify this next time we have more than 2min...
no subject
Ooh, excellent!
no subject
The Luddite speaks....
So, was I meant to understand anything about this post, other than the carpet cleaning bit?!
Re: The Luddite speaks....
Re: The Luddite speaks....
Re: The Luddite speaks....
Plus, you clearly know more than how to just turn it on: how to use a web browser, an LJ client, and where do all those user pics come from, eh? :-)