On 09 Apr 05  17:09:36, Raymond Yates got back to Danny Ceppa 
-> Re: the cold, cold ground

 DC>> The first main frame I got to play with was in 1968.
 CS>> Predates me then!
 
 DC> See!   I told you that you weren't that old!


 RY> I got into the tail-end (user) section of mainframes in 1969... an IBM
 RY> 360/50 that was remoted to us with 300 BPS secure modems and though the

That fast of a modem, huh?    

 RY> programming on punched paper tape (wherein editing out typos was a
 RY> manual task, and involved scissors and tape) and the users at my end

I only got to use punch cards.  There were probably more cards in the 
trash barrels than ever got ran through the system.  

 RY> the river) was certainly impressive. A room full of tape drives and
 RY> other associated equipment that was noisy, and impressive. One time
 RY> when I was there for training, one of the tape reels de-mounted on
 RY> it's own.. 

Just as long as it wasn't your program on the reel!  

 RY> At my shop we had the fastest printer I have seen to this day, and HP
 RY> ink-mask that the greenbar would flow out of at very high -speed. Even
 RY> to this day I have not seen a printer that matched the FPS of this

The name of it still resides on your system.  It's your LTPx Ports.  
The actually printed an entire line rather than individual characters.  
You can still get them.  

 RY> When Carol sees this she might remember the Navy Playboy Centerfold
 RY> Calender that was printed in ASCII and "mysteriously
appeared" on the
 RY> system December 31, a much anticipated event...

Come to think of it, it was the same time, actually a couple of 
years earlier, that I first saw ASCII art.  My older sister brought 
some home from her college.  



... "Your modem or your wife," said the divorce attorney.
--- OMX/Blue Wave/DOS v2.30