creaky, you might have worked on some of the sun systems in which i helped test & debugged the motherboards & daughtercards.
@creaky/ddp: we have many mainframe operators and programmers who've been at it for a great many years...generally banks, large publications like TV guide, insurance companies etc. who have come in seeking retraining claiming that, at least in this area, mainframe programming is no longer a marketable skill. State employment publications tell us the same thing with the exception of an IBM AS/400 midranges which are still rather widely used. Is this incorrect information in your opinion? State publications seem to stress a compatiblilty with data base admin/management.
depends as some companies as still using some progam languages that are not main stream any more. look what happened during the supposed big crisis of y2k. supposedly going to happen again within next 10yrs. something about time problem.
mainframes are sort of making a comeback, but the only ones i can think of are IBM where they have Linux running on huge machines; i was a Mainframe Operator for a lot of my life, fond memories of working on such huge/important equipment. stuff like AS/400 just never did it for me, and the Sun/Fujitsu Enterprise servers i use now, while expensive/complex/built to run for years at a time just aren't the same as the kit i used in my early years
I remeber my first system... It was armed with a Geforce 2! ran perfectly with windows 95' and had a floppy drive that was massive... like masssive big... And massive floppys (500mb HDD). Then four years later I got me a pc with 6gigs of storage!(HDD) this was great! And i jumped for joy when i saw the massivo Geforce 4 Voodoo Banshee! Wahoo! I could perfectly run Sim-Safari! I bought a boxed set with 6 sim games... Like sim tower, sim ant, sim city (the feature) and some others. oh yeah: -Sim ant -Sim tower -Sim Park -Sim safari -sim city Well thats my story....
When I was a kid, I had a Sinclair ZX-81, with 1KB of memory. At the time — back in 1984 or 85 — if you wanted to play a game you couldn't buy a CD, so you had to buy one of the listing magazines, like Sinclair Programs. You had to look at the listing of computer code and type it into your machine. The keyboard was terrible — it was simply a flat piece of plastic. At the end you would try to run the program, and if it didn't run you would have to correct any syntax errors. Thats how it started for me.
yeah me too, i had one and tried typing them in. that hobby didn't last long, sold it after a while; got a Sinclair Spectrum next with the game Horace Goes Skiing, that didn't last too long; next, and my fave machine for a while was a Commodore 64 and an Atari ST (512k version i think); a few other things in between but then many years later i got the awesome Super Nintendo, then replaced it with a Super Famicom which i still use from time to time
Although not a real old timer at 42,I thought I would add to this thread. I got hooked on computers at school when I studied for O-level and A-level computer science. I saved all my hard earned pin money to buy my first "home computer", my pride and joy a BBC micro and cassette deck, wow what data storage that was, a 30 minute load time to use the simplest of programs only for it to crash on the first key stroke. I spent many hours writing and typing "basic" code into that old machine. Next up was my commodore 64 with the inovative 5" floppy drive, oh my prayers were answered. Quick load times and the programs even worked. What heady days of long hours in front of a black and white 14" portable tv. I then started working in the automotive industry and lost touch with my computer, until 1996 when I bought my first real pc. Pentium 166 mmx and then I was rehooked. Now I spend most of my time tinkering at home building for family and friends and offering self taught advice/help gleaned from here on AD and other literary sources.
LOL! Reminds me of when I was in france some thirty years ago. I grew up in Quebec which speaks a much older french. If one stays away from the dialect's mispronounciations, the french is exactly the same but it's a much older french. We had no trouble understanding each other but every now and again, I would come out with some ancient turn of a phrase which would stop them dead in their tracks but they loved it...rather like having dinner with an english speaking person who suddenly utters a sentence in Elizabethan English right out of shakespear.
I see that Lexz has got the boot, permanently, no more betting guys such a shame I was about to get into the action as well @Gerry1 funny you should speak of France, I am going next year with two of my buddies, was planning on going to Japan but it is too expensive, so I will be going 2008.
i was reading the thread, hopefully im old. 17. well ive been coming to aD for 4 years and i got into computer when i was 8, playing with the old 5 and a quarter inch floppy games. w00t oh, and i couple posts back there was a question about old farts are guys so what are girls, i think there called cougers.
I first got involved with computers back in the early 80's when I was working for the Army in Germany. The first computer the agency got was called a "GRID", and we only had 1. The first pc I ever bought was the old Commodore 64. Buought it at Toys-r-Us on one of my trips from Germany back to the Pentagon. BTW, I really qualify as an "old fart" -- I'm 63.
now this is a old fart, I have been wondering about my penis A man in his sixties goes to the Doctor. The Dr. checks him out and tells him everything is fine. The Doctor asked if he had any questions. The man stated he did. "I have been wondering about my penis. When I was 17 and it was hard I could not bend it." When I was in my 40's and it was hard I could bend it a little bit." Now that I am in my 60's and it gets hard I can bend the hell out of it." Doc tell me am I getting stronger What's in Your Ear There were two old fellows who were chatting. Suddenly one of them asked, "What in the world is that sticking out of your right ear?" The other, with a puzzled look, said, "I don't know", and reached up pulling out the object, then exclaimed, "My word, a suppository!" Then he slapped his forehead and excitedly declared, "Now I know what I did with my hearing aid."
In 1974 I had a friend taking a BASIC/APL course at the local college and told me I should look into it. I took the course and was hooked...back then we bought time on a mainframe at TCU. We had a terminal with a keyboard and greenbar paper, no monitor...it was real time, you typed, it responded. In 1975 I went to work for Pier One Imports in the coporate office IT center. In 1978 I bought my first computer, an Apple II+!! Monochrome graphics, no lower case, 48K of RAM, a 1MHZ CPU, dual 180K floppies and a 300bps modem. Total cost - $3500... I was hooked again...I wrote a relational database system for an oil landman in 1979, and another for a video rental in 1980. Today I am a consultant with my own computer services business and design websites. Computers were the only job I ever tried that I couldn't do in my sleep.
I think the answer was easy for me, I started when the internet was first introduced to Australia with an LC 475 Mac, nobody knew a thing about them so I had to teach myself.I then converted to PC's and have 5 PC's on a wireless network of which I have built 3 of them
@tsquare43 good to see you around, been a while. Seen any of those Red DVDs lately. God I thought I was old; you got me by 3 years. LOL
LMAO Ireland! You have no idea how appropriate your penis subject is! On my way home from work, I ran into yet another group protesting something .. a regular occurance here and usually goes hand in hand with whatever group is having a convention. I usually pay no attention but given the heavy rain, I had to admire their dedication. They were protesting CIRCUMCISION!! They were carring signs reading "Stop genital mutilation". Initially, I thought they were speaking of this "female circumcision" of certain muslim groups recently in the news but no, they were speaking about out newborn boys. I was just a bit surprised that they could get so many to stand in the rain over such a subject. Hell, giving a newborn's peanut a date with the axeman is a fine welcome into the world, but I didn't realize it was such a hot subject!
