DC> On 09 Apr 05  05:18:30, Carol Shenkenberger got back to Danny Ceppa
 DC> -> 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!


I got into the tail-end (user) section of mainframes in 1969... an IBM 360/50
that was remoted to us with 300 BPS secure modems and though the crypto systm,
which was my area of responsibility. By that time we were programming on
punched paper tape (wherein editing out typos was a manual task, and involved
scissors and tape) and the users at my end could write programs directly to
the screen, for document and photo requests. Was an interesting time to be
sure, and my initial tour of the 'head end' facility in the Five Sided Temple
of Confusion (across the river) was certainly impressive. A room full of tape
drives and other associated equipment that was noisy, and impressive. One time
when I was there for training, one of the tape reels de-mounted on it's own..

At my shop we had the fastest printer I have seen to this day, and HP ink-mask
that the greenbar would flow out of at very high -speed. Even to this day I
have not seen a printer that matched the FPS of this behemoth.. Only downside
of that was when the ink-jets misfired, and ink flew everywhere.. ah, well..


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

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