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#1
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Replacement file explorer/manager
On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted:
on 2/12/2014, Gene E. Bloch supposed : On 2/12/2014, Ed Propes posted: Gene E. Bloch has brought this to us : On 2/06/2014, Ken Blake, MVP posted: But it's much harder to keep track of your near infinitude of files :-) BTW, I was an earlier adopter: 10 MB for $800. In retrospect, I'd say I was stupid to do that :-) IIRC my first HD was a 10mb "hard card". I'm ashamed to admit how much I paid for it bg. I have an old pc mag stashed somewhere that has an add for a 300bps modem for over $600. Hard to imagine that my phone today has much more memory than most phone switches of 20 years ago. Ed from E Texas Your phone is a far better computer than the room-filling one I started to program on a little while ago... When is the last time you programmed the switch by "loading the deck"? AS400 ring a bell? DSL 100 later on? Ah those were the days ....yeah right. DTMF, SF and test tones.... I have no idea what any of those things are (other than DTMF, which relates to touch-tone dialing, not Fortran II), so I can't even guess at an answer. -- Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch) |
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#2
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Replacement file explorer/manager
Gene E. Bloch was thinking very hard :
On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted: on 2/12/2014, Gene E. Bloch supposed : On 2/12/2014, Ed Propes posted: Your phone is a far better computer than the room-filling one I started to program on a little while ago... When is the last time you programmed the switch by "loading the deck"? AS400 ring a bell? DSL 100 later on? Ah those were the days ....yeah right. DTMF, SF and test tones.... I have no idea what any of those things are (other than DTMF, which relates to touch-tone dialing, not Fortran II), so I can't even guess at an answer. SF - Signaling frequency, relates back to analog technology. Test tones are just that. Tones sent between facilities to test signal levels, again analog technology. Guess I haven't thought about how long I've been out of the military and the communications world of decades ago. One of the first PCs I had was an NEC 8001A. I was visiting a small communications site in Okinawa and was surprised to find the phone switch was being run by an NEC 8001A. I wish I still had that system. IIRC it had a 2 GHZ CPU, had 64K RAM and ran C/PM. It had 2 dual sided floppies and I thought I had all the computer I would ever need. Had an NEC dot matrix printer and VGA color graphics. Ed from E Texas |
#3
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Replacement file explorer/manager
On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted:
Gene E. Bloch was thinking very hard : On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted: on 2/12/2014, Gene E. Bloch supposed : On 2/12/2014, Ed Propes posted: Your phone is a far better computer than the room-filling one I started to program on a little while ago... When is the last time you programmed the switch by "loading the deck"? AS400 ring a bell? DSL 100 later on? Ah those were the days ....yeah right. DTMF, SF and test tones.... I have no idea what any of those things are (other than DTMF, which relates to touch-tone dialing, not Fortran II), so I can't even guess at an answer. SF - Signaling frequency, relates back to analog technology. Test tones are just that. Tones sent between facilities to test signal levels, again analog technology. Guess I haven't thought about how long I've been out of the military and the communications world of decades ago. One of the first PCs I had was an NEC 8001A. I was visiting a small communications site in Okinawa and was surprised to find the phone switch was being run by an NEC 8001A. I wish I still had that system. IIRC it had a 2 GHZ CPU, had 64K RAM and ran C/PM. It had 2 dual sided floppies and I thought I had all the computer I would ever need. Had an NEC dot matrix printer and VGA color graphics. Ed from E Texas OK. But I thought I was comparing today's smart phones to older computers, not to older telephones or switching centers. Think IBM 7090... For one thing, I don't use my smart phone to make or receive phone calls :-) -- Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch) |
#4
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Replacement file explorer/manager
On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 11:34:20 -0800, Gene E. Bloch
wrote: But I thought I was comparing today's smart phones to older computers, not to older telephones or switching centers. Think IBM 7090... The 7090 was a very big, very fast (for its day) computer. Did you work on one? I never did, but I once saw a couple when I visited the American Airlines Sabre Data Processing Center, back around 1968. Mostly I worked on 1401s, a 7080, and 360s and 370s of a variety of sizes (20, 30, 40, 50, 67, 145, 155). Also a Univac II, very briefly, for only a week or two. And an IBM System 23, but that wasn't a mainframe. |
#5
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Replacement file explorer/manager
On 2/14/2014, Ken Blake, MVP posted:
On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 11:34:20 -0800, Gene E. Bloch wrote: But I thought I was comparing today's smart phones to older computers, not to older telephones or switching centers. Think IBM 7090... The 7090 was a very big, very fast (for its day) computer. Did you work on one? Yes. That's where I started my programming career. Fortran II and FAP. We didn't own one, we rented time at $600/hour. Yikes! Yeah, fast. The cycle time was 2 microseconds, IIRC. If not IIRC, then only 1 musec. We didn't even express it in MHz :-) I never did, but I once saw a couple when I visited the American Airlines Sabre Data Processing Center, back around 1968. Mostly I worked on 1401s, a 7080, and 360s and 370s of a variety of sizes (20, 30, 40, 50, 67, 145, 155). Also a Univac II, very briefly, for only a week or two. And an IBM System 23, but that wasn't a mainframe. One of my friends/coworkers worked on 1401s. Later the company acquired a 360, but we also did contract work for others, so I got to work on a variety of minicomputers and other systems. -- Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch) |
#6
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Replacement file explorer/manager
Gene E. Bloch presented the following explanation :
On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted: Gene E. Bloch was thinking very hard : On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted: I have no idea what any of those things are (other than DTMF, which relates to touch-tone dialing, not Fortran II), so I can't even guess at an answer. SF - Signaling frequency, relates back to analog technology. Test tones are just that. Tones sent between facilities to test signal levels, again analog technology. Guess I haven't thought about how long I've been out of the military and the communications world of decades ago. One of the first PCs I had was an NEC 8001A. I was visiting a small communications site in Okinawa and was surprised to find the phone switch was being run by an NEC 8001A. I wish I still had that system. IIRC it had a 2 GHZ CPU, had 64K RAM and ran C/PM. It had 2 dual sided floppies and I thought I had all the computer I would ever need. Had an NEC dot matrix printer and VGA color graphics. Ed from E Texas OK. But I thought I was comparing today's smart phones to older computers, not to older telephones or switching centers. Think IBM 7090... For one thing, I don't use my smart phone to make or receive phone calls :-) I was wrong when I referred to the AS400. It dawned me the next day that the AS400 was a computer. What I was actually thinking of was an old military autovon phone switch. That's what I was talking about when I asked about loading the deck. The autovon switch I was thinking of was programmed by a stack of punch cards or "the deck". That switch/computer was old enough it used the old ferrite core memory. As far as my smart phone you're really making me feel like an old timer because I still use mine for a phone primarily g. I use if for other things you like a clock or to get the weather, things like that. Ed from Texas |
#7
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On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 04:23:17 -0600, Ed Propes
wrote: Gene E. Bloch presented the following explanation : On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted: Gene E. Bloch was thinking very hard : On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted: I have no idea what any of those things are (other than DTMF, which relates to touch-tone dialing, not Fortran II), so I can't even guess at an answer. SF - Signaling frequency, relates back to analog technology. Test tones are just that. Tones sent between facilities to test signal levels, again analog technology. Guess I haven't thought about how long I've been out of the military and the communications world of decades ago. One of the first PCs I had was an NEC 8001A. I was visiting a small communications site in Okinawa and was surprised to find the phone switch was being run by an NEC 8001A. I wish I still had that system. IIRC it had a 2 GHZ CPU, had 64K RAM and ran C/PM. It had 2 dual sided floppies and I thought I had all the computer I would ever need. Had an NEC dot matrix printer and VGA color graphics. Ed from E Texas OK. But I thought I was comparing today's smart phones to older computers, not to older telephones or switching centers. Think IBM 7090... For one thing, I don't use my smart phone to make or receive phone calls :-) I was wrong when I referred to the AS400. It dawned me the next day that the AS400 was a computer. Yes, a computer, but a mini-computer, not a mainframe like the 7090. |
#8
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Replacement file explorer/manager
It happens that Ken Blake, MVP formulated :
On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 04:23:17 -0600, Ed Propes wrote: Gene E. Bloch presented the following explanation : On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted: OK. But I thought I was comparing today's smart phones to older computers, not to older telephones or switching centers. Think IBM 7090... For one thing, I don't use my smart phone to make or receive phone calls :-) I was wrong when I referred to the AS400. It dawned me the next day that the AS400 was a computer. Yes, a computer, but a mini-computer, not a mainframe like the 7090. I'll try to remember that (lol). Ed from E Texas |
#9
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Replacement file explorer/manager
On 2/15/2014, Ed Propes posted:
Gene E. Bloch presented the following explanation : On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted: Gene E. Bloch was thinking very hard : On 2/13/2014, Ed Propes posted: .... For one thing, I don't use my smart phone to make or receive phone calls :-) I was wrong when I referred to the AS400. It dawned me the next day that the AS400 was a computer. What I was actually thinking of was an old military autovon phone switch. That's what I was talking about when I asked about loading the deck. The autovon switch I was thinking of was programmed by a stack of punch cards or "the deck". That switch/computer was old enough it used the old ferrite core memory. As far as my smart phone you're really making me feel like an old timer because I still use mine for a phone primarily g. I use if for other things you like a clock or to get the weather, things like that. Well, you're verging on modernity :-) The 7090, and IIRC its successor the 7094, used ferrite cores. The 7094's cycle time was half that of the 7090. We still didn't talk MHz :-) I'm sure that the ferrite core memory was a major cause of the lack of speed. -- Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch) |
#10
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On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 14:10:55 -0800, Gene E. Bloch
wrote: Well, you're verging on modernity :-) The 7090, and IIRC its successor the 7094, used ferrite cores. Yep--both used cores for their memory. And so did the 7090's predecessor, the 709, and its predecessor, the 704. The 7094's cycle time was half that of the 7090. Wow! I don't think I ever knew the difference was that great, but if I did I had forgotten it. We still didn't talk MHz :-) I'm sure that the ferrite core memory was a major cause of the lack of speed. Also the large size of everything. It takes a nanosecond for electricity to travel about 11 inches, so anything big means the electricity has to travel farther and it's therefore slower. |
#11
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Replacement file explorer/manager
On 2/15/2014, Ken Blake, MVP posted:
Well, you're verging on modernity :-) The 7090, and IIRC its successor the 7094, used ferrite cores. Yep--both used cores for their memory. And so did the 7090's predecessor, the 709, and its predecessor, the 704. That's in no way a surprise, of course. There was back then a tendency not to use technology before it was invented (or at least available). Or, while I'm still in nit-picking mode: we certainly would not have expected the 7090 to take a step backwards. When I was working on the 90 & 94 boxes, core memory was finally reaching the end of its technological life. To be honest, I don't remember what kind of memory was in the new minicomputers that I worked on then, but seeing that they were only the size of a normal refrigerator, I'd guess semiconductors. -- Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch) |
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On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 15:07:35 -0800, Gene E. Bloch
wrote: On 2/15/2014, Ken Blake, MVP posted: Well, you're verging on modernity :-) The 7090, and IIRC its successor the 7094, used ferrite cores. Yep--both used cores for their memory. And so did the 7090's predecessor, the 709, and its predecessor, the 704. That's in no way a surprise, of course. There was back then a tendency not to use technology before it was invented (or at least available). Or, while I'm still in nit-picking mode: we certainly would not have expected the 7090 to take a step backwards. When I was working on the 90 & 94 boxes, core memory was finally reaching the end of its technological life. To be honest, I don't remember what kind of memory was in the new minicomputers that I worked on then, but seeing that they were only the size of a normal refrigerator, I'd guess semiconductors. I never worked on a minicomputer. I started programming a 1401 in 1962, then moved to consulting work on a 7080 with occasional assignments on things like the Univac II. Then I moved to, and stayed on 360s and 370s. If I remember correctly, what we had at my last installation before I retired were two 4381s. |
#13
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Replacement file explorer/manager
On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 17:10:11 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote: On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 15:07:35 -0800, Gene E. Bloch wrote: On 2/15/2014, Ken Blake, MVP posted: Well, you're verging on modernity :-) The 7090, and IIRC its successor the 7094, used ferrite cores. Yep--both used cores for their memory. And so did the 7090's predecessor, the 709, and its predecessor, the 704. That's in no way a surprise, of course. There was back then a tendency not to use technology before it was invented (or at least available). Or, while I'm still in nit-picking mode: we certainly would not have expected the 7090 to take a step backwards. When I was working on the 90 & 94 boxes, core memory was finally reaching the end of its technological life. To be honest, I don't remember what kind of memory was in the new minicomputers that I worked on then, but seeing that they were only the size of a normal refrigerator, I'd guess semiconductors. I never worked on a minicomputer. I started programming a 1401 in 1962, then moved to consulting work, mostly on a 7080 with occasional assignments on things like the Univac II. Then I moved to, and stayed on, 360s and 370s. If I remember correctly, what we had at my last installation before I retired were two 4381s. And speaking of ferrite cores, the phrase "core dump" still sticks in my mind. |
#14
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Replacement file explorer/manager
On 2/15/2014, Ken Blake, MVP posted:
On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 17:10:11 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP" wrote: On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 15:07:35 -0800, Gene E. Bloch wrote: On 2/15/2014, Ken Blake, MVP posted: Well, you're verging on modernity :-) The 7090, and IIRC its successor the 7094, used ferrite cores. Yep--both used cores for their memory. And so did the 7090's predecessor, the 709, and its predecessor, the 704. That's in no way a surprise, of course. There was back then a tendency not to use technology before it was invented (or at least available). Or, while I'm still in nit-picking mode: we certainly would not have expected the 7090 to take a step backwards. When I was working on the 90 & 94 boxes, core memory was finally reaching the end of its technological life. To be honest, I don't remember what kind of memory was in the new minicomputers that I worked on then, but seeing that they were only the size of a normal refrigerator, I'd guess semiconductors. I never worked on a minicomputer. I started programming a 1401 in 1962, then moved to consulting work, mostly on a 7080 with occasional assignments on things like the Univac II. Then I moved to, and stayed on, 360s and 370s. If I remember correctly, what we had at my last installation before I retired were two 4381s. And speaking of ferrite cores, the phrase "core dump" still sticks in my mind. :-) Me too; I still use it... -- Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch) |
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