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| Here's our first lab computer from 1974. It was a DEC PDP 8 and had a total of 4K of memory. I finally got the "boss" to give me the $4000 to get an additional 4K <g>. The service engineer had to install and configure it into the system. Notice the system was on numerous boards. It did things that amazed people and cost almost $25,000. The program, was on paper tape and all input and output was on a Teletype. It was kind of a dog to boot. First you had to put in a whole bunch of binary numbers from the front panel switches that you see. Then load in the first loader from the TTY. Finally if the moon was right and all was OK you could spend the next twenty minutes loading in the program and hope that the TTY read it all in correctly. The system had six fans to keep it cool. If it got a little too hot, it made mistakes and got silly. This system actually read in data from four channels of a chemical analyzer and an electronic tablet weigher, stored it and generated reports. That's why we needed all eight K of memory. <g>. |
| Below is the old Teletype (we called them TTY). It was originally designed to send telegrams which was a kind of written electronic communication like E-mail but a lot slower.. The TTY ran at ten characters per second and could read and punch paper tape, as well. You can see the yellow paper tape on the left front of the TTY. You got used to the smell of hot oil as it was strictly mechanical and also made a noise all its own. After a while, I learned to read the holes in the tape, not a useful skill today <g>. Maybe I should put it on my resume.......... Strangely enough, the confetti like discarded paper punches were called "chads". We heard about that in the presidential election mess, but strictly speaking the parts punched from cards are called "chips". Back then we knew our "chips" from our "chads." Chads were useful to throw at football games but they stuck to you as the tape was oiled to lubricate the punch. <g>. You know when you have been chadded. I actually had a TTY at home and my son Doug and I used to go on-line in 1976. Our favorite game was the original "adventure". It was all text so the pictures were in your mind. All Adventure players know the expression "hello sailor" and the terms "XYZZY" and "foo" among others. |
| Teletype Model 33ASR (automatic send & receive) |
| Our First Mini Computer |
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